How to log a print by hand in your print history

Your connected printers log every print automatically. When a machine is not connected to SimplyPrint, you can still record the job yourself, so your history, your statistics and your filament stock stay complete.

This guide covers the Log a print form: when to reach for it, how to fill each part in, how to log against a virtual machine or a machine SimplyPrint has never seen, and how a logged print behaves differently from a tracked one.

Contents

• When to log a print by hand
• How to log a print
• The file or job name
• Which machine it ran on
• The outcome
• When it ran
• Filament and material used
• Cost
• Who printed it
• Fill the form from your slicer summary
• What logging does, and what it does not do
• Correcting a job you logged
• Plan availability

When to log a print by hand

Four situations come up most:

• A printer you have not connected. You have the machine, you just have not bridged it, or we cannot connect to it at all. Add it as a virtual machine and log against it.
• A laser cutter, CNC or other machine. Same idea. Add it virtually, then log the work you run on it.
• A print that ran while the printer was offline. The bridge was down, or you printed from an SD card. The print happened, so the record should exist.
• Backfilling history from before you used SimplyPrint. Your first prints on a machine, or a job you ran on someone else's printer.

How to log a print

1. Open Print history in the left menu, or go to simplyprint.io/panel/jobs.
2. Click Log a print.
3. Fill in the form. Only the start time and the outcome are strictly required, but the more you fill in, the more useful the record is.
4. Click Save.

The job lands in your history straight away, carrying a Manually logged badge in the Source column so it is never confused with a print we tracked ourselves.

The file or job name

The File / job name field is free text, so "Benchy.gcode" and "Client bracket, batch 3" are both fine.

If the file is already in SimplyPrint, click Pick a file instead of typing. We take the name, the estimated print time and the per-tool filament weights straight from the slicer data on that file, and fill the rest of the form in for you.

Which machine it ran on

You have three choices in the Printer section.

• A connected printer. Pick it from the list, exactly as you would when starting a print.
• A virtual machine. Virtual machines are deliberately selectable here, including lasers and CNCs, because logging is what they exist for.
• No machine at all. Click log it without a printer and type a name instead. The job is recorded against that free-text label rather than a machine in your account.

When you log without a printer, a Machine type picker appears so the job still knows whether it was a printer, a laser, a CNC or something else. When you pick a real or virtual machine, it carries its own type and the picker is hidden.

You can also log the same job on several machines at once by selecting more than one. That creates one job per machine, the same way starting a print on five printers creates five jobs. Filament stock is never subtracted for a group log, because the rows describe one job's usage and deducting them per machine would take the same spool down five times.

The outcome

Pick one of four:

Choosing Successful reveals a quality toggle, Good or Bad, because a print that completed is not automatically a print you were happy with. There is also a Completion % field for a job that stopped part-way.

If you log an ongoing print against a virtual machine that has a status turned on, we offer to set that machine's status to Ongoing at the same time, so your printers page matches reality.

When it ran

There are two ways to describe the timing, and you can switch between them.

• Start time and how long it took. The default. Set when it started, then enter hours and minutes, or use one of the duration presets.
• Exact start and finish times. Click Enter the exact start time instead for this one. Useful when you know both timestamps and want the record precise.

Quick chips cover the common answers for "when did it start": Just now, 1h ago, 3h ago, 8h ago, and Yesterday.

Filament and material used

This section is called Filament used on a filament printer, and Material used on anything else, because a laser or a CNC has no spools.

• Add spool usage lets you pick a real spool from your filament inventory and enter the grams it used. Each row is one tool, so a multi-material print gets a row per tool. There is a Subtract the used grams from spool stock switch: leave it on and your inventory updates as if the print had been tracked normally.
• Add material usage records just a material name and a colour, with no spool behind it. Use this when you did not track the spool, or on a machine where spools do not apply.

Picking a spool matters more than it looks. Logged usage is what keeps your remaining-grams figures honest, and it is the only way the cost of the job can be worked out from what it actually consumed.

Cost

The cost field is labelled Print cost on a 3D printer and simply Cost elsewhere.

It fills itself in for you: from the material cost of the spools you picked, or failing that from the cost estimate on the file you selected. Type over it to set your own figure, or clear it and we work the cost out from your account's print cost settings instead.

Who printed it

Who printed it? defaults to you. Changing it to another user needs permission to view all print history, so on a farm or in a classroom an admin can attribute a job to the person who actually ran it, while a regular member always logs against themselves.

Fill the form from your slicer summary

Rather than retyping what your slicer already told you, paste it in.

1. Click Fill from a slicer summary at the top of the form.
2. Paste the summary text from your slicer, or paste or upload a screenshot of it.
3. Click Extract.

We read the file name, print time, machine type, printer name and any notes out of it and fill the form in. Nothing is saved at that point, so check what came back before you hit Save.

What logging does, and what it does not do

A logged print is a record, not a command.

It does: appear in your print history, count towards your statistics, calculate a cost, subtract from spool stock if you asked it to, and accept custom field values on Print Farm and up.

It does not: send anything to any machine, start or queue a print, touch your print queue, or trigger notifications. There is no machine on the other end to talk to, and even when you log against a connected printer we deliberately keep it hands-off.

Two plan limits are worth knowing if you are backfilling a lot of history.

How many you can log. Prints you log by hand and prints you import share one allowance: 1,000 on Free, 2,500 on Basic, 10,000 on Pro, and unlimited on Print Farm, School and Enterprise. Prints your connected printers track themselves never count towards it, however many you run.

How many you can open. Separately, your plan caps how many past jobs you can view in full, at the 50 most recent on Free, 100 on Basic and 500 on Pro, with no limit on Print Farm, School and Enterprise. That window counts by start date across everything in your history, so a job you log with an old start date may sit outside it straight away and show as a locked row. Nothing is deleted, and upgrading opens all of it again.

Correcting a job you logged

Got something wrong? Open the job and click Edit.

A job you logged by hand, or imported, is fully editable: the file name, the machine, the times, the machine type, the outcome, the rating and the filament all remain yours to change. A print we tracked automatically is deliberately more locked down, and only its outcome, rating, completion and note can be edited, because the rest came from the printer itself.

Plan availability

School and Enterprise plans include everything in the Print Farm column. See the pricing page for the full comparison.

Related articles

• How to import your print history from a CSV or spreadsheet
• The print history feature: your searchable log of every print job
• Virtual machines: add lasers, CNCs and log-only printers
• The statistics dashboard
• Print cost calculations

Updated on: 19/08/2026