Top 10 Items Required for an Accurate Price for your Print Tender.

If you’re buying print on the spot buying market (buying on a project by project basis), then it’s important to get your print specifications exactly right. But if you’re running a print tender where you might be asking for hundreds of prices in dozens of print categories, achieving total precision on your print specifications really couldn’t be more important.

That’s because even the smallest omission or error can have a massive knock-on in the prices you receive – from every print supplier you include in your tender. And mistakes tend to get compounded and multiplied in a print tender too, so a small mistake you make in specifying print at the beginning can be amplified across those many print categories.

So here’s our Top 10 guide covering many of the items you really need to get right in order to get an accurate print price back from your commercial printer.

Fill out the form to download this Top 10 as a PDF. Or bookmark the page so you can refer to it in the future.

1.  Unique Title

So we all know exactly what we’re talking about.

2. Quantity

How many printed items do you want quoting on? If more than one version – what changes between the versions?

3. Pagination

How many pages are there in each printed item?

4. Trimmed Size

What’s the exact final size of the job the end user will see?
When writing a size for print, the industry standard is height then width in mm.

5. Material

What are we printing on? We need stock names, weights and finishes.

6. Printing

How many colours are we printing in?

i.e 4 colour process, black only etc. To one or both sides? Any spot colours?

7. Finishing

Any finishes to be used such as laminating, foiling, perforating etc.?
How is it bound? i.e Saddle Stitched, Perfect Bound, Wire-o Bound etc.

8. Packaging

Any specific quantities in each container, double walled boxes, BPOP (Bulk packed on pallet) – so not in boxes etc.?

9. Delivery

Where is it going? How long will it take to get there. Postcode?

Avoid using ex-works (i.e. staying at the printers) as every job does not remain at a printers … it needs to go somewhere.

10. Schedule

When do you want it delivered to your chosen location by?