Free tool
Shoebox scanning quote calculator for photo organizers
Estimate the image count, the fee and the hourly rate you would actually earn before you quote a client's boxes.
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How long will a client's originals sit in your studio
Estimate the custody window for a family archive project and the number of projects that size your bench can actually finish in a quarter.
Custody time is the quiet liability in photo organizing. Every week a client's irreplaceable prints and slides are on your shelf is a week of insurance exposure, a week of storage, and a week the client can call and ask when she is getting her mother's wedding photos back. Most studios underestimate that window because they count capture hours and forget dating, tagging, quality checks and the days a box waits for pickup.
This planner separates capture from finishing, because they scale differently. Adding a second station cuts capture time almost in half, but it does nothing for the hours spent naming faces and setting circa ranges. That is why studios that buy a faster scanner sometimes find their turnaround has barely moved.
Your result
Capture hours
7.5
Station time only, split across every scanner you keep staffed.
Dating, tagging and check hours
7.2
The part that does not get faster when you add another scanner.
Weeks holding the originals
2.2
Working weeks plus the wait before boxes go back to the client.
Projects this size per quarter
15.9
A bench ceiling that ignores intake visits, travel and client calls.
Treat the weeks figure as the number you put in writing, then add a buffer for the album pages and fragile originals you have not seen yet.
Custody time is a risk number, not just a schedule
Your service agreement almost certainly describes what happens if originals are damaged or lost while in your care. The length of the custody window is the size of that exposure. A project that keeps four boxes for three weeks is a different insurance and storage question than one that keeps them for four months while you fit it around other clients.
Shortening the window is often cheaper than raising your coverage. Taking fewer boxes at a time, capturing in tighter runs, and scheduling handback the same week you finish all reduce the days somebody else's family photographs are sitting in your building. Clients notice too, because the box on your shelf is the one thing they cannot replace.
What the bench ceiling tells you about your calendar
The projects per quarter figure is deliberately optimistic. It counts bench hours only, with no intake visit, no drive across town, no client call about whether the ex husband should appear in the index, and no assessment work for the next job. Real studios land well below it, and the gap between the two numbers is the honest cost of running the business rather than the scanner.
Use it as a ceiling when you are deciding whether to take on one more family this season. If the ceiling says four and you already have three in custody, the fourth will stretch every window you have promised. Saying not until March protects both the schedule and the originals already on your shelf.
Questions about this calculator
Why separate capture hours from tagging hours?
Because only one of them responds to buying more equipment. A second station roughly halves capture time, while dating undated prints and naming relatives takes the same hours regardless. Studios that miss this buy hardware and stay slow.
What is a realistic tagging time per 100 images?
It varies with how much the family can tell you. Well labeled album pages with names on the back move fast, while a box of unidentified 1940s prints can take several times longer per hundred. Track your own figure over two projects.
How do I shorten the custody window?
Take fewer boxes per intake, book capture in continuous blocks rather than scattered hours, and schedule the handback before you start. Most of the wasted days are calendar drift after the work is finished, not the work itself.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The shoebox intake and handback checklist
A working document for the four stages where photo organizing projects go wrong: the client's home, intake day, the capture bench, and the return of the originals.
Now put that figure against real box counts
The number on your screen is only as good as the counts behind it, and most studios still keep those counts in a spreadsheet on one laptop. See what the same job looks like when every batch ties back to a numbered box and the image count firms up as the boxes are assessed. Book a walkthrough and we will use your figures rather than ours.