If you would like your clients to be able to access and create new forms that they can then pay from, a process like this will work instead:

  • Client opens a new form via a link on your website and selects the products they want

  • When the client submits the form, a form action notifies staff there is a new sale to review

  • Staff view the form on the web portal, check the "save as Webform" box, and email the webform link to that specific form back to the customer

  • As the form exists and has an ID number, payment will now be successful


You can use form logic to hide the payment field when the form is first being filled out and prevent confusion from your customers, only making it available once your staff have enabled it via a "Ready to pay?" field that hides and shows the payment function as needed.


We will walk through the process in this article, and there will be links to different parts of the process within this article as well.


Beginning with a simple template setup:


To look up your product information from Xero or a saved Database lookup, you'll need to create a lookup field that can be used to select an item. We will use a test template to demonstrate.



If there are specific areas of using lookup databases in a form, then you can choose any of the links below that might be related to what you're looking for, otherwise, the process will continue below in this article.




Creating a lookup field and selecting the database to be searched


First the lookup needs to be connected to the Lookup in the text field. 



Once you have done that, you will see the lookup settings in the panel on the right.



From the "lookup" dropdown, select the database you want this field to access. As we want to connect products from Xero on this form, we will select "xero_item" from this list.




Choosing what you would like to display in the lookup dropdown


To set how the item displays in the list when being searched. From the "Main Title" dropdown, select the product information that should be used as the main title for the product in the list. We're going to use the "Name" field here so that the product name shows first when searching.




To show other fields when searching the list, use the "Add Display" multiple times to add more fields to the search display. In the example we have added two items - Sales Price and Code. In the text boxes on the left, we've specified the heading these fields should have in the search box.




Adding a filter to your form lookup database


To add a filter, use the "Add Filter" button. This will give you the ability to choose a field, a comparison method, and what it should be compared to, to determine whether the item is included in the lookup or not.


The comparison methods available are: "=", "!=", and "LIKE".


  • =, or EQUALS: The compared items much match exactly, including capitalisation.
  • !=, or NOT EQUALS: The compared items do not match.
  • LIKE: Part of the compared items match.


Select the field you would like to filter by on the left, then the comparison method, and how it should be filtered on the right. The dropdown on the right will list available fields by default, but it also includes an "OTHER" option that allows you to enter a value for the comparison.


When you select "Other", a popup will appear. Enter the value and click "OK".



The value that you entered will now be available in the dropdown for you to select.



In this example, we've added a filter to show only items where the SALES PRICE is NOT 0. Below is the completed filter, now that the value has been selected.




Sending database information to form fields


To define what fields from the item selected will go where in the form. In the field settings of your field in the form template, use the "Add Item" button to begin.



The left dropdown is the information available for each item from the database. The right dropdown is the form field the information should go to. You can add as many items as you need by clicking "Add Item" and matching the item data with the form fields.


In the example, the Name, Description and Sales Price are being brought over from the database and inserted into the ProductName, ProductDescription and unitCost fields respectively.





Once you have set up the look up, Click the save Draft, and then Deploy / Publish Template buttons to have the changes available when starting a new form. 


For this example you can see that when you click into the product search field, a searchable dropdown will appear with the products that match your filter, and with the information selected during configuration:




And when an item is selected from that list, the fields will populate as configured:




Using this method, you can bring information over from your Xero account, or from custom databases created in Lookup Databases on Formitize.