If you run a wide-format print shop, this setup may sound familiar: estimates built in a spreadsheet that doesn’t quite reflect what a job actually costs, a whiteboard or shared document tracking what’s in production, and financial information that has to be entered into QuickBooks after the job is done.
ONYX Align print shop business management software is a cloud-based software built to bring those pieces together. It helps print businesses manage estimating, orders, job costing, production workflows, and financial information from one system, with QuickBooks Online integration and a direct connection to ONYX Thrive for shops using the ONYX RIP workflow.
Put more simply: ONYX Align manages the business side of getting a print job from estimate to completion.
For a wide-format shop that has outgrown tried-and-true spreadsheets, whiteboards, or disconnected systems, Align provides one place to see what a job should cost, where it is in production, and whether the numbers actually worked.
What Is ONYX Align?
Think about a wide-format print shop as running on two closely connected tracks.
One is print production: preparing files, managing color, ripping files, and getting work to your printers.
The other is business and job management: How much should we charge? What will this job cost? Who is working on it? Where is it in production? Is it on schedule? What margin are we making?
ONYX Thrive handles the RIP and print-production side.
ONYX Align helps manage the business side.
Align is a cloud-based order and print shop management system that centralizes estimating, orders, job tracking, production workflows, and financial information. Instead of relying on separate spreadsheets, whiteboards, sticky notes, and accounting entries to piece together what’s happening in the shop, teams have a shared system for managing work from estimate through production.
Align isn’t a RIP, design application, or replacement for your accounting software. It fills the gap between getting a customer request and understanding what it will take to produce that job profitably and get it through the shop.
Explore all ONYX business management solutions.
Who Is ONYX Align Built For?
ONYX Align is designed for print and signage businesses that have outgrown manual tracking: too many jobs, people, and production steps to manage by hand.
That can include:
- Wide-format print shops
- Sign and graphics companies
- Vehicle wrap businesses
- Banner and display producers
- Exhibit and environmental graphics companies
- Specialty print operations
The question isn’t necessarily how big your company is. It’s how complicated your workflow has become.
Align should be considered if:
- You’re estimating jobs from spreadsheets, static price lists, or past experience and aren’t always confident the price reflects your actual costs.
- You have to walk the production floor or ask multiple people to figure out where a job stands.
- Your production schedule lives on a whiteboard, spreadsheet, or shared calendar that is only as accurate as the last update.
- You want better visibility into whether individual jobs are actually profitable.
- Your team is entering the same customer, invoice, or payment information in more than one place.
- You’ve reached the point where “someone knows where that job is” is no longer a reliable production tracking system.
For a very small shop with a simple workflow, manual spreadsheets and systems may still do the job. Align becomes the best fit as job volume, estimating complexity, or the number of people touching each job increases.
What Does ONYX Align Do?
Strip away the software terminology, and Align is designed to answer some of the most important questions a print shop deals with every day:
- What should we charge?
- What will this job cost us?
- Where is the job right now?
- Are we making money on the work we’re producing?
It does that through several connected areas of print shop management.
Print Estimating
Estimating wide-format work gets complicated quickly.
A simple square-foot calculation may work for some jobs. But what happens when a project includes multiple substrates, ink, laminate, finishing, machine time, labor, or other production requirements?
ONYX Align gives shops a way to build more consistent, data-based estimates using the costs and pricing rules configured for their business.
That matters because an inaccurate estimate doesn’t just affect the sale. It affects the margin you have left once the work is complete.
Align also supports different pricing approaches, including cost-based pricing tied to target margins, so shops can build pricing logic around how they actually operate.
Job Costing and Profit Tracking
Winning work is only useful if it’s profitable.
ONYX Align helps connect what you expected a job to cost with the financial results of the actual order. Shops can compare estimated costs with revenue at the order, product, and job level, giving owners and managers better visibility into where they’re making money and where margins may be getting squeezed.
That creates an important feedback loop.
