Administration

Setup includes various settings to customize this software. This has Admin-Only access. This means only admins can use Setup page. It cannot be controlled via Manage Users section. Setup page contains following tabs that are displayed on the header bar on the top:

1. Dealership Setup
2. System Settings
3. Print Settings

Accounting Settings sit under Setup, and they tell Dealersip which accounts to use for the entries it posts automatically. When you save a sale, a purchase or a trade-in, Dealersip has to know which account each side of that entry lands in, and these settings are where that is decided. They also set the dealership's financial year.

Dealersip presets the most suitable account for each one, so a new dealership works out of the box. You only need to change them if your chart of accounts is set up differently. For how those entries are built, see Accounting.

Financial Year

Choose the dealership's financial year — April to March, for example, or whichever start your country and business use. This sets the default reporting window across the accounting reports and the Business Health dashboard.

Accounting Defaults

The accounts Dealersip fills in for its automatic entries, in three groups.

General

• Account Payable — where a bill you owe a supplier is recorded, and where a trade-in debt sits (see below).
• Account Receivable — where money a customer owes you is recorded.
• Bank Account — the default bank account for money received or paid by bank.
• Cash Account — the default cash account for cash received or paid.

Purchase

• Purchase Account — where the cost of a vehicle you buy is recorded.
• Reconditioning Cost Account — where reconditioning spend on a vehicle is recorded. Dealersip keeps this separate from the purchase account by default. If you would rather fold reconditioning into the purchase cost, choose your Purchase Account in both settings.

Sale

• Sale Account — where vehicle sale income is recorded.
• Discount On Sale Account — where a discount given on a sale is recorded, reducing revenue.
• Trade In Payable Account — where the debt for a customer's trade-in is recorded. Set this to the same account as Account Payable — the next section explains why.
• Finance Company Receivable — where money a finance company owes you on a financed deal is recorded.
• Owner Payables (Consignee Sale) — where the amount owed to the vehicle's owner is recorded when you sell a consignment vehicle.
• Commission (Consignee Sale) — where your commission income on a consignment sale is recorded.

Business Health Signals

The Business Health dashboard puts a Good, Watch or Risk badge on almost every figure it shows. This section is where you decide what counts as a warning.

These are settings rather than fixed rules because the right numbers depend on your trade. A new-vehicle franchise runs a much tighter margin than a used lot; a cash lot collects far faster than one selling on finance. A single fixed set would leave whole kinds of dealership sitting on a permanent Risk badge, which teaches everyone to ignore the badges altogether.

These signals are shared across your whole business. They are not set per dealership, so changing a number here changes the badges on every dealership's Business Health dashboard.

Watch is the first warning and Risk is the serious one, so each pair must read Watch before Risk. If you set a Watch beyond its own Risk the settings are refused rather than badging backwards, with a message naming the pair — for example "The receivables Watch days cannot be higher than the Risk days."

Every field prints its shipped default underneath. Leave a field blank to put it back to that default.

Getting paid

• Customers take longer than (days) — Watch and … and Risk — how many days your customers take to pay before the Receivables tile warns. Dealersip works this out as your receivables divided by your average daily sales over the last twelve months, so it measures collection speed, not size: a large receivable is not automatically a problem, a slow one is. Defaults: 45 and 60 days.
• Unpaid past 90 days, share of what you are owed (%) — Watch and … and Risk — how much of your receivable balance may be more than 90 days old before Dealersip raises a flag about it. Defaults: 10% and 25%.

Margin and running costs

• Vehicle cost as a share of sales (%) — Watch and … and Risk — what the vehicles you sell may cost, as a share of what you sell them for, before the Cost of goods and Gross margin figures warn. This is the setting that differs most between trades. Defaults: 85% and 90%.
• Running costs as a share of sales (%) — Watch and … and Risk — what your overheads — rent, salaries, advertising and the rest — may come to as a share of sales before Operating expenses warns. Defaults: 12% and 18%.
• Flag an expense group growing faster than sales by (%) — Dealersip watches which kind of expense is growing fastest and flags it when it outpaces your sales growth by more than this. Default: 20%.

