Price Per Box

Lately, SoftFile has been asked to offer document conversion quotes "per box." Presumably, this is because other vendors are pricing document scanning services in this fashion. The following illustrates why a price "per box" is a bad idea for the customer.

All box content are not equal, consider the following two example;


Box #1 Example


At first glance, Box #1 has about 40 folders and each folder has about 30 sheets of paper (or 1,200 sheets of paper total).

Further, in order to find what you are looking for, each folder must be electronically indexed by say a 7 digit number which might be located on the folder's tab (or 280 characters total).

Finally, in order to get these folders scanner ready (document preparation) assume it will take a SoftFile employee 30 minutes.


Assume the following rate schedule;

Box #1 Example Rate Schedule

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Service Description	QTY	Rate	Unit	EXT
Document Preparation	0.5	$16.00	Hour	$8.00
Document Scanning	1,200	0.05	Image	60.00
Data Entry	280	0.01	Character	2.80
Total				$70.80

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Box #2 Example



At first glance, Box #2 has about 2,200 sheets of paper.
If you look really close, there seems to be a staple (a new file or different document) every 20 pages (so there are about 110 individual files).

Further, in order to find what you are looking for, each folder must be electronically indexed by say a 7 digit number which might be located on the folder's tab (or 770 characters total).

Finally, in order to get these folders scanner ready (document preparation) assume it will take a SoftFile employee 1 hour.


Assume the following rate schedule;

Box #2 Example Rate Schedule

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Service Description	QTY	Rate	Unit	EXT
Document Preparation	1	$16.00	Hour	$16.00
Document Scanning	2,200	0.05	Image	110.00
Data Entry	770	0.01	Character	7.70
Total				$133.70

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In conclusion, a blanket quote of say $150.00 "per box" is really a poor way to quote a large volume document conversion project. This pricing method, although easy for the vendor to quote and for the customer to compute, generally benefits the vendor more than the customer. Further, most boxed document look more like our Box #1 example.

Finally, the more pages per one file (one PDF), generally the less expensive the total project will be.

For more information contact SoftFile at (916) 927-4211 or email us at info@softfile.com.




Matt Monaghan
SoftFile
(916) 927-4211
mattm@softfile.com

Plastic Card Die Cut Catalog

Plastic cards promote repeat business and customer loyalty. Plastic cards have a higher perceived value than paper cards. All this adds up to a great product for you to offer your customers. This brochure displays SoftFile's line of die cut plastic cards.

Are you looking for a unique die cut design for your loyalty card? SoftFile has it.

• Die Cut Catalog
  

Licensing agencies, are you still using paper license cards for your licensees? A licensee cannot realistically keep a paper license with them at all times because they deteriorate rapidly. Your professional licensee deserve a professional looking card. SoftFile offers plastic license cards with customized holograms.

Not only does SoftFile make plastic cards, we will mail them to your members or licensees for you.

This information has been provided by:

Matt Monaghan
SoftFile
(916) 927-4211
mattm@softfile.com

What is a Magnetic Stripe?

A magnetic stripe (aka mag stripe or magnetic strip) is a small strip of magnetic tape that is adhered to the back of a plastic card (drivers license, credit card, gift card, membership card, etc.) which contains information; typically about the card holder.

A magnetic stripe typically contains three lines or tracks of information such as cardholder name, ID number, address, account number, etc.  The third track is usually reserved for the financial industry.
The information contained on the tracks is read by a magnetic stripe reader and transmitted to a computer system for processing. 

Different types of cards have different data layouts, depending on the usage.  For an example of the data layout on a U.S. drivers license, see the following article:

Wikipedia_Magnetic_stripe_US_licenses

There are two types of magnetic stripes:  high-coercivity (HiCo) and low-coercivity (LoCo).  Most commonly you will find that LoCo stripes are light brown, and HiCo stripes are very dark brown (almost black).