Forms
A form is a set of questions your dealership decides on once and then answers on each vehicle you buy or sell. A safety checklist, a disclosure declaration, a delivery acknowledgement and a trade-in appraisal sheet are all forms.
Each form is built for one side of the business. A form marked Purchase appears on the purchase screen when you buy a vehicle, and a form marked Sale appears on the sale screen. A form cannot serve both, so a set of questions needed on each side is built twice.
A form is made of groups, and each group holds questions. Groups exist so that a long form can be broken into sections that read sensibly on paper — “Vehicle History”, “Previous Damage”, “Declaration” — and so that each section can be printed as its own block on a document.
Forms do two jobs. On screen they capture answers against a particular purchase or sale, and those answers stay with the record. On paper their questions and answers can be printed on any template you design, which is how a signed disclosure or a completed checklist reaches the customer.
Forms are managed at Administration → Master Forms.
In this section
- Creating a form — creating a form, choosing whether it serves purchases or sales, retiring it, and what deleting one breaks.
- Groups and questions — building a form out of groups and questions, and what the Print as group header switch controls.
- Answer types — the three answer types, and why a form usually mixes them.
- Filling a form on a purchase or a sale — how staff answer a form against a record.
- How a form reaches a printed template — getting a form’s questions and answers onto a printed document.
Creating a form
Go to Administration → Master Forms. The screen lists every form your dealership has built. A Total Forms count sits at the top, with a Search forms… box and filters for Used For and Active. Each row shows the Form Name, whether the form is used for Purchase or Sale, how many Groups it holds, and whether it is Active.
Creating the form
- Open Administration → Master Forms and choose Add, the button at the top right of the list.
- Type a Form Name. This is the name staff see on the purchase or sale screen, so make it recognisable — “Vehicle Disclosure” rather than “Form 2”.
- In Used For, choose Purchase or Sale. This decides which screen the form appears on, and which templates are able to print it.
- Leave Active ticked so the form is offered on new records.
- Save.
The form now exists but holds no questions. Add its groups and questions next — see Groups and questions.
Choose Used For carefully
Nothing stops you changing Used For later, but a form that has already been answered on purchases disappears from those records if you switch it to Sale, and any template printing it stops working.
Retiring a form
Active controls whether the form is offered for filling in. Untick it to retire a form without deleting it. Answers already saved against past purchases and sales are left untouched.
Deleting a form
Deleting a form cannot be undone, and nothing warns you what it will break. Dealersip does not show which templates print a form, and a template that refers to a deleted form fails when somebody tries to print it. Before deleting a form, check any template that includes its questions.
Related: Groups and questions, Answer types, How a form reaches a printed template.
Groups and questions
A form’s questions live inside groups, so building a form is two steps: create the groups, then add the questions to each one. Groups exist so that a long form reads as sections — “Vehicle History”, “Previous Damage”, “Declaration” — and so each section can be printed as its own block on a document.
Adding a group
- Go to Administration → Master Forms and click the groups icon on the form’s row (Open groups). The Master Form screen opens, listing that form’s groups with their Sort order, Print As Header setting, and the number of Items each one holds.
- Choose Add.
- Type a Group Name. This is the section heading, for example “Vehicle History”.
- Set a Sort Order. Groups appear in this order, lowest first.
- Decide whether to switch on Print as group header.
- Save.
What Print as group header does
With this switched on, the group’s name is shown as a heading above its questions on the purchase or sale screen, which makes a long form easier to work through.
It does not control printing. On a printed template the group name appears only when the template places the group’s header field — see How a form reaches a printed template.
Adding questions
- On the Master Form screen, click the input-fields icon on the group’s row (Open input fields).
- Choose Add.
- Type the question into Input Label (Question). This exact wording appears on screen and prints on the document, so write it as it should read on a legal form — “Has the vehicle been declared a total loss?” rather than “total loss”.
- Choose a Value (Answer) Type — see Answer types.
- Set a Sort Order. Questions appear in this order within their group.
- Save.
A group cannot be deleted while it still holds questions. Remove the questions first.