Cash and stock

• Cash must cover what you owe (times) — how many times over your cash should cover your payables for the Cash & Bank tile to read healthy. At the default of 1, cash simply has to match what you owe. Default: 1.
• Stock over 90 days, share of your own stock (%) — Watch and … and Risk — how much of your own stock, by value, may be more than 90 days old before the Inventory tile warns. Consignment vehicles are excluded, because that money was never yours. Defaults: 25% and 40%.
• Judge the selling rate on the last (days) — the recent window Dealersip uses to work out how fast you are selling, which is what turns your stock into "about so many days of supply". A short window reacts quickly but swings about; a long one is steadier. Default: 90 days.
• Ignore wrong-side balances under — Dealersip flags an account sitting on the wrong side, such as a bank account in credit. Below this amount it treats the balance as rounding rather than a mistake, so small stray figures do not clutter the flags. Default: 100 — or 5,000 in India, where vehicles priced in lakhs would otherwise flag every stray rupee.

One thing you cannot change here is the 30 / 60 / 90 day ageing bands. Those are built into the dashboard's columns, its colour bands and its drill-downs, so "over 90 days" means the same thing everywhere. The 60-day mark that decides when a finance company is late funding a deal is tied to the same bands for the same reason.

Which account to pick for Trade-in Payable

Short answer: the same account you use for Accounts Payable.

Here is why, in the order it happens:

1. A customer trades in their car. You record that car as a purchase, so it enters your stock and can be resold.
2. That purchase says you owe someone for the car, and it puts that debt in your Accounts Payable account.
3. When you invoice the new car, the trade-in wipes out that debt — the customer settles it by giving you the car instead of cash.

Step 3 has to clear the debt in the same account step 2 created it in. If the sale clears it somewhere else, nothing cancels:

• The other account ends up with a debit balance — a debt owed to you, which never happened.
• Accounts Payable stays too high by the same amount — a bill no supplier will ever claim.
• Your total payables still looks right, because the two errors are equal and opposite. That is what makes it easy to miss.
• Neither account can be reconciled against anything, and it gets worse with every trade-in you take.

Dealersip now always uses your Accounts Payable account for both sides, so new sales cannot get this wrong.

If your older entries used a different account

Entries already posted keep the account they were posted with. There are two ways to clean them up.

Preferred — re-save the sale. Open the affected sale and save it again. Dealersip rebuilds its accounting entry using the correct account, and both sides cancel. Do this whenever the sale can still be edited.

If the sale cannot be re-saved (a closed period, or a locked record), post a Journal instead. Say the stranded amount is 7,345,000:

Dr  Accounts Payable      7,345,000     (party = the customer)
    Cr  Trade in Payables         7,345,000

Read it as: the trade-in debt was never really a supplier bill, so take it out of Accounts Payable, and close off the other account that was left sitting on the wrong side. Use the same amount that is stranded, and tag the same customer so their ledger stays true.

After either fix, the old trade-in account should read zero. Accounts cannot be hidden from the pickers, so rename it — putting something like "do not use" in the name — to stop anyone selecting it by hand later.

Dealership Setup section includes critical settings that change the behavior of this software. If any settings are changed then user must log out and log in again. When Setup link is clicked from sidebar, then this page opens  first. It can be used change dealership settings e.g. dealership name or time zone etc. If subscription includes multiple dealerships, then new dealership can also be created from this page. To reach dealership setup select Dealership Setup tab from header bar on the top in Setup page.

Registered Name is the public name of your dealership used for branding and marketing purposes. It represents your business identity across various platforms. Note that some advertising platforms, such as Google Ads, have restrictions on business name length, often limiting it to 25 characters. If your dealership name exceeds this limit, we recommend shortening it to comply with these guidelines and ensure consistent branding across all advertising channels.

The software operates strictly on UTC time. Choosing an incorrect time zone can lead to the system initiating automated tasks at inappropriate times, and wrong date and time stamps in reports. Therefore, it is crucial to select the correct time zone with precision. If you are uncertain about the correct time zone, please reach out to your account manager for guidance.

To create a new dealership, simply click the "Add New Dealership" link found at the bottom of the Dealership Setup page. Keep in mind that the number of dealerships you can create is limited to the quantity included in your subscription. If you wish to manage additional dealerships, please reach out to your account manager.

A customer can subscribe to multiple dealerships under the same account only if all the dealerships are within the same time zone. If a dealership is located in a different time zone, a separate Dealersip subscription is required.

This section allows you to configure AI. Here you can configure how AI generates website content, or replies to Google reviews etc.

System settings tab in Setup page contains settings that impact entire Dealersip software. These settings must be changed by responsible users only. To reach System Settings, expand Admin section in the side bar, then select Setup option. In Setup page, select "System Settings" tab from header bar on the top.

