# Just got T-Quoter - my initial review.



## Pwear (Mar 7, 2008)

I just purchased the newest version of T-Quoter, released a few days ago - version 2.18.331. I attended a webinar after I installed it, and they walked me through most of the program in detail to show me how to use it. I know that many people have considered it, and I know there's a bunch of other software out there, but I ultimately decided to try out T-Quoter because of the generally good reviews on this forum AND the indication that this newest version would fix alot of the bugs that exist in previous versions. In addition, the software was recently bought by another company, and it seems that their customer support is very good. I'm going to try to keep this short and just cover my basic impressions for those interested in this software. Let me preface this by saying that many of the other shop management software out there has similar features - this is not a sales pitch to convince you to use T-Quoter, but rather my personal review of the program as I use it.

My first impression is excellent. The way that the software organizes jobs and customers makes the logistics of running a shop so much easier. I can write up quotes in minutes, and it's easy to change a quote to an invoice and everything in between, without re-typing the entire form. In addition, I can print out work orders for production that tells the printer what he should be doing on that order. The same order number is carried throughout the process. In addition, I can load my supplier's catalog into the program, and the garment prices are calculated automatically based on the markup percentage that I specified in the program settings. This makes it SO much easier to make quotes quickly and keep track of jobs, and seriously cuts down on my paperwork time because everything is pre-filled by the program. I can even print out a pre-filled purchase order for my supplier based on the order details. T-Quoter will also work for embroidery, vinyl, signs, banners, etc.

The front "dashboard" lists your pending jobs, and it shows their current state. The program tells you exactly what should be happening in the future. For example, if a job is in the art department AND a deposit has been paid for, it will notify me that I need to order materials today in order to get the order to the customer by the due date. It knows how long jobs will take based on criteria that I entered in the settings, and it knows what equipment I have. So it will suggest a schedule that the job can be completed, based on how many machines I have, how long it takes to print the actual job, and what other jobs or machines are in use at any given time. If I have an artist AND a printer, it'll let me schedule them at the same time. If I'm a one-man shop, it'll only schedule one task at a time. Again, SO much easier in terms of shop management - everything is there for me, I don't have to drive myself crazy and worry about getting stuff done in time or extending my shop too far with production.

There are so many other great features that I haven't even gotten into - if you want, it'll calculate all of your expenses (rent, water, heat, etc.) and suggest pricing for you based on your expenses, your desired shop profit and your shop production hours. The idea is to keep your shop operating at a profit, and ensure that you're not loosing money on any job. I played with this briefly and had some trouble because it's quoting double what my shop rates are. Even so, it gives a nice consistent pricing grid, and there are ways to lower the numbers, even if you're fooling the system to do it. This is an option anyway, you can still load in your shop pricing and not worry about this feature. I'm going to try to use this feature in the future, the cause of the high prices may even be some setting that I'm entering in error.

Other features are quickbooks integration, financial report output and a bunch of other stuff. From what I see so far, it is a great shop management program for comparatively low cost. I looked at other programs like FastManager and was equally impressed with them, but I didn't have the funds to work with them. For the price, I think this software will do wonders for my shop management and let me focus more on marketing and the actual jobs, rather than the bookkeeping.

Hopefully this was helpful, I tried not to sound like a sales pitch because it's not - it might be right for small/medium sized shops, I'm not sure how well it'll work with huge shops because they might want more flexibility with some things. In any case, I'll be using it daily now, so I'll continue to offer my opinions good and bad as I get further into the program. I've only had it for a couple of days, but I'd be glad to answer questions if anyone is considering the program.

Aaron


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## InkedApparel (Mar 18, 2009)

thank you for your review , I have been wanting to get a shop management program but Im not sure if I need one as of yet....Im still in my garage 

Inked


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Thanks for taking the time to share that informative review! I'm sure it'll be helpful to others looking for that type software!



> I played with this briefly and had some trouble because it's quoting double what my shop rates are.


Maybe it's telling you you need to be charging more


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## Pwear (Mar 7, 2008)

Rodney said:


> Maybe it's telling you you need to be charging more


haha maybe!


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