Paper Categories

Overview

When we introduced Morning Flight, there was My Paper and Vendor Paper. My Paper was paper you kept on hand, Vendor Paper was paper you bought as needed. The price you paid was based on volume: Less than a carton, full carton, multiple cartons, and so much paper the commission alone could buy the sales rep a weekend in Vegas.

A few weeks later we opened the Morning Flight Forum and quickly discovered that this wasn't how most printers bought paper. At least not here, in the U.S. Here most printers paid the same price no matter how much or how little paper they ordered on any given day. That may not make a whole lot of sense from a marketing perspective, but happily, we don't make the rules. Our job is to make sure Morning Flight can deal with them. Here are the categories we ended up with:

My in-Stock Paper

Any paper you keep on hand, or can get your hands on in a hurry. It's also the only cut-size paper Morning Flight will let you quote in broken reams. Before you designate any item as My in-Stock Paper, ask yourself this:

1.	Am I willing to sell sheets in broken reams, and envelopes in partial boxes?

2.	Am I willing to put whatever's left over from a job back on the shelf?

3.	Can I expect either this customer or another customer to order the same paper, in the same color, before the envelopes glue themselves shut and get wrinkled?

My Buy-as-needed Paper

As the name implies, any paper that you order for a specific job. If the customer orders 600 letterheads, Morning Flight expects you to buy a minimum of 1,000 sheets. The program won't let you buy half a box of envelopes because nobody will sell you half a box. Where in-Stock Paper or Special Paper can be priced by weight or per 1,000 in a variety of brackets, Buy-as-needed Paper can only be priced per 1,000. You do get a choice of brackets: Less than a carton, full carton, and multiple cartons.

PaperShop Paper

Same as Buy-as-needed Paper, but pre-loaded with data provided by the vendor. Files from XPEDX are on the way.

Special Paper

Another variation of Buy-as-needed Paper. Special Paper is more versatile because you can order it from the vendor in any conceivable combination of brackets, priced by weight or per 1,000. But that versatility comes at a price: More entry fields to fill in.