Technology for printing companies / Tharstern
Software · Print
Tharstern dashboards and integrations
Tharstern is the MIS behind a good share of the UK's commercial printers: estimating, job tickets, scheduling, despatch. It has belonged to eProductivity Software since 2023, which is why you'll find it listed as ePS Tharstern; the trade still says Tharstern, so we do too. If your estimators live in it all day, this page is about your business.
What its API makes possible
Tharstern's API is unusually good: documented, browsable, and built to be used. In practice that means anything Tharstern knows, job status, due dates, press queues, estimated against actual cost, can be put on a screen or sent into another system without anyone re-typing it.
What we typically build
Shop-floor screens
Jobs due today, by press, late ones flagged. On TVs where the work happens. Takes about a week.
More on this buildTharstern to your accounts
Job ships, invoice appears in Xero or Sage with the right customer and lines. Usually one to two weeks.
Margin dashboard
Estimated against actual by customer and job type. The screen that changes how you quote. About a week.
Three straight answers
Is ePS Tharstern the same thing as Tharstern?
Yes. eProductivity Software, a print and packaging software group, bought Tharstern Group in March 2023. The MIS kept its name and its Lancashire team, so you'll see it written both ways depending on who is doing the writing. If you searched for ePS Tharstern, you're in the right place.
Did the takeover change the API?
Not for the kind of work on this page. The API is still documented, and it's still how job, cost and scheduling data gets in and out. The screens and the accounts links below are built the same way now as they were before the deal.
Should we move off Tharstern now it belongs to a bigger group?
Not on those grounds alone. Replacing an MIS is the most expensive and disruptive thing a printing company can do to itself, and new ownership on its own isn't a reason to start. If the real complaint is that you can't get numbers out of Tharstern, that's a far cheaper problem than a migration, and it's the one on this page. If the product genuinely no longer fits how you sell, that is a real reason to look, and we'd tell you so.
What Tharstern already does well
Its own scheduling boards and standard reports are decent. If what you want is a production schedule for the planners, use the built-in one; don't pay us to rebuild it. We're useful when the data needs to leave Tharstern: onto a wall, into your accounts, or joined up with numbers from another system.
Run on Tharstern?
Tell us which numbers you can't see. A first conversation costs nothing.