Six checks that stop wrong personalised orders before you make them

Every maker has a remake story. The necklace engraved “Jonh”. The hoodie with the logo the customer forgot to upload. The wedding sign with the date that was right in the gift note and wrong in the personalisation field.

The mistake usually isn’t in the making. It was already in the order, and nobody looked closely enough before the tools came out. Here are six checks that catch most of them.

1. Does it fit?

Every product has a physical limit: letters per line on a pendant, characters across a chest print, lines on a sign. Customers don’t know it, and most options apps don’t enforce it.

Check: count characters against the real limit for that product, not a general one. Write the limits down once per product so you don’t work them out again on every order.

2. Is anything missing?

A blank required field is the easiest problem to catch and the most annoying to find halfway through. The usual suspects are a logo upload, a second name, a date and a font choice.

Check: for each product, list the fields you can’t make it without. Any order missing one goes straight to Waiting on customer.

3. Can you actually make it?

Customers type emoji, accented letters, symbols and other alphabets, and phones add curly quotes. Your engraving font or embroidery file may not have them.

Check: look for anything outside the characters your font supports, and for options that aren’t on your list, like “rose gold” when you only offer gold and silver.

4. Does it look like a typo?

This is the hardest one, because the order is technically valid. “Jonh”, “Micheal”, “Elizebeth”: any of them could be a real spelling or a slip of the thumb.

Check: read names slowly and out loud. Anything unusual gets a quick confirmation message. Asking “Just checking, is it Jonh or John?” costs a minute. A remake costs the materials, the postage and often a review.

5. Is there more than one thing in one field?

Customers squeeze extra into the box you gave them: “Emma & James”, “Emma (front) James (back)”, “Emma, font 2 please”.

Check: look for “and”, “&”, commas, brackets and instructions in any single-value field. Split them out before you make anything, and confirm if the meaning isn’t obvious.

6. Is there a hidden instruction somewhere else?

The personalisation field says one thing and the gift message, order note or a follow-up email says another: “Actually please make it silver.”

Check: read every free-text field on the order, not just the personalisation box, before the order moves to production.

Make it a habit, not a hero effort

Checks only work if they happen on every order, including the fortieth one on a busy Friday. Three habits help:

• Check in one place. Copy every open custom order and its details into one list each morning, rather than opening orders one by one.
• Use stages. New → Waiting on customer → Ready to make → In production → Made → Packed. Nothing moves to Ready to make until it passes the checks.
• Make from a run sheet. Print what to make today, with the personalisation spelled out, so nobody reads it off a phone at the bench.

Or let OrderSpec do the checking

We built OrderSpec to run these checks on every order automatically. It reads the personalisation from whichever options app you use and shows all custom orders on one screen. It flags anything too long, blank or unsupported, and uses AI for the typos and the two-names-in-one-field cases. It never changes your orders; it only points things out.

The free plan includes unlimited simple checks and 30 AI checks a month. OrderSpec is in Shopify review right now, and makers who join early access get Pro free for three months.