This option is used to turn the Bella AI Chat Agent on or off. When enabled, Bella will actively monitor visitor behavior, engage users, and assist in converting them into leads. When disabled, the AI chat functionality will not be available on your website.

The Agent Name is the identity shown to visitors during greetings and conversations. Choosing the right name is important because it creates a sense of familiarity and comfort. A well-chosen name can make visitors feel they are interacting with someone who understands their region and language. For more information refer to this link.

The Nudge Text is a proactive message shown by Bella AI when it detects that a visitor has a higher buying intent. This message does not appear to every visitor. It is only triggered when the system determines that the user is actively exploring vehicles and may be interested in making a purchase. For more information refer to this link.

Print Settings tab in Setup page contains settings that affects printouts from Dealersip. These settings must be changed by responsible users only. To reach Print Settings, expand Admin section in the side bar, then select Setup option. In Setup page, select "Print Settings" tab from header bar on the top.

The QR Code Editor allows you to control which vehicle details are printed on the QR card before the QR code itself is shown. This feature is available to admin users only.

In the printed output, your business information such as business name, address, and logo is added automatically. You do not need to configure these items in the editor. The fields you select in the QR Code Editor are printed after the business information. Once those configured fields are printed, the QR code is displayed below them.

To open the QR Code Editor, go to the left menu and click Setup. Then open Print Settings from the top menu and select QR Code Editor.

This screen allows you to design the field layout that will appear on the QR printout.

Each row in the editor represents one line of printed information. Every row contains label fields on the left side and matching data fields on the right side. The editor works in column pairs. A column pair means one label column and one value column placed together in the same row structure. The system requires at least one column pair at all times. You can configure up to two column pairs only. This means the editor supports a maximum of two side-by-side field groups in the layout.

To add a new row, click the Add Row button at the top of the screen. A new blank row will be added to the layout. You can then enter the label text on the left side and choose the corresponding vehicle field from the dropdown on the right side. Use additional rows when you want to print more vehicle details such as variant, model, fuel type, kilometers, year, or trim.

To delete a row, click the cross icon displayed at the end of that row. The selected row will be removed from the layout. At least one row is required. Because of this, the system does not allow deleting the last remaining row.

To add another column pair, click the Add Column Pair button. This adds one more pair of columns at the end of the layout so you can print more information side by side. Only two column pairs are allowed. If the second column pair already exists, the system will not add another one.

To remove the extra column pair, click the Remove Column Pair button. This button removes only the second column pair from the end of the layout. The first column pair always remains because at least one column pair is required. If the layout already has only one column pair, it cannot be removed.

In each row, the text box on the left is used for the label that will appear in print, such as Car, Variant, Model, or KM. The dropdown on the right is used to select which vehicle data should be printed for that label. For example, you may enter the label KM and select the field Kilometers. This gives you flexibility to choose simpler printed labels while still mapping them to the correct system field.

The preview area at the bottom of the screen gives you a visual idea of how the QR card layout will appear. The configured fields are shown first, and the QR code appears below them. This helps you understand the approximate structure before saving.

After making changes to the layout, click the Save button to store your configuration. Your updated layout will be used in future QR printouts.

Business logo, business name, and address are automatically included in the QR printout. These items are not configured from this editor.

The fields configured in the QR Code Editor are printed after the business information and before the QR code.

At least one row and one column pair must always remain in the layout.

The second column pair is optional, but if added, it can also be removed later using the Remove Column Pair button.

The Website Settings section contains important business information that your front-end website consumes for branding and other communication channels. Any changes on this page take immediate effect for new visitors. If the website has already been opened by a visitor, they will not see changes until they keep browsing the website. Current visitors on the website will see changes only if they leave the website and come back after an hour.

Your information in the Website Settings page is crucial, as the system utilizes it in various promotional activities, especially those linked to your website.

How Website Settings Are Used

Following are some examples:

• The QR Card feature prints this information on the generated QR codes.
• This information is used in advertisements, such as Google Ads and Google Business Profile.
• Since your website is structured as a vehicle listing portal, search engines recognize it accordingly.

Entering Information Correctly

It is essential to enter accurate information in the correct format, as specified in the documentation. The system relies on these details for proper functioning and visibility.

Helper Icons for Guidance

For each input field, a helper icon is available. Click on these icons to understand how to correctly enter the required details.

