Every PPF installer knows the moment. The roll on the plotter feels lighter than it should. You check the register, or the WhatsApp group, or your memory, and none of them can tell you which cars that film went on. A full-body job, two bonnets, a front bumper redone after a lifted edge, and a long offcut that is now leaning in a corner somewhere.
PPF roll tracking fixes that with one habit: every length of film that leaves a roll is written against the car it went on. It sounds like bookkeeping. In practice it is how you find out what a full-body job actually costs you, which installer wastes the least, and whether your price list still makes sense.
How much PPF film does a car need?
There is no single number, and anyone who gives you one without seeing the car is guessing. Three things decide it: the painted area you are covering, how much of the car the package covers (bumper and bonnet, full front, or full body), and how you cut. A pre-cut kit from a pattern plotter leaves less waste than a bulk install trimmed by hand on the car, but bulk installs wrap edges more deeply and some installers prefer them for that reason.
What you can know is your own number, per model, from your own jobs. Clear PPF is commonly sold in 60-inch wide rolls, which is 5 feet (1.52 m). Roll lengths vary by brand and film line, so read the length off the box when a roll arrives. The 5-foot width gives you a handy conversion: one running foot pulled off a 60-inch roll is 5 square feet of film.
So if a sedan's panels add up to, say, 200 square feet, that is 40 running feet in a perfect world. If your log shows the job pulled 50 feet, the other 10 went to trim, recuts and offcuts. Those figures are an illustration, not a benchmark. The point is that once you log a few cars of the same model, you stop guessing.
Why the roll never matches the jobs
When a roll comes up short, it is rarely theft. It is film that left the roll for a reason nobody wrote down. These are the usual ones:
- Bleed and wrap. Film cut larger than the panel so it can be tucked around edges. Necessary, but it should be a known allowance, not a surprise.
- Recuts. A piece that stretched, trapped dust or tore and had to be cut again. Every studio has them. The question is how many, on which panels, by whom.
- Warranty redos. A lifted edge or a yellowed panel replaced months later. That film belongs to the original job, not to today's car.
- Offcuts. Strips too narrow for a panel but fine for door cups, handle cavities or a mirror. Useful if someone knows they exist, waste if they don't.
- Training and test pieces. A new installer practising on a scrap bonnet still uses film from a paid roll.
None of these are problems on their own. They become problems when they are invisible, because then the shortfall gets spread across every job as a vague feeling that PPF margins are thin.
What to record every time film leaves a roll
Keep it short enough that an installer with gloves on will actually do it. Five fields are enough:
- The roll: brand, film line and the batch or lot number printed on the box, plus the length it started with.
- The car and job card it went on, so the film is tied to a registration number and a customer.
- Running feet pulled, measured on the roll, not estimated from the panel.
- Usable offcut returned to the shelf, with its rough size.
- The reason, if it was not a first cut: recut, warranty redo, training.
On paper, that is one line in a roll register kept next to the plotter, one page per roll. In a spreadsheet, it is one row per cut with the roll ID in the first column, and a running balance that should match the tape measure when you check it. Either works for a studio doing a few cars a week, as long as somebody owns it. Where both tend to fail is the busy weekend, when three installers cut from two rolls and the register is filled in from memory on Monday.
Turning the log into a price
Once cuts are logged, film cost per job stops being a guess. Divide what you paid for the roll (before GST, if you claim input credit on it) by its length to get a cost per running foot. Multiply by the feet a job pulled. Then look at your average waste for that package over the last ten or twenty jobs and build it in as an allowance, instead of hoping the next car will be cleaner.
Film is only half the bill. A full-body install can occupy a bay and an installer for a long stretch, and that time has a cost whether or not you price it properly. How to calculate a workshop labour rate walks through putting a number on an installer's hour. Put the film cost, the waste allowance and the labour hours together and you have a floor price for each package. Anything below it is a discount you are paying for yourself.
Anyone who has worked a PPF floor knows the argument that follows a slow month: is this package losing money on film, on hours or on price? Without a log it is opinion against opinion. With one, it is a page of numbers, and the conversation gets short.
Batch numbers and warranty claims
A PPF warranty claim can arrive long after the car left. The first questions are always the same: which film, which batch, which panels, and what did the car look like at handover. If the cut log ties the roll's batch to the job card, and the job card holds the intake and completion photos, you can answer in a minute. If it doesn't, you are searching a phone gallery for a car you half remember. The job card format guide covers the intake photos and condition fields that make a claim straightforward.
Low stock is a scheduling problem, not a purchasing one
Running out of film mid-install is worse than running out of film. The car is stripped, the bay is booked, and the next roll is a day away. A running balance per roll tells you before you start a full-body job whether there is enough film on the shelf to finish it. Set a reorder level per film line based on your longest package plus a margin for recuts, and order when you cross it, not when the roll is finished. The same logic applies to every consumable, as the spare parts inventory guide explains for a mechanical floor.
Where Kenro fits
Kenro Workshop was built on a working workshop floor, PPF bay included, so the roll is a record of its own, not a line in a stock list. PPF rolls are tracked by the foot. Each cut is recorded against the job it went on, a low-stock alert fires before a roll runs out mid-install, and PPF warranties and claims sit on the car's record next to its intake and completion photos. The quote goes to the customer on WhatsApp to approve before you cut, and the GST invoice comes from the same job card. You set it up yourself from a checklist inside the app; the PPF shop software page shows the screens.
Questions owners ask
How many feet of PPF does a full car take?
It depends on the model, the package and whether you install pre-cut kits or bulk. Measure it: log the running feet pulled for every job for a few weeks, group by model and package, and use your own average plus a waste allowance. On a 60-inch roll, one running foot is 5 square feet of film.
Should I track PPF in square feet or running feet?
Track what you can measure on the roll, which is running feet (or metres) of a known width. Convert to square feet when you need to compare against a panel-area estimate or a supplier price quoted per square foot.
Do pre-cut kits make roll tracking unnecessary?
No. Pre-cut patterns reduce waste, but the film still comes off a roll, recuts still happen, and a warranty claim still needs the batch number tied to the car.
What should I do with offcuts?
Log usable offcuts back to the shelf with a rough size, and use them first for small parts such as door cups, handle cavities and mirror caps. An offcut nobody knows about is waste.