Artwork Fee - All Decoration Processes

Artwork fees help you recover the time and cost involved in preparing, cleaning up, and approving customer artwork before production. In DecoNetwork, these fees can be applied automatically when customers add or upload artwork to products in your webstore and when artwork or digitizing jobs are created as part of your internal workflow in Business Hub. This helps protect your profit margins while keeping pricing clear and consistent for customers.

In this article

• Prerequisites
• Why configure artwork and digitizing fees
• How to configure artwork fees
  • Step 1: Open the decoration process
  • Step 2: Open Artwork Fee
  • Step 3: Configure the settings
    • Contract price levels
    • Artwork Fee settings (all processes except Embroidery)
    • Digitizing Fee settings (Embroidery only)
  • Step 4: Save your changes
• Best-practice tips
• Troubleshooting
• FAQs
• Additional Resources

Prerequisites

Why configure artwork and digitizing fees

• Protect profitability: Charge for design labor instead of absorbing it into product margin.
• Improve consistency: Automatically apply fees the same way across quotes and orders.
• Reduce missed charges: Auto-created approval jobs ensure artwork/digitizing work is captured and billed.
• Prevent disputes: The approval workflow provides an audit trail of approvals and correspondence.
• Charge at the right moment: Apply fees at checkout or during internal processing, depending on your workflow.

How to configure artwork fees

Step 1: Open the decoration process

1. Log into your DecoNetwork Website.

2. Go to Admin → Decoration Processes → [Decoration Process].

   

   

Step 2: Open Artwork Fee

1. Select Artwork Fee.

   

   The Artwork Fee settings are displayed in the main work area.

   
   All decoration processes, except Embroidery, use the same Artwork Fee settings.

Step 3: Configure the settings

Review and configure each of the settings below based on how you manage artwork and digitizing in your business.

Contract Price Level (Premium & Enterprise Levels Only)

Contract price levels are tiers of selling prices you can offer to affiliate stores and customers. They are defined in Admin → Products → Contract Price Levels. (See the Contract Price Levels help article for instructions).

When contract price levels are enabled, this section lets you switch between price levels and set different artwork fees per level. This allows different store groups or customers to be charged service fees based on their pricing tier. After setting the artwork fees, you can assign the contract price levels to stores and customers. See "Store Contract Price Level" for store instructions and "Edit Customer Account Details" for customer instructions.

• How: Select the radio button for a contract price level to edit its Artwork Fee values.
• Why: Different tiers often have different service inclusions (e.g., “free basic artwork edits” for premium customers), so fee-by-tier helps you match pricing to service expectations.

Artwork Fee (all processes except Embroidery)

Setting: Automatically Create Artwork Job

Automatically creating an artwork job starts the approval process when artwork using the selected process is added to an order or quote.

Customers submit their artwork (if not already provided), your art department completes the work, and the customer then approves or rejects it. Rejected artwork goes through another revision cycle; approved artwork moves to production.

The entire process is managed via email notifications and links to DecoNetwork, with full audit tracking of approvals and correspondence. Managers can view approvals and production status in Business Hub under Artwork Approvals.

• How: Tick or untick Automatically Create Artwork Job to enable/disable.
• Why: When enabled, DecoNetwork automatically initiates an artwork approval workflow when a design using this process is applied to a quote or order. This helps you:
  • Capture artwork work consistently (reducing missed internal tasks).
  • Route customers through approval before production (reducing rework and errors).
  • Maintain a documented approval trail (helpful for preventing disputes).

Setting: Automatically create artwork job for...

This setting is only available when Automatically Create Artwork Job is enabled. It allows you to select an option to determine what designs artwork jobs will automatically be created for.

• Automatically create artwork job for all designs
  • How: Select this option to create artwork jobs for both stock designs and customer-uploaded designs.
  • Why: Use this when you want a consistent approval/check step for every design using this process—helpful when your workflow includes checking placement, sizing, or print readiness even for stock art.
• Automatically create artwork job for user uploaded designs
  • How: Select this option to create artwork jobs only for customer-uploaded designs.
  • Why: Use this when your stock designs are already production-ready and you only want approvals (and fees) for customer-supplied files that may require cleanup, edits, or reformatting.

Setting: Artwork Job Fee

The artwork fee is automatically applied for artwork approval jobs that are created. The fee can be overridden for quotes and orders inside of Business Hub.