The ‘Domain Name’ is the key that links your website to our system. Your website is your digital storefront for displaying your online inventory.

How to Point Your Domain to Our Server

To hook your existing website with software you must point your domain to our server. If you do not have a domain yet, then contact your account manager for further support. If you are not familiar with technicalities, we would advise to contact your domain manager. Do following steps to point your domain to our server:

Add A Records for Your Domain

1. Contact your domain manager or access your domain’s DNS settings.
2. Add an A Record pointing to our server’s IP address 15.235.60.67 for:
   • Root Domain (example.com): Set the Host field to @ or leave it blank.
   • www version (www.example.com): Set the Host field to www. If your website is on a sub domain then set the Host field to www.subdomain
3. Ensure both records point to the IP address 15.235.60.67.
4. Make sure that there are exactly two A records only. Domain setup cannot succeed if there are more than two A records.
5. Make sure that there is no AAAA record for the domain. 

Domain propagation may take up to 48 hours depending upon your domain provider and the country. 

Update domain in Website Settings

1. Open Website Settings from side bar under Admin section.
2. Enter domain in the Domain Name input box.
3. Fill in all other fields and click on Save.

As soon as it is saved, system will verify domain setup. If it does not find setup then it will show "Setup Now" button. Click on Setup Now. The system will do the rest.

Full Propagation Before SSL Installation

Before installing SSL system will verify both root domain and with www subdomain e.g. www.example.com and example.com. SSL setup will not be initiated until both versions propagate to our server. If system displays propation error then please wait for 24 hours at least. Setup will auto start again as soon as you open the Website Settings page.

Disconnecting Your Domain

Once your domain is connected to the system, it cannot be disconnected automatically. If you wish to disconnect your website, please contact your account manager for assistance. Note: Disconnecting your domain may take up to 24 hours to complete.

The information entered in the Business Name field is used in promotional activities, such as QR card printing and advertisements.

The Business Country must be entered as a valid full country name, such as India or Canada. Search engines like Google and Bing uses this name in search results.

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.

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

1. Open Administration → Master Forms and choose Add, the button at the top right of the list.
2. 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”.
3. In Used For, choose Purchase or Sale. This decides which screen the form appears on, and which templates are able to print it.
4. Leave Active ticked so the form is offered on new records.
5. 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.

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

1. 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.
2. Choose Add.
3. Type a Group Name. This is the section heading, for example “Vehicle History”.
4. Set a Sort Order. Groups appear in this order, lowest first.
5. Decide whether to switch on Print as group header.
6. 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

1. On the Master Form screen, click the input-fields icon on the group’s row (Open input fields).
2. Choose Add.
3. 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”.
4. Choose a Value (Answer) Type — see Answer types.
5. Set a Sort Order. Questions appear in this order within their group.
6. 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.

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.

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.

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.

1. Open the purchase or the sale.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

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

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.

A template is a printable document you design once and then use for every purchase or sale — a bill of sale, a purchase agreement, a delivery checklist, a disclosure sheet. You lay out the wording and the layout, mark where the information belongs, and Dealersip fills in each record’s own details when the document is printed.

Every template is built for one side of the business, Sale or Purchase, and belongs to your dealership alone.

Templates are managed at Administration → Templates. To print one, open a purchase or a sale and choose it from the print list there.

In this section

• What a template is — how a template turns into a finished document.
• The Templates list — finding, activating and deleting templates.
• Creating a template — creating one and naming it, and how saving works.
• The designer screen — the designer: toolbar, panels, page and properties.
• Putting data on a template — placing data fields, and repeaters for printing lists.
• Page setup — repeating a header or footer on every page, page numbers and page breaks.
• Designing with Bella — building a template from a description, or from a picture of an existing form.
• Printing a template — printing from a purchase or a sale.
• Why did a field print blank? — what to check when something prints empty.

Questions and answers captured on a purchase or a sale come from Forms.

A template is a printable document that Dealersip fills in with real data. You design it once — a bill of sale, a purchase agreement, a delivery checklist, a disclosure sheet — and from then on any purchase or sale can be printed onto it.

The template is the stationery. The purchase or sale supplies the words.

Every template belongs to one type

A template is built either for Sale or for Purchase. The type is chosen when the template is created, and it decides two things: which screen offers the template for printing, and which data the template is allowed to use. A Sale template can print sale information; a Purchase template can print purchase information.

