The short answer
- A proof is a record of what was agreed, not a preview
- It must carry size, placement, colours, garment and quantity — not just the design
- Say plainly that screen colour is not print colour, before they approve
- State a consequence: approve by a date or the delivery date moves
- Store the approval against the job, never in an email thread
Almost every dispute in decorated apparel is a disagreement about what was agreed. The logo is bigger than they expected, the blue is not their blue, the print is lower on the chest than they imagined. In nearly all of those cases both parties are being honest — they simply held different pictures in their heads, and nothing existed to settle it.
A proof is the thing that settles it. Treated as a preview it is a courtesy; treated as a record it is the cheapest insurance in the shop.
What is a proof actually for?
Two jobs, and shops usually only do the first. The obvious one is letting the customer see the design on the garment so they can catch mistakes — a misspelt name, the wrong year, a logo that is not their current one.
The second is establishing a shared, dated record of the specification. That is the job that saves money, because it is what you point at when somebody says the print was meant to be larger. Not to win an argument, but to end it early and without acrimony, which is usually all either side wants.
That framing changes what belongs on a proof. If it is a record, it has to record everything that could later be disputed — which is far more than the artwork.
What has to be on it?
Every proof, every time
- The design, on the actual garment colour ordered
- Print dimensions in inches or millimetres — not "left chest"
- Placement, measured from a fixed point such as below the collar seam
- Colours, named by reference where one exists, and how they will be separated
- Garment — brand, style number and colour name
- Quantity and size breakdown
- Decoration method — screen, DTG, DTF, embroidery
- The order number and the date
The measured placement is the item most often missing and the one that causes the most trouble. "Left chest" means slightly different things to different people, and a print three inches below the collar looks quite different from one four inches down. A number removes the ambiguity entirely.
Style number matters for the same reason. A customer who approved a proof showing a midweight tee and receives a heavier one has a legitimate complaint, even if the print is perfect — and if the proof named the style, the substitution conversation happens before production rather than after.
What do you say about colour?
Say the true thing, in one sentence, before they approve. Screen colour is not print colour: every monitor and phone renders differently, none of them is calibrated, and ink on fabric behaves differently again from light on glass.
This is not a disclaimer to bury. It is a genuine limitation, and stating it plainly does two useful things — it manages the expectation, and it prompts customers with a real brand colour to tell you the reference rather than assuming you will match what they see.
The sentence to include
"Colours on screen are a guide — every display renders differently, and ink on fabric will not match a monitor exactly. If you have a specific brand colour to match, send us the reference and we will mix to it. If an exact match matters, we can print a physical sample before the run."
That last clause is important. Offering a physical sample converts an unmanageable expectation into a priced option, and a customer who declines it has effectively accepted the tolerance. Both outcomes are better than discovering the disagreement after two hundred garments.
How do you get it approved quickly?
Approval delay is a real production problem, and the fix is not chasing harder — it is stating a consequence when you send it. A proof sent with no deadline invites a reply whenever the customer gets to it, which on a busy week is Thursday.
Attach the deadline to the thing they care about, which is the delivery date rather than your schedule. Approve by Tuesday and we hold the 14th; after that the date moves is both true and effective, and it converts a request into a decision with a cost attached.
| Instead of | Send |
|---|---|
| "Please find attached your proof" | "Proof attached — approve by Tuesday and we hold the 14th" |
| "Let us know if any changes" | "Reply APPROVED, or tell us what to change" |
| "Just checking in on the proof" | "The 14th needs approval today — shall I hold it?" |
Make approving easier than not approving. A single click or a one-word reply gets acted on; a form to complete gets postponed. And send it through whatever channel that customer actually uses — a proof sitting unread in a portal nobody logs into is a proof that has not been sent.
Where should the approval live?
On the job, not in an inbox. An approval in an email thread is findable in theory and unfindable in practice — it is in one person's mailbox, it is not visible to whoever handles the query, and it disappears when that person leaves.
Attached to the order — which is how our back-office management stores proofs and approvals — it is available to anyone who opens the job, survives staff changes, and carries a timestamp nobody has to reconstruct. That is the difference between a record and a memory.
It also has a quieter benefit: it removes a whole class of internal question. "Did this get approved?" is one of the most common interruptions in a decorating shop, and when the answer is visible on the job it stops being asked. That is the same principle behind removing status calls — put the answer where the question occurs.
When should you send a physical sample?
Four situations justify the cost, and it is worth being explicit about them rather than deciding case by case.
An exact brand colour must be matched. No digital proof can settle this. If the customer's brand guidelines specify a colour and they will be judged on it internally, print one.
A large or long-running order. On a big run the cost of a sample is trivial against the cost of a reprint, and on a programme that will repeat, the sample becomes the reference for every future run.
A new garment or a new process for that customer. Hand feel, drape and how a print sits on a particular fabric cannot be shown on screen, and these are exactly the things people react to.
Any history of dispute. If a customer has raised concerns before, a physical sample resets the relationship on a factual footing and is cheaper than the alternative.
Charge for it, and say what it covers. A sample is a real garment, a real setup and real press time — on screen printing it is most of a job's fixed cost for one piece. Offering it free trains customers to expect it on everything; offering it priced, and crediting it against the order if they proceed, is fair to both sides and gets taken up exactly when it should be. The rest of the artwork archive assumes your proofs are records rather than pictures.
