Most shops track revenue and cash in the bank. Revenue tells you how busy you were and nothing about whether it was worth it, and cash tells you what already happened. Seven numbers, looked at weekly, will tell you more than either.
1. Gross margin per order
(revenue - blanks - decoration cost - direct labour) / revenue
The single most important number, and the one that can quietly fall while revenue rises. Track the distribution too, not just the average: if your worst decile is negative, find out which customer or method it is. Your pricing formula is where the fix lives.
2. Quote conversion rate
quotes accepted / quotes sent
Segment by size. Winning 80 percent of small quotes and 20 percent of large ones is a completely different business problem from the reverse. Rising conversion with falling margin means you are simply cheaper. See quoting to win.
3. Average days from quote to approval
The stage that most often owns your lead time, and it is invisible unless measured. Shops are consistently surprised by this one. Fixing it shortens your quoted lead time without touching the press: see cutting approval time.
4. On-time delivery rate
orders delivered by promised date / orders delivered
Against the promised date, always. Measuring against a private internal target is measuring your optimism. This number is what lets you charge a rush fee credibly.
5. Reprint rate
garments reprinted / garments produced
Track the cause alongside it: blanks, setup, cure, artwork, or approval. One reprint is noise; a pattern is a broken check in the QC process.
6. Revenue per productive hour
revenue / press-running hours
Your real capacity measure. It tells you whether a busy week was actually productive, and it is the number that justifies or kills an equipment purchase. Note it uses press-running hours, not opening hours.
7. Repeat order share
revenue from returning customers / total revenue
The health measure. A shop at 70 percent repeat has a business. A shop at 20 percent has a marketing treadmill, however good this month looked. See wholesale accounts and recurring revenue from schools and clubs.
The weekly review
| Metric | Watch for |
|---|---|
| Gross margin per order | Falling while revenue rises |
| Quote conversion | Rising with falling margin |
| Quote to approval days | Any upward drift |
| On-time delivery | Below 95% |
| Reprint rate | Repeating cause |
| Revenue per productive hour | Flat while headcount grows |
| Repeat order share | Below half |
Fifteen minutes, same day each week. The value is entirely in the trend, which means the discipline of doing it on quiet weeks and busy ones alike.
The vanity metrics
- Revenue alone. Says nothing about margin.
- Total orders. A hundred tiny orders can be worse than twenty good ones.
- Social media followers. Uncorrelated with orders in this trade.
- Equipment utilisation as a target. A press running unprofitable work is worse than a press standing idle.
The eighth number: margin after labour
Seven numbers is a good discipline, and there is one more that changes how the other seven read. Gross margin says whether you bought and sold well. Margin after labour says whether you should have taken the job at all.
| Job | Revenue | Materials | Gross margin | Hours | Labour | Margin after labour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 tees, 2 colours | £750 | £276 | £474, 63% | 4.5 | £117 | £357, 48% |
| 24 tees, 2 colours | £265 | £66 | £199, 75% | 2.6 | £68 | £131, 49% |
| 50 polos, embroidered | £980 | £362 | £618, 63% | 3.4 | £88 | £530, 54% |
| 12 hoodies, DTF, 2 positions | £310 | £118 | £192, 62% | 2.9 | £75 | £117, 38% |
On gross margin the 24-piece job is the best in the shop. On margin after labour it is ordinary, and the small DTF job with two positions is the one quietly costing you. That reordering is the whole argument for measuring hours: percentage margin without a denominator in time cannot rank work.
The denominator problem
Five of the seven numbers above need a measure of time to be meaningful, and time is the one input most shops do not capture. The workable version on a shop floor is not timesheets, it is a clock-on station: an order number, a Clock on button, a Clock off button, nothing else. Hours land against the job at each person's own rate.
Once that exists, revenue per productive hour becomes a report rather than an estimate, and the job costing report also gives you the two derived views worth reading weekly: labour cost per staff member, and the jobs that consumed the most hours in the period. The second list is your requoting list.
A number for the sales side
If anyone in the shop sells, add commission earned per rep to the weekly review, alongside the margin the orders they closed actually produced. The pairing matters. A rep whose orders carry a high commission and a low margin after labour is selling the wrong work, which is a briefing problem, not a character problem.
Commission calculated on the ex-tax value of dispatched orders, at a rate frozen when the rep was assigned, is the version that never causes an argument at payroll: tax is not your money, quotes that never shipped never earned, and a rate change next quarter cannot rewrite last quarter.
Put the review on a fixed slot
Thirty minutes, same time each week, same order, one page. The discipline is the point: numbers reviewed monthly are history, numbers reviewed weekly are still decisions. Anything that has moved more than a set threshold gets one action and one owner before the meeting ends.
A sensible reading order: on-time rate first because it protects revenue, reprint rate second because it protects margin, then margin after labour by method, then conversion and approval days, then repeat share as the slow-moving health measure. Revenue goes last, because it is an outcome of the others rather than a lever.
Printer's Friend reports margin per order and per line, quote conversion, stage timings and on-time delivery from the orders you are already processing, so these are a report rather than a spreadsheet exercise. If you are not yet tracking any of this, the cost of staying manual is mostly the cost of not knowing these seven numbers.