The type cannot be changed afterwards. If the wrong one is chosen, the template has to be deleted and built again, so choose it deliberately at the start.

Templates belong to your dealership

A template created by your dealership is visible and printable only within your dealership.

How the printing works

A template holds ordinary text and layout, plus data fields — markers that stand in for information such as the customer’s name, the vehicle’s VIN or the selling price. When somebody prints a purchase or a sale, Dealersip replaces every data field with that record’s real value and produces a PDF. The template itself is never changed by printing, so the same template serves every record.

Templates are managed at Administration → Templates.

Related: Creating a template, Putting data on a template, Printing a template

Go to Administration → Templates to see every template your dealership has built.

Across the top the screen counts Total Designs, Active and Inactive. Below that a line reports how many records are currently shown, and the list is sorted by name.

Finding a template

Three controls narrow the list, and they work together:

• a status filter offering All Statuses, Active or Inactive;
• a form-type filter offering All Form Types, or a single type such as Sale or Purchase;
• a Search designs… box that matches the template’s name and its type.

What each row shows

Every row carries the Design Name, a pill showing the Form Type, the date and time it was Last Updated, and a Status pill reading Active or Inactive. At the left of the row are two icons: a pencil (Edit design), which opens the designer, and a bin (Delete design).

When no templates match, the list reads “No document designs found. Use Create New to add one.”

Active and Inactive

Active does exactly one thing: an inactive template is not offered in the print list on purchases and sales. It has no other effect. Untick it to take a template out of circulation without losing it.

Deleting a template

The bin icon asks “Delete this design?” and then deletes the template. There is no check on whether it has been used — a template printed hundreds of times deletes just the same. Documents already printed are PDFs and are unaffected, because each one was produced at the moment it was printed.

There is no copy

Dealersip cannot duplicate a template. To reuse an existing design as a starting point, open it, copy its HTML from the HTML view, create a new template, and paste the HTML in.

Related: Creating a template, Printing a template, What a template is

A template is created from the Templates list, and the first choice you make cannot be undone later.

1. Go to Administration → Templates.
2. Open Create New at the top right. It is a menu rather than a plain button: it lists your form types under the heading “Choose a form type”.
3. Choose the type this template is for — Sale or Purchase. The designer opens with an empty page.
4. Type a name into the box at the top left of the designer, beside the type badge.
5. Build the template.
6. Leave Active ticked so the template is offered when printing.

If Create New shows “No form types defined”, no form types have been set up yet and no template can be created.

Naming is not optional

A template cannot be saved without a name. Attempting it is refused with “Design name is required.”

Saving happens by itself

Dealersip saves your work as you go. The indicator beside the name reports what is happening: Unsaved changes… while you are editing, then Saving…, then Saved. If something goes wrong it reads Save failed. There is also a Save button in the toolbar for saving on demand.

While the template still has no name the indicator stays blank and nothing is saved, because a template cannot be stored without one. Name the template first, then build it.

If you try to leave the designer with work that has not been saved, your browser warns you before the page closes.

Related: The designer screen, Putting data on a template, What a template is

The designer opens when you create a template or click the pencil icon on a template’s row. It has three columns: a panel of building blocks on the left, the page you are designing in the middle, and the properties of whatever is selected on the right.

The toolbar

Along the top, from left to right: a link back to the Templates list, a badge showing whether this is a Sale or Purchase template, the template’s name, the Active tick box, the save indicator, Undo (Ctrl+Z), Redo (Ctrl+Y), a button that opens the HTML view, Bella for designing with the assistant, and Save.

The left panel: Elements and Data

The Elements tab holds the building blocks, grouped by kind:

• Text — Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, Paragraph, Text, Bold text, Small text, Line break and Horizontal rule.
• Layout — Section, 2 columns, 3 columns, 4 columns, Page break and Spacer.
• Table — a two-column table and a three-column table.

Drag an element onto the page, or click it to drop it inside whatever is currently selected. Blocks can only be placed inside something that holds them — the page itself, a section, a table cell or a repeater. They cannot be placed inside a data field.

The Data tab lists the information this template can print, and is covered in its own topic.

The page

The middle column is the printed page. Click anything to select it and see its settings on the right.

Clicking selects the smallest thing under the pointer, so a click inside a table normally selects one cell rather than the table. Above the properties you will see a trail of links such as Section › Table › Table row › Table cell. Click any step in that trail to select that container instead. There is also an upward arrow beside the element’s name that selects its parent one level at a time.