If a certain type of job consistently costs more than expected, you have information you can use when estimating the next one. Instead of discovering a pricing problem only when reviewing monthly financials, you can start understanding profitability at the job level.
Print Job Tracking and Production Workflows
Knowing a job was sold isn’t the same as knowing where it is.
ONYX Align provides job boards and customizable workflows that help teams manage jobs as they move through production. Jobs can progress through defined workflow stages and steps, giving the team a shared view of what’s happening instead of relying on a whiteboard, spreadsheet, or someone’s memory.
That means an estimator, production manager, or owner can see work progress without tracking down the person who last touched the job.
Because Align is cloud-based, that information can also be accessed through a browser rather than living on one computer in the production area.
QuickBooks Online Integration
ONYX Align integrates with QuickBooks Online, helping connect the operational side of the print shop with its accounting workflow.
The important distinction is that Align doesn’t replace QuickBooks.
Your accounting still happens in QuickBooks Online. Align reduces the need to maintain disconnected sets of information as an order moves from estimating and production to the financial side of the business.
For a shop that regularly enters or reconciles the same information across different systems, that can mean less administrative work and fewer opportunities for manual errors.
What Does an ONYX Align Workflow Look Like?
Imagine a customer requests an estimate for a vehicle wrap.
Instead of starting with a generic square-foot price, your estimator builds the estimate around the products, print jobs, substrates, printers, labor, and other production requirements configured in Align.
Once the customer approves the work, that estimate becomes an order and the individual jobs can move into the appropriate production workflow.
The production team can see the job and move it through the stages you’ve established for your shop.
If you’re using ONYX Thrive, you can submit print-ready files directly from Align into the Thrive RIP workflow for processing and printing.
As the order moves toward completion, Align also connects the financial side of the job with QuickBooks Online.
Instead of the estimate, production job, and accounting information functioning like separate pieces of the business, the goal is to create a more connected path from:
Estimate → Order → Production → Print → Invoice → Profitability
That’s Align’s bigger purpose. It’s not simply another place to store jobs. It’s designed to connect the information your team needs to manage those jobs.
See How Align Could Fit Your Workflow
How Does ONYX Align Work With ONYX Thrive?
ONYX Align and ONYX Thrive solve different parts of the print workflow.
- ONYX Align manages the business and order workflow.
- ONYX Thrive manages RIP and print production.
When the two are connected, print-ready files in an Align job can be submitted directly to ONYX Thrive for RIP processing and printing.
That creates a connection between information generated earlier in the process, such as the estimate, order, and job, and the production workflow that ultimately prints the work.
For a shop already using Thrive, this is one of Align’s biggest advantages. Instead of adding an entirely disconnected business management system, you can extend the ONYX workflow further upstream into estimating and job management.
Do You Need ONYX Thrive to Use ONYX Align?
No. Align is our cloud-based print shop and order management platform, and Thrive is its scalable RIP and print workflow solution — but you don’t need one to use the other.
Align and Thrive connect directly, but that connection isn’t required. Align is compatible with other RIP software, so shops that don’t use Thrive still get the full benefit of Align’s estimating, job tracking, and financial management.
Talk to ONYX About Your Current Workflow
ONYX Align Isn’t Generic Project Management Software
A Trello board or general project management platform can tell you that a job is “in production.”
It doesn’t necessarily understand the components that determine what a print job costs to produce.
Align is designed around print-specific concepts including substrates, printers, labor, print jobs, products, estimates, orders, and production workflows.
That’s an important distinction if your biggest challenge isn’t simply organizing tasks, but understanding and managing the economics of producing print work.
See What ONYX Align Would Look Like in Your Print Shop
Reading about print shop management software can only tell you so much.
The better test is seeing how it handles the kind of work your shop actually produces.
An ONYX Align demo gives you the opportunity to look at estimating, job management, production workflows, QuickBooks Online integration, and the connection with your existing ONYX workflow, then ask the questions that are specific to your shop.
