Creating Media Rolls for Supply Ordering

The media rolls that you provide to your customers are created by going to Supplies > Media Roll Setup.

 

This dialog displays all the media rolls that have been configured in your account. You can add, edit or delete media rolls from this page.

 

Adding a Media Roll

 

To add a Media Roll to your account, click “Create New Media Roll”

 

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SKU

Each media item must have a unique SKU. This should be the SKU for this item from your fulfillment or ERP system.

 

Media Roll Name

Use the name from your fulfillment or ERP system if possible. Make sure the name is descriptive, including the roll size.

 

Roll Width/Length

Even if you include the size of the roll in the description, it is very important to also define the width and length of the roll. Printerpoint uses these values to know how much of each roll is left, and which roll to decrement from when a print job happens.

Sometimes media rolls are sold in multi roll packs. For example, if you ship 24x150 rolls in a two-pack, the length of the roll should be doubled - because the SKU represents 300 feet of paper instead of 150 feet.

 

Notes

The notes field is optional, but useful to tag multi roll packs, define core sizes, or any other information you might want to include.

 

Aliased Media

For Printerpoint to decrement media from a printer’s inventory, we need to know how the printer will report the media name. For example, an HP PageWide XL might show “HP Universal Bond Paper”, “Plain Paper”, “Plain paper” or “Plain Paper (<90 g/m2) to describe standard 20lb Bond. It depends on how the media profiles on the printer were initially set up. In this case, since this roll of paper has a 3” core size, we will map it to the media names for both HP and Oce printers. 

The search box above the media list helps you search by media name or printer type.

 

Click Save to create the media roll. You can always add aliases later if needed. Make sure to create Media Rolls for all the roll widths used by your customers.

 

Setting up media inventory on a printer

 

Adding media inventory to a printer enables you to have automatic supply orders and customer supply notifications enabled.

 

Once your media rolls have been created, you can add them to printers.

 

Select a printer and go to Supplies Details > Media, then click the “Add Media” button next to Inventory.

 

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Media Rolls

The media roll dropdown menu shows all the configured media rolls. Select the first media roll you want to add to the printer’s inventory.

 

Remaining Media (rolls)

Remaining media is how much paper is at the customer’s location. For example, if they have one full roll in the printer, and two on the shelf, put 3. If they have about half a roll in the printer, put 2.5. It is often hard to estimate partial rolls, so try to use your best judgement - it does not need to be exact.

 

Reorder at (rolls)

The “Reorder at” value determines when you, or the customer, are notified that it is time to order more of this media. You should factor in their print volume and the time it takes you to deliver the paper when setting this value.

 

Default Order Quantity (rolls)

The Default Order Quantity is the number of rolls that will be on the supply order for you or the customer to approve. On the supply order, the number can always be changed if in a certain month a customer is printing more, or less than average.

 

In Contract

If you include this media roll as part of your MPS contract with the customer, check the in contract box. This isn’t required, but it is helpful if you include some media, like bond, in the contract, but charge a premium for other media.

 

Ensuring media names are aliased correctly per printer

When setting up inventory, you want to verify that the media names used by the customer’s printers line up with the aliases you have set up for the media roll.

 

The best way to do this is to go the the printer’s Billing Details page, and scroll through the activity grid that shows every print job recorded on the printer. This will show the media names reported by the printer so you can verify that the right names are aliased to the media SKUs.

 

We recommend opening up two browser tabs to do this. Have one on the printer’s Billing Details page, and the other the Supplies > Media Roll Setup page.

 

On different printers, the name may be different, and different print drivers might send a different name to the printer, so just make sure to look through the activity list to make sure you’ve got any relevant names covered when you’re setting up inventory on a printer.

 

If your customer has multiple sizes of the same media type, make sure  to alias these names for each size when you add the sizes to their inventory.

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