The right panel: Element

The Element tab shows the settings for the current selection, and its contents change with what is selected. You may see: the element’s Text; appearance settings such as font, size, colour and alignment; row and column buttons when the selection is inside a table; Vertical align for a table cell; an image address, an Alt text box and a Paste image button for pictures; a Printing section for page headers and footers; Margins for the four sides; Borders for each side, its style and colour; and Edit CSS for setting styling by hand.

The right panel: Global Styles

The Global Styles tab applies settings to the whole template rather than one element. Choose an element type and every element of that type takes those settings, unless that particular element has been styled itself. This tab also carries Page setup, and a Document CSS box for rules the controls do not cover.

The HTML view

The HTML button in the toolbar opens a drawer showing the template’s underlying HTML. It is read-only until you press Edit HTML, at which point the button becomes Lock.

Your changes are not applied as you type. Pressing Lock applies them to the page and rewrites the box with Dealersip’s own tidied version of the HTML, which is why the text you see afterwards may differ from what you typed. Anything the designer does not recognise may be reshaped or dropped, so treat the HTML view as a tool for small corrections rather than wholesale rewriting.

Related: Putting data on a template, Page setup, Designing with Bella

A template becomes useful when it prints real information. That is what the Data tab in the left panel of the designer is for.

What the Data tab holds

The Data tab lists the information available to this template, arranged into objects. What appears depends on the template’s type and on how your dealership is set up, so read your own list rather than assuming. A Sale template typically offers your dealership’s own details and the sale itself; a Purchase template typically offers the dealership, the purchase, and lists such as the vehicle’s pictures, its special features and its check list. Any group of any form built for that side of the business also appears here, listed under the name of the form it came from.

Click an object to expand it and see its fields. Each field shows a short label with its exact name beside it. A search box at the top of the panel filters the whole list by field, object or form name.

Placing a data field

Drag a field from the Data tab onto the page. It appears as a small chip, and when the document is printed the chip is replaced by that record’s value.

A field may be placed anywhere on the page, or inside a repeater belonging to its own object. Dropping a field into a different object’s repeater is refused, with the message “That field can only go outside a repeater or inside its own object’s repeater.”

Repeaters: printing a list

Some information is a list rather than a single value — the pictures of a vehicle, the items on a check list, the questions in a form. A repeater prints whatever is inside it once for every row in that list.

Beside each object in the Data tab is a repeater badge. Drag it onto the page and it becomes a box: anything you put inside repeats, and anything outside prints once. Drag it onto a table row instead and that row is wrapped, so the row repeats for each item — which is how a printed table of items is built.

An object holding a single row prints once. Placing such an object in a repeater is harmless: it simply prints once and never repeats.

Getting a form’s questions and answers onto a template is covered in How a form reaches a printed template.

Related: How a form reaches a printed template, The designer screen, Why did a field print blank?

A long document rarely fits on one page. A purchase agreement with a full disclosure questionnaire often runs to two or three. When that happens, the dealership’s letterhead should still appear at the top of page two, the terms should still sit along the bottom, and the reader should be able to tell which page they are holding.

Repeating a block at the top or bottom of every page

1. Open the template from Administration → Templates by clicking the pencil icon on its row.
2. Click the block you want repeated, usually the letterhead across the top of the page. Because clicking selects the smallest thing under the pointer, use the trail of links above the properties — Section › Table › Table row › Table cell — and click the step that represents the whole block.
3. In the properties on the right, on the Element tab, find the Printing section.
4. Tick Print on each page (header).

The block is now outlined on the page with a small PAGE HEADER label in its corner, so you can see at a glance which block carries the role. A footer works the same way: select the block — a terms and conditions box, for example — and tick Print on each page (footer).

Leave the block where it sits in the document. Dealersip lifts it out when printing and draws it on every page. If you copy the letterhead to the top of the second page yourself, it prints twice on page one.

What can and cannot be marked

A template has one page header and one page footer. Ticking Print on each page (header) on a second block quietly moves the role to it, so check the labels on the page if you are unsure which block currently holds it.

The Printing section appears only when the selection can carry a role. A section, a table, a paragraph, a heading, a horizontal rule or an image can be marked. A single table row, a single cell, and anything inside a repeater cannot — a row that repeats for each item of data cannot also be pinned to the top of every page. If the Printing section is missing, use the trail of links to select the block that contains your selection.

Printing page numbers

Page numbers apply to the whole template, so they are set on the other tab.

