A printing system alternately provides both literal finishing and abstract finishing to a print job. The printing system includes a user interface for supplying print job information including desired finishing instructions. A finishing element is also provided which applies a finishing operation to a print job, and a processor is in communication with both the user interface and the finishing element. The processor determines compatibility between the finishing element and the desired finishing instruction and upon determining incompatibility, selects a compatible finishing instruction for the finishing element. The compatible finishing instruction may be either a literal finishing operation available on the printing system, or an abstract finishing operation. Abstract finishing operations include insertion of slipsheets and/or marking separators between compilation boundaries of a print job with data including machine-readable code or human-readable code indicative of the desired final finishing operation.