Your county wants its own septic inspection form. Not a PortaPro report that covers the same ground — *their* PDF, with their layout, their seal, their box positions. Regulatory Forms lets you upload that PDF once, place fields on it, and fill it per job. What comes out looks exactly like the county's form, because it is the county's form.
Settings → Regulatory Forms.
Regulatory form vs. service report. A service report is *ours* — we designed the structure, so the data comes back as structured fields that feed billing, analytics and pump-out prediction. A regulatory form is *theirs* — a fixed PDF we stamp text onto. Its whole value is looking like the original. Use a service report to capture work; use a regulatory form when an authority requires their document.
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RF-1: Uploading the Form
Settings → Regulatory Forms → New form template.
Give it a name (what you'll pick from later — "Ashland County Septic Inspection"), an optional description of which jurisdiction and when it's required, then drag the PDF onto the drop zone or click to browse.
Multi-page PDFs are fine — you'll get page arrows in the editor.
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RF-2: Placing Fields
Pick a field type, then click the document where it goes.
| Type | For |
|---|---|
| Text | Names, addresses, numbers, anything written |
| Date | Dates — defaults to auto-filling today |
| Checkbox | A checkmark |
Moving and resizing
Drag a field to move it. Drag either blue edge handle to make it wider or narrower — which is what you'll want constantly on forms with tight columns like City / State / ZIP, where the default width overlaps its neighbours.
You can also type exact numbers into Font size and Box width (pt) in the panel on the right.
Placing many at once
A county checklist can be forty-eight checkboxes. Click Checkbox, then click Lock on — the tool stays armed and every click drops another one. Esc when you're done.
Without the lock you'd be going back to the toolbar between every single box.
Labels are required
Text and date fields start blank and you must name them. A field with no label shows red on the page, and Save tells you how many are still unnamed and jumps you to the first one.
That's deliberate. The label is what your tech sees when filling the form — a field called "Field" tells them nothing, and the old default of "Field" survived all the way to the fill screen doing exactly that.
Checkboxes are exempt and auto-number themselves ("Checkbox 1, 2, 3…"). Making you type forty-eight labels would undo the lock that just saved you forty-eight clicks.
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RF-3: Auto-Fill Bindings
Each field has an Auto-fill from setting. Bind it and the value arrives already filled when a tech opens the form on a job.
Available bindings include:
| Binding | Pulls |
|---|---|
| Customer name / phone / email | From the job's customer |
| Site address (full, street, or city / state / ZIP) | From the service location |
| Tank capacity (gal) | From the on-site system record |
| Equipment type | From the on-site system record |
| Gallons pumped | From the job's recorded gallons |
| Job date / completion date / today's date | From the job |
| Technician name | Whoever did the work |
| Your company name / phone | From your company settings |
Leave it on Manual entry for anything only the tech on site can answer.
The tank capacity and equipment bindings come from the customer's On-Site System record. Record the tank once and every county form for that address fills its tank fields by itself.
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RF-4: Filling a Form on a Job
Open the job → three-dot menu → Fill Form. Choose the template, and it opens as a form, not a canvas — a list of labeled fields, with the bound ones already filled.
Fill the rest, save, and PortaPro stamps the values onto the original PDF at the positions you placed them.
Filled forms appear on the job, and each one keeps a snapshot of the template name and the values used — so a form you filed two years ago still opens correctly even if you've since edited or deleted the template.
You can also reach the fill action from a scanned component's screen, which is useful when the tech is already standing at the tank.
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RF-5: Where the Files Live
Uploaded PDFs and filled outputs are stored privately. They're never publicly linked; every view goes through an access check scoped to your organization. A form belonging to another company is simply not found.
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RF-6: Common Questions
Can I edit a template after filling forms with it?
Yes. Existing filled forms keep their own snapshot, so they're unaffected.
What if a field ends up off the page?
It's skipped when stamping rather than producing a broken PDF. Move it back in the editor.
Does text that's too long get cut off?
It shrinks to fit first, then truncates with an ellipsis if it still doesn't fit. It won't overflow into the next box.
Can the customer sign it?
Not with an e-signature — regulatory forms are stamped PDFs, not signing ceremonies. Place a text field for a printed name, or print and sign by hand. For real signatures, use a service report (which supports dual e-signatures) or an Agreement.
Can I use this for anything other than county forms?
Yes — any fixed PDF you fill repeatedly. Pumper's logs, disposal manifests, landlord forms.
Why doesn't it look like PortaPro?
Because it shouldn't. The point is that the inspector receives the document they expect.