Part 1 - Setting up your terms documents
Creating your document template
Your terms document needs to be set up as:
- Google Doc
- Publicly visible (view, comment or edit access)
The Google Doc can be set up using your normal templates and can combine a letter of engagement, terms and conditions, invoice, booking form and more.
Adding tags into your document
A tag is made up of two opening brackets and two closing brackets.
E.g. [[ ]]
In between is a letter to denote the type of field, a number to denote the signer order, and some other variables to set if a field is required, can be written over multiple lines and if it should prefill with data.
Types of tag:
- t = Text field
- d = Date field
- c = Checkbox
- s = Signature
Signing order
- 0 = the first signer. This is usually you as the surveyor. The terms will come to you first and you count as a signer in the process even though you’re just checking the document.
- 1 = the second signer. This is usually your main customer. The terms will send to the customer once you have finalised it.
- 2 = an additional signer. This could be the additional report contact if your settings are set to always invite the second signer. Alternatively, this is any email you’ve added into the additional signer field.
Tag settings
You can set how each field should work:
- r = required
- p = prefilled
- m = multiline – information can be added over multiple lines
The letter will be followed by a number which sets if that setting is true or false:
- 0 = false (no)
- 1 = true (yes)
For example – r:1 = required, yes. m:0 = allow to write on multiple lines, no.
Prefilling data into a field
To save time sending terms you can prefill data into your terms document such as the customer name, property address, quote and more. To do this, the end of your tag needs an id. A list of id’s are listed at the end of this guide. For example for the customer name we have id:customer_name.
If you’ve created ‘Custom timeline fields’ you can add the data from these fields into the terms document by creating your own tag. The id part is your field name with no spaces, characters or special characters. For example, a custom field of “The customer’s concerns” would become id:thecustomersconcerns (lower case, no spaces, no special characters).
Adding customer responses to a field into the Booking Notes section
If you want data to be saved in the booking notes of a job once terms are signed, you can add your own custom id to any fields that can’t be prefilled. Note: the id can’t have spaces, you must add underscores instead. E.g. id:my_custom_field.
Examples of a tag:
As above the tag is made up of:
- Two open square brackets
- Letter for the field type
- Signer order
- Settings with the yes or no status – you don’t need to include all of these
- ID of the field for prefilling data or saving it to Survey Booker on completion
- Two closed square brackets
- Divider between each part: |
[[t|1|r:1|p:1|id:customer_name ]]
This example is a required text field, that will prefill for the customer.
[[t|0|r:0|id:my_name ]]
This example is an optional text field, that will appear for you when you check the document that you could choose to fill in or not with a custom id name.
Common questions
How do I hide a tag?
The tag once added should be in the same font colour as your document background. This is usually white. The tags then aren’t visible. When editing a document we recommend selecting all text and adding a text highlight so you can see the tags whilst you make changes.
My tag isn’t working / appearing
The tag must remain on one line. If the tag gets split over two lines the system will not pick it up so it’s important to check it is on one line. You must also ensure you have 2 open and 2 closing square brackets for the tag to work correctly.
How do I change the size of the tag
The open and closing square brackets control the size of the text. If you make the square brackets bigger or smaller the text will adjust. We recommend making your tags 1-2 font sizes bigger than the rest of the document to appear the same size. The text inside the square brackets can be any size – you can make the tags a small font inside to reduce the space they take up on the page.
Does the text around the tag move after information is saved in the field?
The prefilled text will take up as much space as it needs and the rest of the document will not adjust as the text is being added over a pdf (which is an image of a document). We recommend giving prefilled addresses a whole line to fit into.
Standard tags you can use to prefill data
Here is a list of tags that can be added to your document to prefill data into the terms document.
NOTE: if you add a prefillable field but there is no data in the system, it will become an empty field you can write the answer into. If you won’t know the answer, you should set the tag order to ‘1’ instead of ‘0’ so the customer can fill in the information if it isn’t available to prefill. An example of this could be the correspondence address. If this is not saved in the system it will become an empty text field so you’d want the signing order to be ‘1’ so the customer can enter it.
| Data | Tag |
| Survey Booker ID | [[t|0|p:1|id:survey_id ]] |
| Internal ID (Your ID) | [[t|0|p:1|id:internal_id ]] |
| Auto internal ref | [[t|0|p:1|id:internal_ref ]] |
| Survey type | [[t|0|p:1|id:survey_type ]] |
| Total paid (or survey quote) | [[t|0|p:1|id:total_fee_paid ]] |
| Survey quote | [[t|0|p:1|id:survey_quote ]] |
| Total quote | [[t|0|p:1|id:total_quote ]] |
| Total tax | [[t|0|p:1|id:total_tax ]] |
| Optional extras | [[t|0|p:1|id:optional_extras ]] |
| Optional extras price | [[t|0|p:1|id:optional_extra_price ]] |
| Introducer fee | [[t|0|p:1|id:introducer_fee ]] |
| Introducer name | [[t|0|p:1|id:introducer_name ]] |
| Property address | [[t|0|p:1|id:property_address ]] |
| Property value | [[t|0|p:1|id:property_value ]] |
| Bedrooms | [[t|0|p:1|id:bedrooms ]] |
| Property type | [[t|0|p:1|id:property_type ]] |
| Tenure | [[t|0|p:1|id:tenure ]] |
| Listed building | [[t|0|p:1|id:listed_building ]] |
| Property link | [[t|0|p:1|id:property_link ]] |
| Additional information | [[t|0|p:1|id:additional_information ]] |
| Customer name | [[t|0|p:1|id:customer_name ]] |
| Customer email | [[t|0|p:1|id:customer_email ]] |
| Customer number | [[t|0|p:1|id:customer_number ]] |
| Correspondence address | [[t|0|p:1|id:correspondence_address ]] |
| Inspection date | [[t|0|p:1|id:inspection_date ]] |
| Assigned surveyor name | [[t|0|p:1|id:assigned_surveyor_name ]] |
Adding your terms to Survey Booker
Navigate to Settings > Survey settings > Terms documents. Here you can see all of your terms documents and set which document templates are related to which survey types.
Please do not select the ‘This document needs only the customer to sign’ option unless you have the auto sending of terms to customers on booking feature active (Enterprise plan feature).
Setting up your email template
The terms document link is sent to your customer in the ‘Please sign E-terms’ email.
You will need to make sure the [Terms Document Url] tag is in your email template so they can sign. They will also be able to sign terms via the account (surveys only).
Creating your own prefillable tags
As well as our standard fields/tags that can prefill into terms, you can also prefill your own custom fields or custom booking questions into terms documents. To do this you take the name of your field or booking form question and remove all spaces and special characters and make it lower case. As an example below:
Custom question / field:
“Is there mains electricity?” becomes “istheremainselectricity”. This is used as the tag ID.
In a tag this would be: [[t|1|p:1|id:istheremainselectricity ]]
This is a text field set to prefill the answer to the question is there electricity when the customer signs the document. If the data wasn’t available it becomes a required text field for the customer to fill in.
Please note: custom property fields currently aren’t supported into terms documents.
Adding your terms to Survey Booker
Navigate to Settings > Survey settings > Terms documents. Here you can see all of your terms documents and set which document templates are related to which survey types.
Please do not select the ‘This document needs only the customer to sign’ option unless you have the auto sending of terms to customers on booking feature active (Enterprise plan feature).
Setting up your email template
The terms document link is sent to your customer in the ‘Please sign E-terms’ email.
You will need to make sure the [Terms Document Url] tag is in your email template so they can sign. They will also be able to sign terms via the account (surveys only).