Calendar Capacity Planning & Job Scheduling
How to use the calendar to schedule jobs, assign presses, and avoid overbooking your production days.
How capacity limits work
Every production day has two global guardrails: a maximum number of jobs and a maximum number of pieces (garments). The defaults are 8 jobs and 2,000 pieces per day. When a day is approaching those limits, the calendar cell turns amber at 75% and red at 100%. You can adjust these limits any time in Settings → Scheduler.
These limits are shop-wide — they cap total daily throughput across all presses. Per-press capacity is tracked separately (more on that below).
Per-press daily capacity
Each press in your shop has its own daily minute limit. By default every press gets 480 minutes (8 hours) of run time per day. When a job is assigned to a press, its estimated run time is deducted from that press's daily bank. The utilization bar in the production queue turns amber at 75% and red at 100%. You can change the limit per press in Settings → Presses.
There's also a 15-minute changeover buffer built in between jobs on the same press. If a job ends at 2:00 PM, the next job on that press can't start until 2:15 PM. This accounts for wash-out, re-registration, and ink swaps.
How job duration is estimated
Kontrol™ calculates estimated run time automatically based on the job's decoration method, quantity, and number of colors. The formulas used are:
- 1Screen print: (quantity × 15 sec) + (number of screens × 3 min). Example: 100 shirts, 4 colors = 25 min print time + 12 min setup = 37 minutes total.
- 2Heat press or DTF: quantity × 45 seconds. Example: 50 transfers = 37.5 minutes.
- 3Embroidery: quantity × 3 minutes. Example: 24 hats = 72 minutes.
- 4You can override the estimate manually — open the job and edit the "Estimated Minutes" field directly.
These defaults are designed for an experienced crew at a steady pace. If your shop runs faster or slower, you can tune the base rates in Settings → Scheduler → Production Times.
Scheduling a job manually
Open any job and click the calendar icon next to the "Scheduled Date" field. Pick the date and save. The job appears on the calendar and its run time is deducted from that day's capacity. You can also drag an existing job from one day to another directly on the calendar — the capacity math updates instantly.
Drag-and-drop on the calendar
In week or day view, grab any job card and drop it on a new date. In list view, drag the row to a different date row. Both methods call the same update — the job's scheduled date changes and capacity recalculates. If you accidentally drop a job on the wrong day, drag it back or use the Undo button that appears briefly after the move.
The calendar won't stop you from scheduling past a day's capacity limit — it will just turn the cell red. This is by design. Rush jobs sometimes require busting the limit; the red is a visual warning, not a hard block.
Assigning a job to a specific press
Open the job and find the "Press" field in the scheduling section. Select the press from the dropdown. The job now counts toward that press's daily minute total instead of the global pool. If you don't assign a press, the job counts toward the global day totals only.
Press assignment matters most when you have one press that can only do specific jobs — for example, an embroidery machine or a large-format DTF printer. Assigning jobs to the right press keeps each machine's queue balanced and prevents overbooking.
Press types and job compatibility
Kontrol™ knows which jobs are compatible with which presses. Screen print jobs are routed to SCREEN_PRINT presses, heat transfer and DTF jobs to HEAT_PRESS or DTF_PRINTER presses, and embroidery jobs to EMBROIDERY_MACHINE presses. The Smart Scheduler uses this to suggest the right press automatically — it won't try to put an embroidery job on a screen print press.
How rush and hot-rush priority work
Every job has a priority: Normal, Rush, or Hot Rush. Priority affects two things: where jobs appear in the production queue (Hot Rush jobs are always listed first) and what order the Smart Scheduler fills dates (Hot Rush jobs get scheduled before Rush, which gets scheduled before Normal).
Priority badges appear on calendar cards. A job marked Hot Rush shows a red "HOT" badge and a Rush job shows an orange "RUSH" badge. On busy weeks this makes it easy to see at a glance which jobs need press time first.
How priority interacts with capacity
When a production day is full (red), the Smart Scheduler will push Normal jobs to the next available day but will try harder to fit Rush and Hot Rush jobs into the current day — even if it means exceeding the soft limit. Hot Rush jobs get the highest weight (3×) in the scheduling algorithm, Rush jobs get 2×, and Normal jobs get 1×. Within the same priority tier, jobs are sorted by due date (earliest first).
A Hot Rush job will NOT automatically bump a Normal job off a day that's already been manually scheduled. The Smart Scheduler only affects unscheduled jobs. If you need to manually clear space for a rush order, drag Normal jobs to a later date first.
Using the Smart Scheduler
The Smart Scheduler is a one-click tool that fills your unscheduled job backlog automatically. Click the calendar icon in the top bar (or open the Scheduler Panel from the sidebar) and hit Generate. Kontrol™ shows you a preview: each job, its proposed date, assigned press, and a plain-English reason (e.g., "Hot priority ~2h 15m on Press 2 — earliest slot before due date"). If the preview looks good, click Apply to push the schedule live.
Run the Smart Scheduler at the start of each week after entering new jobs. It's not a locked-in schedule — you can always drag jobs around afterward. Think of it as a first draft that saves you 30–60 minutes of manual planning.
Adjusting the scheduler configuration
Go to Settings → Scheduler to change the global defaults:
- 1Max jobs per day — how many jobs can be scheduled on a single day (default: 8).
- 2Max pieces per day — maximum total garment count across all jobs in a day (default: 2,000).
- 3Work days — toggle which days of the week the scheduler treats as production days (default: Mon–Fri).
- 4Scheduling horizon — how many days ahead the Smart Scheduler is allowed to place jobs (default: 30 days).
- 5Production times — adjust the per-garment and per-screen time estimates used in duration calculations.
Configuring your presses
Go to Settings → Presses to add, edit, or remove presses. For each press you can set:
- 1Name — what you call the press (e.g., "M&R Challenger 8", "Workhorse Press 2").
- 2Type — Screen Print, Heat Press, DTF Printer, or Embroidery Machine.
- 3Max Colors — the head count on the press (screen print only). Jobs requiring more colors than the press supports won't be assigned to it.
- 4Max Minutes Per Day — the press's daily run-time budget (default: 480 min = 8 hours).
- 5Active toggle — disable a press temporarily without deleting it (e.g., while it's being serviced).
Reorder presses by dragging the handle on the left. The order here is the order the scheduler prefers when multiple presses could handle the same job.
Reading the capacity indicators
On the calendar, each day cell shows a small bar at the bottom. Empty = open capacity. Amber = 75–99% full. Red = at or over 100%. Hover over a day to see the exact numbers: how many jobs are scheduled, total pieces, and what percentage of capacity is used. The same color logic applies to individual press utilization bars in the production queue.
Overbooking and how to handle it
Overbooking a day is allowed — the system warns but never blocks. If a day turns red, review the jobs scheduled there and move the lowest-priority ones to the next open day. A practical tip: keep Fridays at ~70% capacity as buffer for rush jobs that come in Thursday evening. You'll thank yourself every week.