Adding a question later is safe
A new question appears immediately, unanswered, on purchases and sales that already exist. An older record simply shows a blank against it.
Related: Answer types, How a form reaches a printed template, Creating a form.
Answer types
Every question has a Value (Answer) Type, chosen when the question is created on the Administration → Master Forms screen. It decides what staff see beside the question, and what can be printed on a template.
| Type | On screen | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| True/False | a Yes/No choice only | “Has the vehicle been in an accident?” |
| User Input | a typing box only | “Odometer reading at appraisal” |
| Both | a Yes/No choice and a typing box on the same question | “Out of province vehicle?” answered Yes, with “Ontario” typed beside it |
Why Both exists
Printed forms rarely stay uniform. A disclosure page usually mixes the types:
Inspection done: Yes
If yes, which province: ON
The first question is True/False and the second is User Input, yet both print in the same block. Choosing the type for each question rather than for the whole form is what lets a printed document match the original paper form line for line.
Changing the type later
Choose carefully. Changing a question’s type leaves answers already recorded in their old shape. A question changed from Both to True/False keeps the typed remarks in the record, but they no longer appear.
Related: Groups and questions, How a form reaches a printed template, Filling a form on a purchase or a sale.
Filling a form on a purchase or a sale
Forms appear on the screen where the work happens. A form built for Purchase appears when you open a purchase, and a form built for Sale appears when you open a sale.
- Open the purchase or the sale.
- Find the forms list. On a sale this is the Sale Forms panel down the right-hand side of the screen; on a purchase the forms are listed the same way.
- Click the form’s name to open it. Its questions appear grouped, each with a Yes/No choice, a typing box, or both, depending on that question’s answer type.
- Answer what applies, then save the purchase or sale as usual. The answers are stored with that record.
A form that has been saved against the record shows Saved beside its name.
Removing a form from a record
Open the form and use the delete control on its panel. This clears the answers held against that purchase or sale. It does not affect the form itself, which stays available everywhere else.
A form prints whether or not you open it
Filling a form in decides what the answers say. Whether the questions appear on a printed document is decided by the template.
So a record where nobody touched the form still prints the full list of questions with the answers left blank — which is exactly what you want when the document is printed for a customer to complete by hand.
Related: How a form reaches a printed template, Answer types, Creating a form.
How a form reaches a printed template
A form does not print by itself. It prints because a template asks for it.
When you design a template, each group of every form built for that side of the business appears in the designer’s Data panel as its own object, listed under the name of the form it came from. Dragging that object’s repeater onto the page prints one row for each question in the group.
The fields a group offers
| Field | What it prints |
|---|---|
| GroupHeader | the group’s name, for example “Vehicle History” |
| nvcInputLabelOnly | the question on its own |
| TextValueOrYesOrNo | the answer in whichever form this question takes — “Yes” or “No” for a Yes/No question, the typed text for a typed one |
| nvcTextValueOnly | the typed text only, never Yes or No |
| YesAsX | “X” when the answer is Yes, otherwise empty |
| NoAsX | “X” when the answer is No, otherwise empty |
| InputLabelAndTextValue | the question with its typed text underneath it |
| GroupId | an internal number, not meant for printing |
Which fields to use
A group always prints through its repeater, and each group needs its own. Never merge two groups into one repeating block; each has its own questions and its own heading.
Use the question together with TextValueOrYesOrNo when a group mixes question types, which is the normal case. It prints “Yes” or “No” for the Yes/No questions and the typed answer for the typed ones, so every row comes out right. A two-column table — question on the left, this field on the right — is the layout most printed forms need.
Use YesAsX and NoAsX only for tick boxes. They put an X in the ticked box and leave the other empty, reproducing a paper form’s YES [ ] NO [X] style. They are empty on a typed-answer question, so a group containing typed questions needs one of the other fields as well, or those rows print with nothing beside them.
InputLabelAndTextValue never carries a Yes or No. It prints the question with any typed text below it, so a group containing Yes/No questions loses those answers if this is the only field used.
Related: Putting data on a template, Answer types, Groups and questions, Filling a form on a purchase or a sale.