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Every finished-goods product can carry its own specifications, authored in a guided wizard and exported as a polished PDF. There are two types — a PIF and a Product Specification — and the Product Specification is the source of truth your AI Label Review checks the label against: allergens, the ingredient statement, and the nutrition panel.

Where to find it: open a finished-goods product and use the Specifications tab. AI Label Review lives on the product's Label Reviews tab.

Two types — which one to author

You pick the type on the first step of the wizard. The type locks once the spec is saved — to switch, create a new specification.

Authoring a specification

The wizard walks through:

1. Type — PIF or Product Specification (locks after first save).
2. Region(s) — choose the destination market(s): AU-NZ, USA, or both. This drives the allergen rules and which sections appear later (e.g. a USA-only Nutrition Facts panel).
3. Identity — product name, code, legal/supplier name, intended use, description. The name defaults to the product description to save typing.
4. Ingredients — the declared statement of ingredients. Click Generate from recipe to build it from the product's current recipe in descending ingoing-weight order, then edit freely.
5. Allergens — declare each allergen as Present (Contains), May contain, or not present; the Contains / May-contain statements are auto-generated and editable.
6. Details — the structured sections for the chosen type and region(s): nutrition, microbiological, chemical & physical, sensory, storage/packaging, claims, regulatory, authorisation, and so on.

Saving as you go: the wizard saves your progress as you move between steps, and the Details step auto-saves shortly after you stop typing.

Structured nutrition panels

Nutrition is captured as structured tables, not free text, so it can be rendered correctly and checked against labels:

• AU-NZ NIP (FSANZ Std 1.2.8) — per-serve and per-100 g/mL columns; mandatory nutrients plus optional ones (e.g. dietary fibre); add custom rows as needed.
• USA Nutrition Facts — amount-per-serving and % Daily Value, with the full FDA nutrient list.
• Each panel header captures the Serving size and Servings per container / per package.

The right panels appear automatically for the region(s) you selected.

Versions, status & the PDF

Specifications are versioned and move through statuses shown as badges in the list:

• Draft — being authored.
• Approved — the current, live version (used by the PDF and label review).
• Superseded — a previously-approved version.

Key behaviours:

• Editing an approved spec creates a new draft alongside it. The approved version stays live, and the list shows a "Draft vN pending" badge so you can tell unapproved changes exist. Author continues that draft; Discard throws it away and keeps the approved version untouched.
• Approve & make current promotes the draft to the live version.
• PDF always prints the approved version (a draft's edits aren't in it until you approve). A spec that only has a draft prints that draft as a preview.

How the Product Spec ties into AI Label Review

When you run an AI Label Review on a finished good, QTRACA reads the uploaded label images and checks them for regulatory compliance — and, when a Product Specification exists, it cross-checks the label against your spec under a Spec Conformance section.

Choosing which spec to check against

You pick the spec on the Confirm step when you start a review:

• No Product Specification on the product → no picker, and spec conformance is skipped entirely.
• One → it's selected automatically ("Validating against: …").
• Multiple (e.g. private-label / co-pack variants) → a dropdown, defaulted to the most recent, that you can change.

The chosen spec is saved against the review, so each review records exactly which specification (and version) it was judged against. The review detail shows "Conformance checked against (vN)." (PIFs are never used for label review — only Product Specifications.)

What gets checked

1. Allergens — the label's declared allergens vs. the spec's Presentdeclarations, region-aware:
   • Spec says Contains but the label is missing it → fail (critical).
   • On the label but not in the spec for this region → review.
2. Ingredient statement — the label's ingredient line vs. the spec's; materially different → review.
3. Nutrition panel (NIP / Nutrition Facts) — the values read off the label vs. the spec's structured panel, using an "actual values only"rule:
   • A nutrient the spec lists as zero or blank is never demanded on the label.
   • Optional nutrients absent from the label are fine.
   • A mandatory nutrient with a real spec value that's missing from the label → fail.
   • A value present on both that clearly differs (beyond normal rounding) → review.

Findings appear in the Spec Conformance filter alongside the rest of the review, and in the exported review PDF.

Tips

• Author the Product Specification before running label reviews so conformance has something to check against — otherwise that part is skipped.
• Generate the ingredient statement from the recipe, then refine — it's faster and starts from real data.
• Keep nutrition in the structured tables (not notes) so label review can verify the NIP / Nutrition Facts values.
• Re-approve after edits: the live PDF and label-review checks use the approved version, so promote your draft when changes are final.
• For multi-brand / co-pack products, keep a Product Specification per label and pick the right one when you start each review.