Both are work-tracking tickets in office furniture. They live in the same software systems, look similar on the surface, and frequently get confused. That confusion costs money — installers do work for free that should have been billed, or clients refuse to pay for things they thought were punch.
Here's where the line is, why it matters, and how to handle the cases that look like both.
Quick definitions
A punch list is the catalog of deficiencies on a fresh install. The desk wobbles. The laminate is chipped. The fabric is the wrong color. The drawer hinge sticks. Punch items are the dealer's or installer's responsibility to fix, before substantial completion, at no charge to the client.
A MAC ticket (Move, Add, Change) is a billable change request after substantial completion. The client decides they want the workstation moved. They want a new monitor arm. They want to swap a desk. MACs are paid work, quoted and approved as separate scope.
If "MAC ticket" is unfamiliar, see What is a MAC ticket? for the longer treatment.
The line is "substantial completion"
The single sharpest distinction between the two is the date the project achieves substantial completion. Items captured before that line are punch. Items captured after that line are MACs.
The reason: substantial completion is when the install is contractually accepted as built. Anything wrong with the as-built state is punch — the dealer needs to fix it because they didn't deliver it correctly. Anything that asks to change the as-built state is a MAC — the client is asking for new work that wasn't in scope.
If the project doesn't have a formal substantial completion date, set one. Without it, every issue feels like punch and the dealer eats every change order.
Who pays?
This is where the consequences of mixing them up land.
- Punch is the dealer's wallet. The dealer is correcting work the client already paid for.
- MAC is the client's wallet. The client is buying new scope the dealer wasn't paid to deliver.
Treating a MAC as punch means the installer does free work. Treating a punch item as a MAC means the client gets billed twice for something that shouldn't have left the warehouse broken. Both kill trust on future projects.
Different lifecycles
Punch and MAC tickets follow different shapes:
Punch lifecycle. Capture → assign → fix → re-inspect → close. No quote, no approval gate. The dealer just does the work.
MAC lifecycle. Request → quote → written approval → execute → invoice → close. The middle three steps — quote, approve, invoice — don't exist on punch items. They're the difference between paid and unpaid work.
Software that captures both should expose them as different ticket types with different fields, not a single generic "issue" with a checkbox somewhere.
Different urgency
Punch items are time-bound by the closeout. The retention money releases when punch is closed; every day a punch item lingers is a day of cash flow stuck.
MAC tickets are time-bound by the client's operational need. A MAC for "new hire arrives Monday, needs a workstation" is urgent for entirely different reasons than a punch item that's holding up retention.
The right SLA for each ticket type is different. Most software that lumps them together doesn't expose this — and small installers running in email get burned by it.
The grey zone — and how to handle it
Some requests genuinely look like both. The honest approach is to call them MACs and document why.
Example 1. Client says during the punch walk: "Actually, can we have this desk in white instead of grey?" That's not a defect — the right desk was delivered. It's a MAC, even though it surfaced during a punch walk. Document it as a MAC ticket, quote it, get approval before touching it.
Example 2. Workstation is installed correctly per spec. Client now wants it 6 inches east. Same answer — not punch, MAC. Get it in writing.
Example 3. A drawer hinge breaks two weeks after move-in. This one's gray. If it's covered by warranty (most furniture has 5–10 year structural warranty), it's a warranty claim, not punch and not MAC. Treat it as its own thing. If it's a wear part (chair caster), it's a maintenance call.
When in doubt, write a short paragraph in the ticket explaining why you classified it the way you did. The paper trail saves disputes.
Why a single tool helps
The reason most teams confuse punch and MAC is that their tools — email and spreadsheets — don't enforce the distinction. A spreadsheet has a row for each issue and that's it. The "is this billable" column is a notes field that gets lost.
A purpose-built tool exposes punch and MAC as separate first-class objects. New requests have to pick one. The fields differ. The lifecycles differ. The reports differ. The disambiguation happens at intake, not at invoice time.
We built Cleat for installers and Cleat for dealers with both ticket types as separate objects. End-user facility managers get free seats to submit MAC tickets; installers and dealer PMs handle punch and MAC on the same workspace.
For the paper version, the free closeout checklist walks through punch handling and MAC management as separate phases of a clean closeout.