How the catalogue fits together
Materials, items, departments, machines and products — and how they price a job.
What this is for
Your catalogue is what makes quoting fast and consistent. This explains how the pieces connect so the rest of the catalogue guides make sense: materials and items are the ingredients, departments and machines are the work, and a product's recipe puts them together into something you can quote in seconds.
Step by step
- 1
Materials (bought by sheet or roll) and items (counted parts) are your ingredients, each with a real cost.
- 2
Departments carry your labour rate and machines carry their running rate. That is what the work costs per hour.
- 3
A product is a recipe written as plain sentences — 'print on 3mm ACM', 'laminate for 10 minutes', 'add 4 eyelets' — each one naming an ingredient or a bit of work and how much of it the sign needs. Sizing rules and markup sit on the product too.
- 4
When you quote, you pick a product (or build a custom line) and Sign OS reads the recipe, adds up every ingredient, the work and your markup, and gives the same price every time.
Tips & gotchas
- Set up the catalogue once and quoting becomes picking from a list. The time you invest here pays back on every quote.