Sign OS terminology — what each word means

Plain-English definitions of every term the app uses, from material to traveler.

What this is for

Sign OS uses a handful of words with precise meanings — a hardware item is not a material, a process is not a product. This page walks through the app in the order you meet things and defines every term, so every other guide (and every screen) reads clearly.

Step by step

1
Your shop — your business inside Sign OS. Everything you set up — rates, materials, products, customers — belongs to your shop and is private to it.
2
Global vs Shop — many catalogue lists (materials, hardware, machine rates, products) are tagged one of two ways. Global entries come with Sign OS as shared, ready-made starting points; Shop (custom) entries are your own. You can use a Global entry as-is or copy it and make it yours — your figures always win.
3
Cost, markup, margin, sell price — cost is what something costs you to make (materials + labour + machine time). Markup is the percentage Sign OS adds on top of cost to reach the sell price the customer sees. It is a markup on cost, not a margin on the sell price: a 100% markup doubles a $100 cost to a $200 sell, which is a 50% margin. Set your default under Settings → Pricing & margin.
4
Pricing group — a customer group with its own pricing, so trade and retail customers can pay different rates automatically. Credit terms — the payment terms a customer is on, like 7, 14 or 30 days. Both live under Credit terms & pricing groups and apply themselves the moment you pick the customer on a quote.
5
Department — a station a job physically moves through: design, print, laminate, CNC, weld, paint, install. Departments are the backbone of Sign OS — they drive labour costs, the floor boards and the production schedule. A labour rate is what one hour of a department's time costs you.
6
Machine — a piece of equipment that does work: printer, laminator, router, laser. A machine rate is what it costs to run that machine for an hour (power, ink, wear, finance), so machine time prices itself into any recipe that uses it. A rate profile is one saved set of those figures.
7
Supplier — a business you buy from. A supplier quote is a recorded price from a specific supplier for a specific material size — it is how a material knows what it really costs and who to order it from.
8
Material — anything a job consumes that you measure and cut: ACM sheet, acrylic, vinyl, laminate, banner media, ink. Found under Catalogue → Materials (your stock library). A material has physical sizes (width × depth), a purchase unit (the sheet, roll or litre you actually buy), a purchase cost for that unit, and a sell unit (the square metre or lineal metre you quote in). Recipes work out how much of it a job's dimensions use, so material cost scales with the size of the sign.
9
Basic vs Advanced pricing (materials) — a material can price the Basic way (one flat rate) or the Advanced way (per-size supplier quotes, so a 2440×1220 sheet and a 3050×1500 sheet each carry their real price). Start Basic; go Advanced when the real prices differ by size or supplier.
10
Hardware & items — the countable parts that go into or onto a job: fixings, screws, standoffs, LED modules, power supplies, rail, spacers. Found under Catalogue → Hardware & items. An item has a default cost per unit and is priced each — a recipe or quote simply adds a quantity of them. Each item can carry a default supplier so it can go straight onto a purchase order.
11
Material or hardware item? Ask how you would order more. If you would say 'three square metres of' or 'two rolls of' — you measure it, you cut it, offcuts go back on the shelf — it is a material. If you would say 'forty of' — you count whole units and never cut one — it is a hardware item. A vinyl roll is a material (a job uses part of the roll); a standoff is an item (a job uses four of them, whole).
Note: Why it matters: material cost scales with the sign's dimensions, item cost scales with how many you fit. Put a standoff in as a material and its price stops making sense the moment the sign changes size.
12
Stock words — on hand is how many/much you physically have; on order is what is coming on open purchase orders; reorder level is the point where Sign OS flags it for reordering. These apply to both materials and hardware items.
13
Units & conversions — the maths that turns the unit you buy in into the unit you quote in: millimetres to square metres, a roll into lineal metres. Set once under Settings → Units & conversions; after that it just works. A common size is a saved go-to dimension — your standard panel and banner sizes — so you pick from a list instead of typing measurements.
14
Catalogue — the umbrella for your shop's library: products, processes, materials, hardware & items, machine rates, common sizes and product types all live under Catalogue in the sidebar. A product type is a category that keeps products tidy when browsing — panels, banners, vehicle graphics, illuminated signage.
15
Process — a repeatable piece of production work, like 'print, laminate and cut to shape', saved with the departments it runs through, the machines it uses and the time it takes. Build it once, drop it into any product, and the labour and machine cost comes with it.
16
Product and recipe — a product is a finished, priceable thing in your catalogue: 'ACM panel', 'pull-up banner'. Its recipe is everything needed to cost it — the material it is made from, the hardware items it needs, the processes that make it, its sizing rules and markup. The recipe is why anyone in the shop can quote the product in seconds and get the same price every time.
17
Quote and lines — a quote is a priced offer to a customer, made of lines. A premade line prices a product straight from the catalogue (pick product, size, quantity — done). A custom line is a one-off recipe built on the spot from materials, items, labour and machine time, for work that is not in your catalogue.
18
Delivery & install details — the page on a quote that captures everything around the making: delivery, installation, site details and dates. It can affect the price, and it feeds the production schedule once the quote becomes a job.
19
Job — a quote the customer accepted, now being made. It carries steps (the production work to tick off), files (artwork and site photos), checklists (quality gates) and its money side (customer PO reference, invoicing, dispatch). A variation is a recorded, re-priced change to a job's scope — the extra panel the customer added — so the change is billed, not absorbed.
20
Job sheet and SWMS — the job sheet is the paperwork that goes to the floor: what to make, in what sizes, from what materials. A SWMS is the safe work method statement for installs. Both generate as branded PDFs from the job.
21
Release — the switch that says 'make this now'. Releasing a job puts it on the schedule and the floor boards so the team can start. The timeline is your whole-shop schedule at a glance, planned around your shop hours.
22
Floor boards, traveler and floor scan — floor boards show each department's queue as cards moving through stages, for the people doing the work. The traveler is the printed job sheet that travels with the job, carrying QR codes; scanning one to update progress is floor scan. Job health flags jobs that are slipping — behind schedule or stuck in a department.
23
Purchase order (PO) — your formal order to a supplier. Raising one tracks what is on order; receiving marks the stock as arrived and updates your on-hand counts.
24
Install contractor — an outside crew who installs your work. The installer portal is their own limited login: the jobs you assign them with site details, plus their rates and compliance documents — and nothing else of your shop.
25
Customer and web order — a customer record holds who you sell to: contacts, their pricing group, credit terms and full quote/job history. A web order is a request that arrives through your online store — your public, branded storefront — and gets turned into a normal quote or job.
26
Approvals — your internal sign-off queue. When your shop requires it, sending a quote, issuing an invoice, sending a PO or a job variation waits in the Approvals inbox for a manager's yes before it goes out.
27
Proof and artwork approval — different thing, same word. A proof is the artwork you send the customer to sign off before you make anything, and it is versioned: v1, v2, v3, each tied to the exact file you sent. It lives on the job's own Approvals tab, not the Approvals inbox, and a customer approving it is what lets production start.
28
Outbound and delivery docket — Outbound is the dispatch board: jobs that have finished production and still have goods to leave the building, whether the customer collects, you deliver, or your crew installs. A delivery docket is the paperwork that goes with those goods — what is on the truck, where it is going — and the customer signs it, on screen or on paper.
29
ReAct and Talk to build — ReAct is the built-in AI assistant; ask it anything in plain English, including what a word means. Talk to build is a separate tool under Catalogue: describe a product out loud and it builds the recipe for you. Bulk import is the spreadsheet loader under Catalogue → Bulk import for getting suppliers, materials and hardware items in fast.

