Order forms: asking the right questions

You’ll need: Order form templates, Offers — if you cannot see these, the module may be switched off for your business or outside your permissions. An administrator can change either.

Some orders need information the products cannot supply. Which pupil is this list for. What name goes on the engraving. Which branch to collect from.

Order form templates are a reusable set of questions you attach to an offer, so that information arrives with the order instead of in a follow-up phone call.

A template is a label and its fields

Each template has a label — how you recognise it in a list — and its fields, the questions themselves.

Rows come in kinds. Some are free text, which can remember what was entered before. Some present a fixed set of choices, so the answer is one of yours rather than whatever the customer types. Some resolve to a contact, so the answer is a real record in your address book rather than a name that may or may not match one.

That last kind is the interesting one: a form answer that points at a contact is a link, not a string. Wherever the answer is displayed, the current name is shown — so a contact renamed after the order still reads correctly.

Choices beat free text more often than you think

“Which branch?” as free text produces Douala, douala, Dla, Akwa and Bonaberi in the same week, and nobody can group orders by branch afterwards.

The same question as a fixed set of choices produces five clean values forever. Use free text where the answer genuinely cannot be enumerated — a name, an engraving, a note — and choices everywhere else.

Where the answers go

Answers travel with the order and are exposed to your printed documents, so a picking list can show the pupil’s name and class beside the items. The warehouse and the customer read the same information, which is the entire point of collecting it at the moment of ordering.

Reuse, do not rebuild

Templates are reusable by design. One school-list form serves every school offer you run; one engraving form serves every engravable product.

Building a fresh form per offer is how you end up with the same question worded four ways, and four incompatible sets of answers to report on.

Try it