Artwork files, proofs and customer approval records

The approval record is the most useful thing a job system can hold. When a customer says "that's not what I signed off", you want to open the job and see what they approved, in which version, and when.

Most arguments in print and sign work come back to one question. Was this the file the customer agreed to?

Artwork often arrives as a PDF

Artwork is quite often provided by the customer as a print-ready PDF file.¹ Others arrive as photos, logos or half-finished designs that your staff tidy up. Software should let you attach every file to the job and label each one, so the original stays separate from the version you've adjusted.

Version history

A digital asset management system is a tool for storing and cataloguing files. It will often store earlier versions of a file and allow them to be downloaded or reverted to.² Job software may offer something simpler. Ask how it handles a file that's uploaded twice with the same name. Does the new one replace the old, or sit beside it?

Look for these before you buy:

• Each upload keeps a date, a name and the staff member who added it
• Old versions stay available
• One version is marked as the current one for production
• The version a customer approved is tied to the approval, not just to the job

What a proof is

A proof is a check copy made before the real run starts.¹ Two kinds are common. Soft proofs are digital proofs that simulate how the finished piece will look. Hard proofs are physically printed.¹

A soft proof is what most job software handles, since it's a file or an on-screen view. For colour-critical work, ask the maker whether the screen preview is meant to be a colour match. Maker documentation should say what it does and doesn't promise.

A contract proof is a proof signed off by the customer before printing can begin, and it serves as the agreement between customer and printer.¹ If your customers sign off on paper, scan it and attach it to the job.

Recording the approval

There's no single standard for what counts as an approval, and the law on electronic signatures differs by country. For anything beyond ordinary business practice, ask a lawyer or check your government's official guidance. Don't rely on the software maker to tell you what will hold up.

What you can check in the software:

Web-to-print systems can carry out prepress reviews online, and the client can approve the materials without a face-to-face meeting with the printer.³ If that suits your shop, ask whether the software sends the customer a link or needs them to log in, since many customers won't create an account for one sign.

Approval as a stage

Some systems treat approval as a state a file moves through. The general pattern for digital assets is a lifecycle with states such as creation, approval, live, archived and deleted.² In job software, look for a stage that stops a job from going to the printer until the approval is recorded. See production stages and status boards for how that fits the larger flow.

Pre-flight checks

Pre-flight is an automatic scan that hunts for file errors before a job goes to print.¹ Ask whether your software runs one, or whether you'd need a separate tool.

Questions to put to the maker

• Can a customer approve from a phone with no account?
• Is the approval locked to a specific file version?
• Can I see the full history of proofs on one job?
• How long are files kept, and can I export them?