Tips & gotchas

You will meet these words in this order as you set up — this page follows the same Golden Path as 'The right order to set Sign OS up'.
Unsure on a screen? Search Help for the word, or ask ReAct — it knows these definitions too.

Step by step

Your shop — your business inside Sign OS. Everything you set up — rates, materials, products, customers — belongs to your shop and is private to it.

Global vs Shop — many catalogue lists (materials, hardware, machine rates, products) are tagged one of two ways. Global entries come with Sign OS as shared, ready-made starting points; Shop (custom) entries are your own. You can use a Global entry as-is or copy it and make it yours — your figures always win.

Cost, markup, margin, sell price — cost is what something costs you to make (materials + labour + machine time). Markup is the percentage Sign OS adds on top of cost to reach the sell price the customer sees. It is a markup on cost, not a margin on the sell price: a 100% markup doubles a $100 cost to a $200 sell, which is a 50% margin. Set your default under Settings → Pricing & margin.

Pricing group — a customer group with its own pricing, so trade and retail customers can pay different rates automatically. Credit terms — the payment terms a customer is on, like 7, 14 or 30 days. Both live under Credit terms & pricing groups and apply themselves the moment you pick the customer on a quote.

Department — a station a job physically moves through: design, print, laminate, CNC, weld, paint, install. Departments are the backbone of Sign OS — they drive labour costs, the floor boards and the production schedule. A labour rate is what one hour of a department's time costs you.

Machine — a piece of equipment that does work: printer, laminator, router, laser. A machine rate is what it costs to run that machine for an hour (power, ink, wear, finance), so machine time prices itself into any recipe that uses it. A rate profile is one saved set of those figures.

Supplier — a business you buy from. A supplier quote is a recorded price from a specific supplier for a specific material size — it is how a material knows what it really costs and who to order it from.

Material — anything a job consumes that you measure and cut: ACM sheet, acrylic, vinyl, laminate, banner media, ink. Found under Catalogue → Materials (your stock library). A material has physical sizes (width × depth), a purchase unit (the sheet, roll or litre you actually buy), a purchase cost for that unit, and a sell unit (the square metre or lineal metre you quote in). Recipes work out how much of it a job's dimensions use, so material cost scales with the size of the sign.

Basic vs Advanced pricing (materials) — a material can price the Basic way (one flat rate) or the Advanced way (per-size supplier quotes, so a 2440×1220 sheet and a 3050×1500 sheet each carry their real price). Start Basic; go Advanced when the real prices differ by size or supplier.

