Accelerates document production engine works by using a PDF template and writing values from the system onto the template.
In order to design a template that will work well with the system there are some things that need to be considered. This article aims to explain these fully, to ensure a frustration-free design process for all involved.
PDFs do not expand and contract according to the content of the document. This means that you must provide space on the document to cover all eventualities - for example if you are designing a document which needs to display optional extras for a vehicle deal, you need to allow space for cases where a large number of options are selected. This also must be considered when thinking of e.g. customer names,
salesperson names, email addresses, financial values etc.
Note: If you provide an area for notes, make this large enough to be useful.
A further consideration flowing from the above is that it is not advisable to have a replacement tag flowing with text eg.... " call on" intending this to have the salesperson's name as you will not be able to judge where the replaced text will end. The exceptions to this are any values which are always the same length e.g. contract term is always a two digit number, annual mileage is always either a four or five digit number, and so on.
Info: It is not possible for replaced values to flow from one line to the next, unless part of a block of text - but e.g. you can't have a phone number start on one line, and flow to the subsequent line.
Note: If your document is to be electronically signed, there is no need to provide an area for the date of signature as this is part of the e-sign block.
If you are designing a document for vehicles the following deserves particular consideration:
Optional extras: these can take up a large amount of space. It is not impossible for vehicles to have 30+ options selected and option names can be very long. If your document has any significant spare whitespace, you should use it for options instead.
Exterior colours: these can be surprisingly long.
Vehicle derivatives: MERCEDES-BENZ SPRINTER 319CDI EXTRA LONG SPECIAL EDITIONS 3.5t 20th Anniversary BlueTec BlueEFF H/Roof Van is the longest LCV derivative name
MERCEDES-BENZ M CLASS STATION WAGON SPECIAL EDITIONS ML350 CDi BlueTEC Special Edition 5dr Auto[Comand] is the longest CAR derivative name
Note: The Accelerate PDF template engine does not support printing of currency characters. Therefore, the currency of financial values must form part of the design.
The Accelerate PDF template engine does not supporting printing of ticks or crosses. In some cases you may be able to have these hardcoded in (by e.g. having one document for funder maintained contracts, and one for customer maintained contracts), but printing of Y or N, or Yes or No for binary choices is the other option.
The Accelerate PDF template engine can print in any RGB colour, any font size and bold, italic and/or underline are available.
The Accelerate PDF template engine can support any number of pages. The document can be either portrait or landscape, but orientations cannot be mixed in the document.
Info: The Accelerate PDF template only supports the ISO A4 page size.
Note: Document tags can be left and right aligned ONLY.
Dates will always be printed in DD/MM/YYYY format.
If you are creating multiple documents, try and keep as much the same as you can between them, e.g. headers, footers, positions of basic information. This will make your customer's task when tagging the documents much simpler, as they can copy the tags from one document to another. However, it must be stressed that items must be in EXACTLY the same position for this to be of benefit.
If you are creating full suites of documents, for example a suite of quote documents for a variety of different finance types. It is recommended that you heavily critique and test a single document before you create all the other finance types/options. Making small changes to one document is very simple however making changes to multiple documents can be extremely time consuming and laborious. Imagine creating a full suite of documents and then realising you have missed one field from these. Test, test and test again!
There are also technical considerations when producing PDFs, which can be seen in the Related Articles Preparing a PDF for Document Builder.