Getting art approvals in writing, not in an inbox

Every decorator has reprinted a job over a proof. The customer said the logo was fine, or said it in a way that somebody read as fine, and 300 shirts came off the press with last year's tagline on them.

The argument afterwards is never about the artwork. It is about what was approved, by whom, and when — and if the approval was an email, the answer is somewhere in a thread with eleven replies.

What goes wrong with email approvals

• "Looks good" is ambiguous. Good as in approved for production, or good as in nice first draft?
• Threads drift from the file. Three revisions in, "the second one" means different things to different people.
• The approver is often not the buyer. The office manager forwards it to a coach, who replies to her, who says the coach is happy. Nothing in your inbox has the coach's name on it.
• Nothing is timestamped against the job. When it matters, you are searching an inbox rather than opening the order.

Approval is a record, not a message

The change is to treat approval as a thing that gets recorded against the order, rather than a message that arrives. Same artwork, same customer, different evidence: instead of a reply in a thread you have a proof, a named approver, and a timestamp, attached to the job.

That distinction only matters occasionally — and when it does, it is worth several hundred dollars of blanks and a week of press time.

Make it easy for the person who has to approve

The approval you are waiting on is usually not held up by disagreement. It is held up by friction: an attachment somebody cannot open on a phone, or an account they would have to create.

A link that opens the proof, shows it clearly, and offers one button removes most of the delay. No login, works on a phone, forwardable to whoever actually decides — because it will be forwarded.

Track how long approvals take

Most shops assume production is their bottleneck. Track approvals honestly for a month and a familiar pattern appears: a meaningful share of "in production" jobs are actually parked waiting on a customer.

Knowing which ones, and for how long, changes what you do on a Monday morning — and gives you something concrete to say when a customer complains about a date they themselves delayed.

Revisions need to stay attached

When artwork changes, the previous proof matters. A customer who approved version two and received version three has a legitimate complaint, and you can only answer it if both versions are on the order with their own approvals.

Proof approvals in PromoSoft

Proofs are attached to the order and shared through the customer's order page — no login required. The customer approves there, and the approval is recorded against the order with who approved it and when. Because it lives on the job rather than in an inbox, anyone in the shop can see whether a job is cleared to run.

Related: customer order status pages · the public order view.