Specs and customer files held against the approved estimate before prepress opens the ticket.

The estimate says one thing, the purchase order may say another, and the PDF that lands on Thursday has its own opinion. Before a ticket goes to prepress, a customer service rep or planner works through them: finished size, bleed, page count, ink, versions, due date and whether anything moved after the customer approved the quote.

In the test, AI reads copies of those same papers and files and writes a draft ticket with a list of exceptions: each place the job as received differs from the approved estimate or from your file requirements, with the page or line where it found the difference. Nothing goes near a live job, and your reviewer compares every list with what your team actually caught.

A file can pass and still be the wrong job. Preflight software measures a file against rules and knows nothing of what you sold. A job estimated at 32 pages plus cover that arrives at 36 can clear every check there and still need a phone call. The Government Publishing Office builds this comparison into paperwork. Its Form 952, the digital publishing information sheet customers send with their files, carries a preflight box for initials and dates, and asks whether files changed after the visual was made, whether the visual was smaller than actual size, whether bleeds are needed and supplied, whether graphics are linked and whether fonts came with the job. Those questions are most of a ticket check.

A PDF/X label isn't a clean bill of health. The PDF Association points out that PDF/X governs reliable exchange and sets no quality requirements of its own, including no minimum image resolution, since the right figure depends on screen ruling and screening method. Every PDF/X-4 page has to carry a trim box or an art box, never both, and any bleed box has to contain it, so the check sets those numbers against the finished size on the estimate. Your own rules sit on top. GPO's April 2015 publishing guidelines, as one buyer's example, ask for at least 1/8 inch of bleed on anything printing off the page, scans at 300 pixels per inch, process work free of RGB, Index and LAB, and no rule thinner than half a point.

Changes since the quote need a name and an owner. The trade customs count customer alterations as everything done beyond the original specifications, billed at the current rate. So a ticket has to show what moved: a new page count, a swapped stock, an added version, a spot color nobody quoted. One 2019 GPO program told its printer to check furnished media and files before image processing, report errors to the contracting officer before going any further, and make any revision on a copy of the files supplied. The draft lists every difference and who needs to decide it. Whether a change is billable is never its call, and nothing here is legal advice.

Some errors have no tolerance. GPO's attribute program treats missing pages, upside-down pages, unspecified blanks and wrong pagination as critical at every quality level, and its index files wrong imposition under wrong pagination, while trim only starts to count as a defect past 1/16 inch at Level I and 1/8 inch at Level III. Tickets carry the notes that guard against the first group: signatures, sheetwise or work-and-turn, head-to-head or head-to-toe, shingling for a saddle-stitched book. The test checks that those notes agree with the page count, binding and sheet on the estimate and lists any gap. Imposing the job remains your prepress operator's work.

What the ticket becomes, and who judges. CIP4, the standards group behind the Job Definition Format, describes a job ticket as information about a printed product that can start as customer intent and end up holding every process instruction, and its XJDF passes that between management systems and prepress workflows. The test writes nothing into either: it produces a readable draft ticket and an exception list. Color stays with your operators and with proofs, where ISO 12647-7 sets requirements for systems making hard-copy digital proofs of a printing condition. Your reviewer, often the prepress manager, checks whether each list caught what your team caught and raised anything that wasn't a real problem.

Once your reviewer agrees, newly arrived jobs get a draft ticket and an exception list for about a month.

A person checks each ticket, settles each exception and releases the job as your shop does today. The AI releases nothing and changes no file, and the same table keeps score.