How to set up your buyer's order so it fills itself in
Count how many times the buyer's name gets written on a single deal. The buyer's order, the retail installment contract, the title application, the odometer statement, the warranty disclosure, the we-owe. Then the VIN, the price, the trade. On a busy Saturday, that is where the typos come from, and a typo on a contract is a problem you find out about later.
The state forms are the easy part: GARAGEBIRDS has over 300 of them built in for all 50 states, and they fill in from the deal on the Free plan. The harder part is your own paperwork: the buyer's order with your name on it, the contract from your forms vendor, the disclosures your attorney wrote. No software ships those, because every dealership's are different.
This guide walks through setting up your own buyer's order so it fills itself in on every deal, with Smart Print Forms on GARAGEBIRDS Pro. The same steps work for any document you print on a deal.
Start with a clean blank
The better the blank, the less work later.
- Ask your forms vendor for the PDF. Most vendors can send a fillable PDF of the forms you already buy from them. A fillable PDF already knows where its boxes are, which turns setup from drawing into checking.
- If all you have is paper, scan a clean, unmarked copy, flat and straight. A phone photo works too, as a JPG or PNG; take it from directly above, in good light, with the whole page in frame.
- Use the version you actually print. If your buyer's order changed last year, set up the current one.
Upload it and let the fields come in
In GARAGEBIRDS, an admin uploads the blank, names it and files it under Sales, Purchase, Finance or Other.
If the PDF is fillable, its fields are imported and matched to deal data automatically. A box the PDF calls something like "Buyer Name" or "VIN" usually finds its match on its own. The ones it couldn't match are highlighted, so you know exactly which to look at.
If it isn't fillable, you draw the boxes yourself: a text box for each blank, a checkbox for each tick box, and a comb box where the form wants one character per cell, the way many forms lay out the VIN.
Point each box at the right value
This is the step that matters. Each box reads one value GARAGEBIRDS already holds, from close to 200 of them. On a typical buyer's order:
- Buyer and co-buyer: full legal name, street address, city, state and ZIP, phone, driver license number. Use the co-buyer's values for the co-buyer's boxes, so a deal without one leaves them blank.
- The vehicle: year, make, model, VIN, stock number, exterior color, and the odometer reading.
- The trade-in: year, make, model, VIN, mileage, the allowance, and the payoff owed on it.
- The deal's figures: sale price, doc and dealer fees, sales tax, cash sale price, cash down payment, balance due.
- The date and the salesperson. If your form splits the date into separate day, month and year boxes, there's a value for each.
- Tick boxes: a box that should be checked on a financed deal, or when there's a co-buyer or a trade, can read that from the deal.
Pick the price box carefully. "Sale price", "cash sale price" and "balance due" are three different numbers. Sale price is the car alone. Cash sale price adds tax, fees and products. Balance due is what's left after the trade and the down payment. Match each box to the line your form actually means.
Formatting comes with the value: money prints as money and dates as dates. You only decide where it goes and, if the box is tight, whether the text shrinks to fit.
Make the rest custom fields
Some boxes ask for something no software keeps: a delivery note, an internal reference. Make those custom fields. You place and name them once, and they show up as empty boxes on the document for whoever is working the deal to type in before printing.
Don't use a custom field for something GARAGEBIRDS already knows. If you type the VIN into a custom field, you're back to retyping it on every deal.
Check it against a real deal
Preview the document filled in from a real deal, not just sample values. Look for three things:
- Every box lands on its line. Nudge any that sit a little high or low.
- Nothing runs out of its box. Long names and addresses are the usual culprits; let those boxes shrink the text to fit.
- The numbers are the right numbers. Check the price, the trade and the balance due against the deal's desking.
When it looks right, turn it on. From then on it's offered in every deal's documents, filled in, ready to preview, download or print on plain paper.
Then do the next one
Once the buyer's order is done, the rest of the jacket goes the same way: the retail installment contract, the as-is or warranty acknowledgement, the arbitration agreement, the we-owe, the delivery receipt. The financed figures, such as lender, APR, amount financed, finance charge and payment amount, are values too, so a contract fills in straight from the finance worksheet.
If a document needs fixing later, take it out of use, fix it and put it back; its setup stays. And if a number is ever wrong on the printout, correct it on the deal, not the document: boxes filled from the deal can't be typed over, so the paperwork and the record always agree.
Signing and the state forms
Everything prints ready for the buyer and the dealership to sign in ink. Your contract's wording stays yours: GARAGEBIRDS fills in the blanks you point it at, and what the contract says stays between you and your forms vendor or attorney.
Your state's title application, bill of sale and the rest are already built in, on every plan. Smart Print Forms on Pro is for everything else in the deal jacket.
In GARAGEBIRDS: Smart Print Forms — upload and map your own contracts and documents, with auto-fill (Pro plan).