By signcraft
Posted on Monday, September 9th, 2024
A sign shop is a busy place where it’s very true that “the devil is in the details.” One of the reasons money gets lost and time gets wasted is communication errors along the line about the details—between the client and you, and between you and your staff.
A good work order form helps you collect everything you need from the client to quote and produce the sign successfully. And if you have staff, it’s even more critical that all the information gets passed along to them, so that they can do their job without tracking down what they need to know. Even if you work alone, it’s too risky to commit things to memory.
Customers aren’t always good at communicating exactly what they want or need. An effective work order form gets everything down in black-and-white so that everyone knows what to expect. It also helps you remember to get all the key information. If you miss something when you first discuss the job with the client, you’ll waste time contacting them later to get the answer.
If you have production staff, a work order lets the job move through the shop with minimal conversation about the details. Your staff didn’t meet with the client, so their ability to produce the sign you and the client agreed on depends completely on you communicating the details clearly via the work order.
Don’t leave those details to memory—yours or your staff’s. Get everything on the order form that they need to make the sign. It eliminates those time-wasting “I thought I told you about…” and “I thought you said to…” conversations later.
If you don’t have time to develop a work order, we have a few easy options for you. SignCraft’s Business Forms Pak includes two different Work Order forms along with a Proposal form, Quotation form and Job Cost Record.
We also have a couple of forms that you can download for free to use or modify. The first is based on one developed by Chicago-area sign pro Bob Behounek years ago to minimize errors and speed production. It’s easy to use and lets you quickly gather all the critical information from the client.
Click here to download the work order form.
You might want to use a separate production order to both spell out the details and track the time and materials used to produce the signs that your shop typically makes. Leon Yoder [Legendary Designs, Shipshewana, Indiana] developed a production work order that stays with the job as it goes through the shop.
