Print shops, like most businesses these days, are under more pressure than ever to deliver high-quality work faster and with fewer resources. In this environment, manual processes become your enemy, slowing you down and disrupting productivity. One of the most overlooked bottlenecks is manual preflighting. Despite how routine the process may seem, manually checking every file for errors like missing bleeds, low-resolution images, or incorrect color profiles can be surprisingly costly to your print shop. Investing in time-saving technology like automated preflight software can help you reduce mistakes, improve turnaround times, and scale your operations more efficiently.

The Real-World Consequences of Manual Preflighting

Maybe you’re manually checking every file before it goes to print, and you’re thinking, “What’s the issue? This process is working fine.” And maybe it does feel good enough. Sure, some mistakes slip through, but you’re running a test print before the full run anyway, so it’s no big deal… right?

The reality is, those “small” issues come with big consequences. Beneath the surface, manual preflighting is slowing you down, costing you money, and putting pressure on your team in ways you may not even realize.

The Expensive Errors That Slip Past You

Nobody can perform perfectly 100% of the time. That’s why really important processes—like flying an airplane, for instance—have built-in redundancies. Of course, preflighting a file is much lower stakes, but it’s still important to remember that even the most experienced team members miss things, especially when they’re juggling a high volume of jobs.

A file with a low-res image, missing bleed, or the wrong color profile might get caught on a test print, but that’s not a guarantee, especially if you’re using different materials or machinery for the test proof. If an issue doesn’t get caught and you go ahead and print a full run, the final product will wind up in the hands of a customer, leading to costly reprints, overnight shipping, and possible damage to your reputation.

The Cost of Labor

Manual preflighting takes time—and not just any time. It takes up the attention of your most knowledgeable employees. Your prepress staff often become bogged down doing repetitive preflight tasks like checking file specs or converting color profiles, taking their attention away from issues and customer questions that require their expertise. Not only do the labor costs of manual preflighting add up, this inefficiency prevents your shop from scaling.  

Delays in Your Production Workflow

Manual preflighting creates friction at one of the most critical points in your workflow. By the time a file arrives to the preflight process, a project has likely gone through several revision cycles and the deadline is breathing down your neck. Now, one of your employees has to interrupt the momentum to carefully go through your preflight checklist to prepare the file for print. Each time this happens, your entire production schedule could be pushed back. These incremental setbacks will compound, resulting in missed press windows, frustrated press operators waiting on fixes, and jobs that end up shipping late.

The Costs You Likely Aren’t Tracking

When you think about how manual preflighting may be impacting your business, the cost of expensive reprints, labor costs, and workflow delays may have come to mind, but there are other costs you probably aren’t considering that quietly eat away at your margins and prevent you from scaling. 

Reprint Waste and Material Loss

Every error that sneaks past your manual process can lead to wasted paper, ink, and labor. Even small mistakes can force you to completely reprint an entire job. If you multiply that waste across dozens of projects a month, you could be losing thousands of dollars in materials, machine wear and tear, and labor. 

Reputation and Customer Trust

The last thing you want is to get a reputation for delivering poor quality products. One misprinted job here or there can be forgiven, but once mistakes start to become more frequent, customers will start to lose confidence in your services. 

Every time you have to call and explain a delay or are forced to ship a flawed product, you’re quietly eroding the trust you’ve built with your customers. In an industry where deadlines are tight and competition is fierce, maintaining a reputation for reliability is essential to keep customers coming back. 

Opportunity Costs

So far, we’ve discussed the costs tied to what you produce, but there’s also a hidden cost in what you aren’t producing. Not only does manual preflighting slow down your turnaround times, it limits how many jobs you can take on and forces you to allocate more resources to error correction instead of new business. 

How Automated Preflight Software Solves These Issues

Whether you’re handling a small workload or managing dozens of jobs a day, automated preflight software solves the issues manual preflighting is currently creating in your business. 

If you’re already dealing with a heavy workload, automated preflighting clears up one of the biggest bottlenecks in your prepress process while ensuring you maintain the speed and consistency your customers expect—without sacrificing quality or burning out your staff. And even if you have a smaller operation, automation allows you to increase your capacity without overextending your team.

So, what exactly can automated preflight software do for you? 

Instant File Validation

Instead of relying on manual review, automated preflight software instantly checks every file against a predefined set of standards. It flags issues such as missing bleeds, low-resolution images, incorrect color profiles, and missing font issues, allowing you to quickly fix them without missing a beat. You can be assured that any errors will be caught before they derail a job, which will save you costly reprints, wasted materials, and delaying orders. Plus, with automation handling what tends to be a tedious process, your team can focus their expertise where it’s really needed. 

Consistency and Scale

Manual checks introduce variability depending on who’s reviewing the file and how much time they have to spend on it—and let’s face it, even your most attentive employees have their off days. Automated preflight software, on the other hand, delivers the same level of scrutiny on every file. It never takes shortcuts or makes assumptions to speed things along. Beyond reducing errors, this consistency of application also enables you to scale effectively; whether you’re dealing with 5 or 50 print jobs, an automated approach never varies. 

Faster Turnarounds & Happier Teams

At one of the most critical points in your workflows, manual preflighting puts the brakes on while automated preflight software keeps the momentum going by seamlessly checking for and fixing any mistakes, whether they be white borders, misaligned crop marks, or color corrections.  Your press operators aren’t left waiting for file corrections. Your prepress staff isn’t stuck double-checking the basics. And your whole team can focus more on creative problem-solving and customer service. 

Stop Paying the Price for Manual Preflighting

What is manual preflighting costing your business? How much have you lost this month in material waste? Has a simple mistake led to a negative customer review? Are you trying to scale up, only to keep hitting capacity issues? Ashore Preflights can help you tackle all of these challenges moving forward.

Designed for high-velocity print shops, our automated preflight software makes it easy to create print-ready PDFs in seconds. Ashore Preflights intelligently extends artwork to the bleed for seamless, professional prints, auto-resizes and converts files to 300dpi, adds built-in crop marks, and ensures accurate color conversion. Now, the most tedious, error-prone steps can be taken off your plate, freeing you and your employees up to focus on the tasks that call for your expertise. 

Ready to try out Ashore Preflights for yourself? It is now available in beta on the Ashore platform, and we invite any printers interested in beta testing to reach out to us at support@ashoreapp.com. Currently, all premium Ashore users have access to Preflights as part of their subscription, as well. In the future, Preflights will be available as an add-on for all subscription tiers. 

Don’t wait for another costly mistake to hold your business back. Automate your preflight process with Ashore today!