Busy is not the same as profitable
Ask most shop owners how business is and you’ll hear ‘busy’. Ask how profitable the busy-ness is and the answer gets vaguer. The industry data explains why. In PRINTING United Alliance’s Winter 2025 report, average sales grew 3.5%, but 70.5% of decorators saw profitability stay flat or fall, because costs rose 6.8% while prices rose 5.3%. The spread inside the industry is wide: the top quarter grew sales 17.3%, the bottom quarter shrank 10.1%.
A lot of that gap comes down to knowing which work actually makes money. As one Print+Promo article puts it, a 12-piece, four-colour order takes as long to set up as a 200-piece one. If your price list doesn’t reflect that, small orders quietly eat your margin, and a full schedule can hide it for months.
Step 1: Know your true hourly shop cost
Everything else depends on this number. Add up a year of everything it takes to keep the doors open, then divide by the hours your presses are actually producing (not hours open):
| Cost line (annual, illustrative 6-person shop) | Amount |
|---|---|
| Wages and payroll taxes (production, art, admin) | $330,000 |
| Owner compensation (pay yourself a market salary) | $90,000 |
| Rent and utilities | $72,000 |
| Equipment payments and maintenance | $48,000 |
| Software, insurance, accounting, marketing | $30,000 |
| Total overhead | $570,000 |
| Productive press hours (2 presses × 6 productive hrs × 250 days) | 3,000 hours |
| True shop cost per productive hour | about $190 |
Many owners are surprised by this number because they think in operator wages ($20–25 an hour), not in the full cost of an hour of production. Leave out owner pay and you will under-price every job.
Step 2: List every cost a job carries
| Cost | What it includes | Often missed? |
|---|---|---|
| Blanks | Garments, plus spares and expected spoilage | Spoilage allowance |
| Setup | Art prep, film or file setup, screens, press setup, test prints, breakdown and cleanup | Yes: the biggest gap on small runs |
| Run time | Press time per piece at your real speed, by method | Real speeds are lower than brochure speeds |
| Finishing | Curing, folding, bagging, tagging, labels | |
| Reprints and returns | Rework caused by this job | Yes |
| Freight and packaging | Outbound shipping, split shipments, rush upgrades | Yes, on rush jobs |
| Payment costs | Card fees, discounts, late payment | Yes |
| Overhead | Covered through your true hourly cost | Often under-counted |
Run speeds deserve a reality check. Printavo’s figures for screen printing are about 100 shirts an hour on a manual press and about 450 on an automatic for a one-colour job, falling to roughly 50 and 330 for a six-colour, front-and-back job. DTG is slower again: a large print on a dark shirt can take around three minutes. Use the speed you actually achieve, including loading and changeovers.
Step 3: A worked example (illustrative)
Two screen-printed orders on the same day, both priced from the same price list, using the $190 hourly shop cost from Step 1:
| Item | Order A: 24 pieces, 3 colours | Order B: 300 pieces, 3 colours |
|---|---|---|
| Price (from price list) | $408 ($17 each) | $3,600 ($12 each) |
| Blanks (incl. 2% spoilage) | $147 | $1,836 |
| Setup and breakdown (40 min) | $127 | $127 |
| Run time (auto press, ~300/hr real) | $15 | $190 |
| Finishing and packing | $12 | $120 |
| Reprints | $18 | $45 |
| Freight | $45 (rush) | $60 |
| Card fees (3%) | $12 | $108 |
| True profit | $32 (8%) | $1,114 (31%) |
Same price list, same shop, same day. Setup is 31% of Order A’s price and 3.5% of Order B’s. Illustrative.
On the price list both orders look healthy. In reality Order A earns about a quarter of Order B’s margin, and one more reprint or a split shipment would wipe it out. Multiply that across hundreds of small orders a month and you have the ‘busy but flat’ shop.
Step 4: Price so the numbers work
- Charge setup separately, or build it into price breaks. Common practice is a flat fee per colour or location (around $20–30), or a minimum order of 12–24 pieces, according to Anatol’s pricing guide.
- Set price breaks by run size that reflect the setup share, not just volume discounts.
- Price darks and large prints separately on DTG, because ink and time can be several times higher than on light garments.
- Add rush and split-shipment fees that cover the real freight and disruption.
- Target a margin, not a markup. A 30–50% markup is common, but check the margin after all the costs above, by order.
Step 5: Review margin by order and customer every month
Job costing only pays off if you look at it regularly. Once a month, sort last month’s orders by true margin and look at three lists:
- The bottom 20% of orders: what do they have in common (run size, method, customer, rush)?
- Customers below your target margin: are they strategic, or just habits?
- The share of loss-making orders over time: if it is rising, your prices or costs have drifted, and you have caught it before it shows up in the P&L.
Then decide, don’t drift. Some small orders are worth taking: a new customer, a strategic account, a sample that leads to a big order. Take them as a conscious choice, priced so you know what they cost you.
Doing this for every order, automatically
Job costing by hand works for a few orders a week. At hundreds of orders a day, and with costs moving every month, it doesn’t. The data you need is already in your systems: orders, job times, reprints, freight invoices, payment terms. It just isn’t connected.
An AI layer on top of your existing shop system can calculate the true margin of every order as it is quoted and after it ships, show which customers, run sizes and methods lose money, and warn you when the share of loss-making orders starts to climb, with a specific suggestion such as a setup charge below 25 pieces or batching same-artwork orders.
Curious which of your orders actually make money? Bring us one problem. We’ll show you on your own data.
Bring us one problem →Related: What is a normal DTG spoilage rate, and how do you cut it? · AI for print shops and POD production
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate job costing for a print shop?
Add blanks (with spoilage), setup, run time, finishing, reprints, freight and payment costs for the job, plus overhead through your true hourly shop cost, then compare with the price.
Why do small print orders lose money?
Setup takes about the same time regardless of quantity, so on short runs it is a large share of the cost.
What should I charge for setup?
Many shops charge a flat fee per colour or location, often around $20–30, or set a minimum order; the right number comes from your own hourly shop cost.
How often should I review job costs?
Monthly for margin by order and customer; whenever blank prices, wages or freight rates change.
What is a good margin on a print job?
It varies by method and market. The useful number is your own margin by run size and customer, tracked over time.
