Event tickets, raffle tickets, receipts and vouchers are usually numbered and bound into pads (for example 50 or 100 tickets per pad). If you print the numbers in plain sheet order (1, 2, 3, 4 across each sheet), every pad ends up full of mixed numbers after cutting. Printers solve this with cut-and-stack numbering.
How cut-and-stack works
Each position on the sheet becomes one pad. With 8 tickets per sheet and 50 tickets per pad:
| Sheet | Position 1 | Position 2 | Position 3 | … | Position 8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0001 | 0051 | 0101 | … | 0351 |
| 2 | 0002 | 0052 | 0102 | … | 0352 |
| … | … | … | … | … | … |
| 50 | 0050 | 0100 | 0150 | … | 0400 |
Stack the 50 printed sheets in order and cut them: each pile is a complete pad in sequence (0001–0050, 0051–0100, and so on). The rule is: number = start + position × tickets per pad + (sheet − 1).
Plan the pad count to fill the sheet
Use a number of pads that is a multiple of the tickets per sheet. With 8 tickets per sheet, order 8 or 16 pads. If you only need 6 pads, two positions on every sheet are left blank, which wastes paper.
Stub and ticket numbers
Most tickets carry the same number twice: once on the stub that stays in the pad, and once on the part the customer takes. Place both numbers away from the perforation and away from dark artwork, and choose a colour that reads clearly. Red or black are the most common.
Spacing the tickets on the sheet
Large tickets often look and cut better when they are spread evenly, with equal gaps between them and to the sheet edges and their own crop marks, rather than packed tightly. A 75 × 210 mm ticket fits 3-up across A4, for example, with the size reduced slightly to leave room for crop marks.
Do it in seconds with ImpoGrid
Tick Numbered tickets, open your ticket design, and drag the stub and ticket numbers into place on a preview of the ticket. ImpoGrid generates every sheet with cut-and-stack numbering, in black or red, with prefixes and leading zeros. Thousands of tickets are produced in seconds.
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