Hardware & items — the countable parts that go into or onto a job: fixings, screws, standoffs, LED modules, power supplies, rail, spacers. Found under Catalogue → Hardware & items. An item has a default cost per unit and is priced each — a recipe or quote simply adds a quantity of them. Each item can carry a default supplier so it can go straight onto a purchase order.

Material or hardware item? Ask how you would order more. If you would say 'three square metres of' or 'two rolls of' — you measure it, you cut it, offcuts go back on the shelf — it is a material. If you would say 'forty of' — you count whole units and never cut one — it is a hardware item. A vinyl roll is a material (a job uses part of the roll); a standoff is an item (a job uses four of them, whole).

Note: Why it matters: material cost scales with the sign's dimensions, item cost scales with how many you fit. Put a standoff in as a material and its price stops making sense the moment the sign changes size.

Stock words — on hand is how many/much you physically have; on order is what is coming on open purchase orders; reorder level is the point where Sign OS flags it for reordering. These apply to both materials and hardware items.

Units & conversions — the maths that turns the unit you buy in into the unit you quote in: millimetres to square metres, a roll into lineal metres. Set once under Settings → Units & conversions; after that it just works. A common size is a saved go-to dimension — your standard panel and banner sizes — so you pick from a list instead of typing measurements.

Catalogue — the umbrella for your shop's library: products, processes, materials, hardware & items, machine rates, common sizes and product types all live under Catalogue in the sidebar. A product type is a category that keeps products tidy when browsing — panels, banners, vehicle graphics, illuminated signage.

Process — a repeatable piece of production work, like 'print, laminate and cut to shape', saved with the departments it runs through, the machines it uses and the time it takes. Build it once, drop it into any product, and the labour and machine cost comes with it.

Product and recipe — a product is a finished, priceable thing in your catalogue: 'ACM panel', 'pull-up banner'. Its recipe is everything needed to cost it — the material it is made from, the hardware items it needs, the processes that make it, its sizing rules and markup. The recipe is why anyone in the shop can quote the product in seconds and get the same price every time.

Quote and lines — a quote is a priced offer to a customer, made of lines. A premade line prices a product straight from the catalogue (pick product, size, quantity — done). A custom line is a one-off recipe built on the spot from materials, items, labour and machine time, for work that is not in your catalogue.

Delivery & install details — the page on a quote that captures everything around the making: delivery, installation, site details and dates. It can affect the price, and it feeds the production schedule once the quote becomes a job.

Job — a quote the customer accepted, now being made. It carries steps (the production work to tick off), files (artwork and site photos), checklists (quality gates) and its money side (customer PO reference, invoicing, dispatch). A variation is a recorded, re-priced change to a job's scope — the extra panel the customer added — so the change is billed, not absorbed.

Job sheet and SWMS — the job sheet is the paperwork that goes to the floor: what to make, in what sizes, from what materials. A SWMS is the safe work method statement for installs. Both generate as branded PDFs from the job.

Release — the switch that says 'make this now'. Releasing a job puts it on the schedule and the floor boards so the team can start. The timeline is your whole-shop schedule at a glance, planned around your shop hours.

Floor boards, traveler and floor scan — floor boards show each department's queue as cards moving through stages, for the people doing the work. The traveler is the printed job sheet that travels with the job, carrying QR codes; scanning one to update progress is floor scan. Job health flags jobs that are slipping — behind schedule or stuck in a department.

Purchase order (PO) — your formal order to a supplier. Raising one tracks what is on order; receiving marks the stock as arrived and updates your on-hand counts.

Install contractor — an outside crew who installs your work. The installer portal is their own limited login: the jobs you assign them with site details, plus their rates and compliance documents — and nothing else of your shop.

Customer and web order — a customer record holds who you sell to: contacts, their pricing group, credit terms and full quote/job history. A web order is a request that arrives through your online store — your public, branded storefront — and gets turned into a normal quote or job.

Approvals — your internal sign-off queue. When your shop requires it, sending a quote, issuing an invoice, sending a PO or a job variation waits in the Approvals inbox for a manager's yes before it goes out.

Proof and artwork approval — different thing, same word. A proof is the artwork you send the customer to sign off before you make anything, and it is versioned: v1, v2, v3, each tied to the exact file you sent. It lives on the job's own Approvals tab, not the Approvals inbox, and a customer approving it is what lets production start.

Outbound and delivery docket — Outbound is the dispatch board: jobs that have finished production and still have goods to leave the building, whether the customer collects, you deliver, or your crew installs. A delivery docket is the paperwork that goes with those goods — what is on the truck, where it is going — and the customer signs it, on screen or on paper.

ReAct and Talk to build — ReAct is the built-in AI assistant; ask it anything in plain English, including what a word means. Talk to build is a separate tool under Catalogue: describe a product out loud and it builds the recipe for you. Bulk import is the spreadsheet loader under Catalogue → Bulk import for getting suppliers, materials and hardware items in fast.

Sign OS terminology — what each word means

What this is for

Step by step

Tips & gotchas

Related guides

Sign OS terminology — what each word means

What this is for

Step by step

Tips & gotchas

Related guides