Packing and posting.

[Earl Smith]

In all my years doing this work I have never had to pack and post an order of mugs for a customer. Im looking at costing and what I should charge.
I will have 250 mugs to pack into twin boxes. Each will have a letter inside from my customer and each twin box has to be labeled and posted to a different address.
My customer will supply the address labels and the enclosed letter. GLS will be the "post" I will use so each box will need to be GLS labeled and I hope my customer supplies these too.

How many hours will this all take as I need to put this into the costing of the job.
Thanks

[MugPrint]

Hi Earl

The way i would do this is break it down. Roughly there is 6 cases of 36 mugs with a few extra over. Simply judge how long it would take to do 36 mugs with in a day and work out your overall cost per hour then multiply that by the hours it takes to do the mugs. Then total it all up not forgetting to give your client a little bit of a discount to keep them coming back.

[socialgiraffe]

Hi Earl

Not quite sure on your exact requirements but what I always do is break it down...

Take a view on how long it will take to do one from start to finish. Add a wee bit for good measure and use that as a guide.

Although I can not be 100% sure, I reckon allowing 1 minute per unit will be well within anyone's capabilities so about 4 hours although I suspect it will be quicker.

[pisquee]

depending on how stuff is delivered from your client - will the labels be 6x4" on a roll, will they be multiple labels on an A4 sheet, how are the letters delivered? Or are you going to be sent PDFs of the labels and letters to print off?
If printing off, do you have a 6x4 label printer?
How will you sort which letter goes with each label, and each set of mugs? - sorting takes time on top of just posting/packing

If all the mugs and letters are the same, and no sorting required, then it's obviously a lot better

[Earl Smith]

Thanks for the replies.
I originally gave my customer a price for 250 mugs printed and boxed into 125 twin boxes so they could post them themselves. Then the customer came back and asked how much for labeling and sending out to 125 different addresses. I was working it out as two separate jobs when it could be done all in one.
Im hoping the labels (sticky backed) will be printed by my customer so I can peel it off a roll and put it on a box. The "letter" inside can only be business card size and that will also be supplied by the customer.
Im negotiating with GLS to try and get a cheaper packet rate but they are not being very helpful.
It will be so much easier if I just supplied and the customer did the sending out from their office. Trouble is they are a medical research firm and dont have dogs bodies to do this manual work. And doctors do not do this sort of thing.

[webtrekker]

If printing sheets of A4 labels it's possible to use Mail Merge in Word if the addresses are supplied to you in an Excel spreadsheet. However, it can take some time just setting up Word to print labels of the required size.

[GoonerGary]

I have some times up on my wall. Packing 36 mugs to 36 customers with a gift box and taping up a flat packed posting box, adding pre printed address label and half of them with customs labels averages out at:

36 mugs per hour.
98 seconds per mug...it can vary.

[Earl Smith]

I have some times up on my wall. Packing 36 mugs to 36 customers with a gift box and taping up a flat packed posting box, adding pre printed address label and half of them with customs labels averages out at:

36 mugs per hour.
98 seconds per mug...it can vary.

Thats great Gary, sthanks. Ive just received an offer from GLS for 150 cartons per year ( I told them I only have 125 ) @ 4,25€ per box. Now all I have to do is work out a complete price for the whole job.. Roughly 4 to 5 hours to do the job.