Printing job cards

Two separate ways to get a job card on paper, and only one needs hardware: Daily printing sends the day's cards to a shop printer each morning, and the Print button on a booking prints one card from whatever computer you are at. For the odd card or a PDF, skip to the last section.

What a job card shows

• Customer name and contact details.
• Every line of work on the job, plus add-ons.
• If the job has a quote, the quoted lines and total. A job nobody has quoted shows its booked prices.
• The job number.
• The drop-off date and time window, a banner if it is a rush, how much extra work the customer pre-approved, and any notes they left.

Is it working?

Everything below lives under Integrations → Printing. The first thing on that panel is a sentence saying whether printing is working right now, from "Automatic printing is off." through "Nowhere to print to." to "Printing normally.", with the next thing to do. If cards stop coming out, start there.

Step 1: add your printers

Under 1. Your printers, choose Add printer and pick the kind. Add one per physical printer; job cards go to whichever is free.

• Epson receipt printer: a supported Epson connects over your shop wi-fi with nothing to install. Open the printer's own settings page, go to Services → Server Direct Print, paste in the Printer link from the printer's card, set the interval to 5 seconds and tick enable.
• Any other printer: a USB or office printer works through the Velobook print app, running on a shop computer that stays on. Choose How to connect this printer on the printer's card for a step-by-step guide with your link filled in.
• Each printer's card leads with its state, from "Not connected yet" to "Connected and printing." Once connected, hit Send test print: a slip should come out within about 10 seconds.

Step 2: turn it on

• Print each morning, and print new same-day bookings as they arrive is the main switch. Off, nothing is sent to the printer; bookings still save, and the per-booking Print button keeps working.
• Email me if the printer stops working emails the shop owner if cards pile up unprinted or the printer reports an error.

Print today's jobs

• Print today sends today's job cards again, the same batch that goes out each morning. Safe to use twice. Use it after fixing a printer, or on the day you first set up
• Recent prints lists the last few cards, with a tick once the printer confirms each one and a Retry link on anything that failed

The Print button on a booking

Open any booking and hit Print for that job's card, with or without a shop printer. When staff hit Print, at the bottom of the Printing panel, decides what happens:

• Open this computer's print dialog needs no setup. The card prints from whichever computer you are on, and Save as PDF in that dialog gives you a file.
• Send it to the shop printer uses the printers from step 1. It needs step 2 switched on, and falls back to the print dialog when it is not.
• Morning and same-day printing always use the shop printer, whichever you pick here.

Keeping the print app running

Only for an ordinary printer connected through the Velobook print app; a wi-fi Epson looks after itself.

• Leave the app's window open while the shop is open. If it is closed or the computer restarts, job cards wait and print as soon as it starts again: double-click the .bat file on Windows, or rerun the start command on a Mac.
• Stop the computer sleeping. Windows: Control Panel, then Power Options, set "Put the computer to sleep" to Never. Mac: System Settings, then Displays, then Advanced, turn on "Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off".
• Switch on Email me if the printer stops working in step 2, so a stopped app cannot go unnoticed.

Print app troubleshooting

• "poll failed" in the app's window: no internet, or the printer link was pasted wrong. Copy it again from How to connect this printer on the printer's card.
• "print failed": wrong printer name, or the printer is off. On a Mac, run "lpstat -p" in Terminal and check the spelling. On Windows, delete velobook-print-bridge-config.txt from the app's folder and double-click the .bat file to pick the printer again.
• Job says printed but nothing comes out: check paper and toner. The computer's print queue holds the job until the printer is ready.
• Connection or trust errors on Windows 7: the app needs TLS 1.2. Run Windows Update, then start it again.