• How: Enter a value for Artwork Job Fee.
• Why: This sets the default fee charged when an artwork approval job is created in Business Hub, helping ensure you recover the cost of artwork handling. You can still override the fee on a specific quote/order when:
  • You’re waiving the fee as a courtesy.
  • The job complexity is higher/lower than your default.
  • The customer has special pricing terms.

Digitizing fee (Embroidery only)

Setting: Automatically Create Digitizing Job

Automatically creating a digitizing job starts the artwork approval process when embroidery artwork is submitted with a quote or order. Once digitized, the design is sent to the customer for approval. If rejected, it returns for revision; if approved, it moves to production.

All steps are managed via email notifications and DecoNetwork links, with full audit tracking of approvals and correspondence. Management can monitor approvals and production in Business Hub under Artwork Approvals in the main tree view.

• How: Tick or untick Automatically Create Digitizing Job to enable/disable.
• Why: When enabled, DecoNetwork initiates a digitizing approval workflow when artwork is submitted for embroidery in a quote or order. This helps you:
  • Ensure digitizing work is tracked and billed.
  • Get customer approval before stitching begins (reducing re-runs).
  • Maintain an approval audit trail for embroidery-specific artwork changes.

Setting: Apply Digitizing Fee to Auto-Digitization?

• How: Tick Apply Digitizing Fee to Auto-Digitization? to charge a digitizing fee when auto-digitization is used to generate an embroidery file from uploaded raster artwork.  See the help article, Embroidery Designer Settings, for instructions on how to enable auto-digitization on your website.
• Why: Auto-digitization can still require staff time for checking, adjustments, sew tests, and customer communication. Enabling this helps you charge consistently for the digitizing service, even when software assists in file creation.

Setting: Digitizing Job Fee

• How: Enter a value for Digitizing Job Fee.
• Why: This sets the default digitizing charge applied to digitizing jobs created. This helps prevent undercharging for embroidery setup work. You can override the fee on individual quotes/orders when needed.

Setting: Per sq inch

• How: Tick Per sq inch to charge digitizing based on the design area rather than a flat fee.
• Why: Larger embroidery designs typically take longer to digitize and stitch (more complexity, more stitch count, more testing). Charging per square inch helps scale your digitizing fees in a way that better reflects the workload and production risk.

Step 4: Save your changes

1. Click Save to apply your availability changes.
2. If you don’t want to keep your changes, click Cancel.

Best-practice tips

• Start simple: If you’re new to approvals, begin with customer-uploaded designs only so you don’t create extra jobs for stock art.
• Review pricing quarterly: Update artwork/digitizing fees as labor costs and turnaround expectations change.
• Use overrides intentionally: Document when/why you override fees in Business Hub to keep pricing consistent across staff.
• Align with your sales messaging: If you advertise “free basic edits,” reflect that in your default fee and when jobs are created.

Troubleshooting

Artwork or digitizing jobs are not being created automatically

• Confirm Automatically Create Artwork Job (or Automatically Create Digitizing Job) is enabled for the relevant decoration process.
• If using artwork jobs, confirm the scope matches the artwork type you’re testing (all designs vs user uploaded designs).
• Confirm the order/quote design is using the same decoration process you configured.

The artwork fee was not applied

• Webstore check: confirm the customer is actually adding/uploading artwork to the product (not selecting a pre-approved/stock design that doesn’t trigger an artwork charge in your workflow).
• Configuration check: confirm the relevant decoration process has artwork fees enabled and saved.
• Contract price levels: if you use them, confirm the fee is set on the correct price level and that the customer/store is assigned the level you tested (overrides can apply).
• Business Hub check: if you expect the fee via job workflow, confirm the related artwork/digitizing job was created and wasn’t overridden on the quote/order.

FAQs

Can I override artwork or digitizing fees per order?

Yes. The default fee is applied automatically when the job is created, but you can override it for individual quotes and orders in Business Hub.

Do all decoration processes use the same artwork fee settings?

No – all decoration processes except have their own Artwork Fee setting.

When should I use “all designs” vs “user uploaded designs”?

• All designs: when you want an approval/check workflow for every design using the process (including stock art).
• User uploaded designs: when you only want approvals/fees for customer-supplied artwork that may require cleanup or changes.

Why charge digitizing per square inch?

It helps scale your fee based on design size, which often correlates with digitizing effort, stitch count, and testing time.

Additional Resources

• Decoration Pricing
• Decoration Process – General Settings (All Decoration Methods)
• Contract Price Levels
• Store Contract Price Levels
• Edit customer account details
• Embroidery Designer Settings