Production Printing - while creating Multiple-Deliveries and Multiple Invoices

Production Printing - while creating Multiple-Deliveries and Multiple Invoices

Multi-Print Strategy


IQ gives you the ability to print multiple items on a sheet, or within a print job. For instance, you might be printing posters for multiple store locations. You can print them at once, sometimes multiple up on a sheet saving your company time and money.

However, as printers, we don't always want to share our trade secrets with the customer. The customer may be submitting individual purchase orders, and wanting individual deliveries, and possibly invoices as well. There are several ways of achieving this, but creating individual packing slips and invoices can be cumbersome. 








A combination of IQ tools can help you achieve this objective. This is especially useful when you are constantly doing this type of work.

This article contains multiple steps in case you are unfamiliar with all the "tools" you need - you can easily use the contents to jump to the last step of creating the CSV. 

A. Create your Production Print Job

1. Create Your Print Job

The first step will be to create a production print job where you will gang all of your items for printing, or print the entire run en-mass. It doesn't matter if you are printing Wide Format, Sheetfed, Screen, Web or Digital.
Choose your size, stock, color and finishing options as you usually would. 

2. Split into Versions

When creating your job you can use the versions import function. 
A. Once you have created your quote - you can click on the WRENCH/SPANNER to open "advanced quantity mode"

B. Click the "Split into Versions" option:

C. Now click the UPLOAD KINDS button (or enter them manually)

D. Here you can import a simple spreadsheet - with the first column being your Version Name, the second column being the quantity:

in our example we have a head office, plus 97 stores, each of which will have their own PO, require their own Delivery Address, and their own Invoice

E. Once you upload it will break out the job with all of the quantities for each store/location


a total for the job will be displayed at the right hand side (Click here to see more on Advanced Quantities)

F. Now update your job and your Production Quote will be ready to go. In our case we're running the job 5 up of each store on one board (wide format), and multiple boards to complete the job.



G. Proceed the job, and set the delivery to NONE as we'll be doing delivery separately.


F. When the job hits production - go to the all jobs board assign the JOB to a JOB SERIES (This is so you can track the production job with the invoice/delivery jobs you will create):

Create a new Series for this group of Jobs/Invoices/Deliveries:

You will see your job now is linked to this Series. (For more on job series click here)

B. Create a Product with Pricing

1. Create a Tree Node to hang your SINGLE PRODUCT on.

A. Go to the Product Category an create a PRODUCT called something like "POSTER PRICING" - you can use this for multiple purposes. 


2. Create a Single Product for Pricing Purposes

A. Go to the single product creation menu (or create one from a quote)

B. Create a product with individual pricing. In this case we do not want a "print job" or anything that will hit the production boards or capacity planning. 
 Create a non-printing job with no operations simply "no printing, no material, no color etc" - simply a pass through. 

i. Associate the product with the tree node you created in step B1. (ie. hang the fruit on the tree branch you want it on)
ii. Give the product a session name so you can distinguish it in your list of products
iii. Give the product a code you will use later 
iv. Enter a description that will be picked up
v. If you are shipping this product you can specify the carton name and the number of items that will fit 
C.  Set the price to the unit price of the entire job (ie. in our case we had 505 double-sided WF posters printed on Sintra, with grommets (eyelets), totalling $40,400 or $80 a piece.  (You can use this to dictate the price on each separate invoice automatically.)

i. Choose a price list that will not mark up (for more on pricelists click here)
ii. Choose the Pricing Method of single unit per quantity which will charge the flat rate for each item (on the invoice)
iii. Enter the rate per item you determined (ie. total job / quantity)
iv. Use a pricing factor of 1 - to not mark up the product. 
*This product can be used over again - simply changing the price as you need to populate more products in a similar way

C. Create a CSV to push in your Jobs/Delivery Addresses & Invoices

1. Enable CSV product uploads visibility

A. If your company has not been using CSV uploads, you may need to enable the menu to be visible.
i. Go to the ADMIN menu and choose Menu under the Application heading (for more information on menus click here)


ii. Now click the pencil on first UPLOAD - and ensure it is active


iii. Then click the pencil on simplified quote and ensure it can be seen (you can name it what you want, but ensure it is visible to staff, is active, and choose the roles you want to be able to perform this function). 

iv. The menu will now be available under quoting:


2. Download the CSV Product Import template.

A. Download the Template:

B. Open the CSV in Excel:

3. Populate the CSV

1. Populate the "job" information (or just a quote)

If you are wanting just push jobs in with invoices you need to populate all the yellow areas of the CSV (the ones with * in the CSV):


Our example is show below:

Critical Columns:
a. Type = Product (this is what you are uploading)
b. Line Reference - should always be 1
c. Order Ref - is the customer PO which in our example are all different per line
d. Customer Code - is the customer code for the quote
e. Product Code - is the Product code you created in Step 2.B.iii above. 
f. Quantity - is the quantity for this location
g. Kinds - typically is one
h. Job title - typically this is the job title, but in our example - we want each store listed in the title (as they are paying individually)
i. Due date - is your due date set by the sequence in your site for date and time
j. Series Ref - is linking all these jobs to a "series" so they are all tied together (see A.2.F above)
You will also need to populate the REQUIRED information that would be required 

This will include an address line etc. for the invoice to go and a contact name and address.
Columns X and Y are helpful if you want them to be "one off" uses.  Typically you will want to set these to TRUE. If these addresses already exist you want this to be TRUE so they are one-time use and don't duplicate. 

2. Creating only a quote, vs. a quote and an invoice 


Critical Columns 
W - will allow you to create these as only quotes awaiting acceptances - if you put FALSE in it will create a job too.
Z - will allow you to create Invoices with the Job.
If you only want to create a QUOTE you can choose TRUE on column W (otherwise it will create a job)
The other Critical Column is AK which allows you to specify the shipping type:


4. Upload the CSV.

Once you are complete you can upload this directly into IQ.
In this example we are creating 98 quotes, 98 jobs, 98 deliveries and 98 invoices. 
Double check your CSV because it will populate (in our case) 98 quotes, jobs, deliveries and invoices, (and if we had chosen it 98 delivery contacts and addresses.)

a. Choose your file to upload:



IQ will then run a verification process that will point out any errors you may need to fix (ie. did you add the price list to the client, is the product name right etc).

b. IMPORT your file


IQ will then generate a quote, a job, a delivery address and an invoice for each item on your list, and add the jobs to the job series (if you decided to use this)

This will take some time to produce depending on the size of the upload.

5. Viewing your jobs

A. Viewing them on the PRE-PRODUCTION and PRODUCTION boards

If you created your job from a product that had no production items, your job will skip the pre-production board and the production board and will be found on the Dispatch and Invoice boards. 

B. Viewing them on the ALL JOBS boards

The job will be on the all-jobs board, but hidden if the attribute COMPLETE is ticked. To show these jobs you can click on the INVOICE Status and turn on partial or invoiced to see the component parts. 



C. Viewing them on the DISPATCH (Shipping) boards

Your jobs will also be on the "dispatch" board - ready to send out:

The delivery information will be present, and the integration will have calculated the price (if you have integration) - it will be ready for your dispatcher to send out:

 The Box Label can display the information you need (ie. unique title/part number, PO # etc):



B. Viewing them on the MANAGE INVOICE boards

The jobs will show up on the invoice board (if you chose to invoice them, and if they were not marked as paid)


The invoice itself will be approved, but not sent - and depending on your setup may add the freight on top:


The invoice will display the PO Number, and the unique title, and grab the description from the product you created in step



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