1. In the properties on the right, click the Global Styles tab.
2. Under Page setup, tick Print page numbers.

Each page is then printed with Page 1, Page 2 and so on at the bottom. Only the page’s own number is printed; Dealersip does not print “Page 1 of 3”.

Forcing a new page

To start a new page at a particular point, open the Elements tab on the left, find Page break under Layout, and drag it onto the page where the break should fall. Everything after it prints on a new page.

Page size and margins

Printed documents are Letter size with a 20pt margin on all four sides. This applies to every template and is not set per template.

Related: The designer screen, Printing a template

Bella can build a template for you, or change one you already have. Open it with the Bella button in the designer toolbar; a chat panel appears which you can drag aside while you work.

Two ways to ask

Describe what you want. Tell Bella the document you need and what should appear on it — for example, a bill of sale showing the customer, the vehicle, the price breakdown and a signature block. Bella asks a question if the description is not clear enough to build from, and loads the finished template onto the page when it is.

Show it an existing form. If you already have a document you want reproduced, attach a picture of it and ask Bella to copy it. Use Attach or paste image at the bottom of the chat, or simply take a screenshot and press Ctrl+V in the chat box.

Pictures must be PNG, JPG, WEBP or GIF, and under 4 MB. PDF files are not accepted, so a PDF has to be turned into a picture first.

Making changes

Bella can see the template currently on the page, so you can keep asking for adjustments in plain words — make the header bigger, add a column for tax, move the signatures to the bottom. Each answer replaces the template on the page, and nothing is stored until you save.

If a request is unclear, Bella asks rather than guessing, because changing the wrong part of a document is harder to spot than an unanswered question.

Previous chats

The clock icon at the top of the panel lists your earlier conversations, so you can reopen one and continue it. New starts a fresh conversation.

What Bella will not do

Bella works only on document templates in this designer. Anything unrelated is politely declined.

Always check the result

Bella writes the template; you own it. Read what it produced before saving, particularly on documents that carry legal weight, and confirm that every value it placed is the one you intended.

Related: The designer screen, Putting data on a template, Page setup

Templates are printed from the record they describe: a Sale template from a sale, a Purchase template from a purchase. Only Active templates are offered, and only those belonging to your dealership.

Printing from a purchase

1. Open the purchase.
2. Choose Print Form at the bottom of the screen. It opens a list of the active purchase templates, by name.
3. Click the template you want. The finished PDF opens in a new tab, ready to print or save.

Printing from a sale

1. Open the sale.
2. The print control is split in two. The main part prints the standard invoice. The small arrow beside it opens the list of active sale templates.
3. Click the arrow, then choose the template you want. The PDF opens in a new tab.

On a sale that has not been saved yet the button reads Print Invoice, because a template needs a saved record to draw its information from.

Each printing is fresh

Dealersip builds the PDF at the moment you print it, using the record as it stands. Change a price or correct a name, print again, and the new document reflects it. A PDF you have already saved or emailed is a finished file and does not change.

If a template is missing from the list

Check that it is Active, and that it was created for the right type. A template built for Purchase never appears on a sale, and a Sale template never appears on a purchase.

Related: Why did a field print blank?, The Templates list, Page setup

A printed document sometimes shows a label with nothing beside it, or a section that has vanished entirely. There are four usual explanations.

The record has no value for that field

The most common cause, and the simplest. If the purchase has no stock number recorded, a stock number field prints blank. Open the record and check the value is actually there.

A form was never filled in

A form’s questions print whether or not anybody opened that form on the record. If nobody answered it, the questions print with blanks beside them. That is intended — it is what lets you print a blank questionnaire for a customer to complete by hand — but if you expected answers, open the purchase or sale and fill the form in.

A whole section disappeared

A repeater prints once for each row of information it has. With no rows there is nothing to print, so the entire block disappears rather than leaving an empty frame. A vehicle with no pictures prints no picture rows at all.

The wrong field was chosen

Some fields print only in particular circumstances. On a form question, the tick-box fields are empty for a question that expects typed text, and the combined question-and-text field never carries a Yes or No. If a column of answers is blank, check which field the template uses — see How a form reaches a printed template.

Still blank

Open the template in the designer and check the field on the page is the one you meant. A field’s printed label is your own wording, so a heading reading “VIN” may sit beside a field carrying something else entirely.

Related: Putting data on a template, How a form reaches a printed template, Printing a template