Switching from spreadsheets to Printer's Friend
Import your customer list, supplier catalogue and historical orders in under an hour. The playbook we use with every new shop.
You signed up. The workspace is empty. Here's how to fill it without spending a Saturday.
The hour-long playbook
Have these files open before you start. The whole import takes under an hour if you batch the work properly.
- Your customer list (any CSV, name + email + phone)
- One supplier catalogue you actively use (AS Colour, SanMar, Ralawise, Gildan)
- Your invoice template if you use a specific layout
- Your last three months of paid invoices, just for cross-reference
1. Customers (10 minutes)
Open Onboarding inside the app (it shows as a "Getting started" entry in the nav until you've finished). The customer importer accepts any CSV with a name column. Optional columns: contact_name, email, phone.
The importer creates an Organisation per row and a primary Contact when an email is present. Don't worry about deduplication: it's idempotent by org name + contact email, so re-running is safe.
2. Supplier catalogue (20 minutes)
Skip this if you have the supplier's API key. We sync AS Colour live; SanMar, Ralawise, and Gildan AU/US/EU are on the roadmap.
Otherwise, drop a CSV of your SKUs. Required columns: style_code, style_name, colour_code, colour_name, colour_hex, size_code, sku_code, list_price. Sample at the bottom of this page.
3. Pricing rules (15 minutes)
The default install ships with a tier-based rule per decoration method: screen, DTG, DTF, embroidery, heat transfer, sublimation. If your rates are different, edit them under Pricing > Decoration Methods. The base setup fee and per-quantity cost matrix are both editable.
4. Brand and portal (5 minutes)
Open Brand & portal. Set your shop name, contact email, contact phone, location, and your accent colour. Save. Reload the customer portal in another tab and it picks up the changes immediately.
5. Test order (10 minutes)
Sign in as a portal user (Onboarding seeded one). Place a test order. Watch it flow from Artwork to Print Queue to Dispatched on the kanban. The full lifecycle in 90 seconds.
The "test order" step matters more than people think. Don't switch over to PF for real until you've watched one fake order go from quote to invoice. The flow makes way more sense once you've done it once.
Now switch
Run both systems in parallel for a week. New orders go into PF; old work in your old system stays there. Once a week is done, you'll have stopped reaching for the old system without noticing.