Use currency fields in legacy Forms Manager

This article refers to our legacy product, Forms Manager. For the best Finalsite experience, we recommend using our newest product, Forms, which is already available to you in your modules list. To learn more, please review our New Forms FAQ.

A currency field is used to designate the amount of money to collect on a form. It can be either a text field or a selection field. When you have enabled a form to process payments, you can enable these fields for currency and calculate the total owed on the form.

Text fields

If you'd like the user to manually input a currency value, you can use a text field. A primary application of a currency-enabled text field would be an online donation form, where the user inputs their intended donation amount.

To set this up, add a text field (under the Standard Elements library) to your form. Open the element options and check the "Use this field for currency" checkbox.

The field will default to "0.00." If you'd like to use a different amount, you can set the default in the element settings. Alternatively, there is a setting in the Payment tab to control the default text for empty text fields. The options are "Blank" and "0.00." If a currency text field is blank and required, the user will be forced to input a value before they can move on.

When adding currency fields to a form, it is often helpful to include a field at the end of the form to calculate the total that the user will be charged. This can be done by adding a text field to the form, and selecting the "Use to display totals from currency fields" option in the Element Properties.

Selection fields

If you'd like the user to choose from a list of options, you can create a radio button, checkbox, or select list field. This allows you to use the List Builder in the Element Properties to create a set of options, with each option having a currency value. Each of the selection fields has a different use:

• Radio buttons allow the user to select a single option.

• Checkboxes allow the user to select multiple options.

• Select list allows the user to select a single option from a dropdown (conserves space).

To enable any of these fields as a currency field, check the "Assign currency" checkbox in the Element Properties window. The "Assign Currency" column, which determines the cost of each selection, will be activated. Then, add each possible selection on a new line in the List Builder (also found in the Element Properties).

When working with selection fields, you can opt to have the value, the label, and/or the alternate result appear in the Results tab, using the checkboxes at the bottom of the List Builder.

Refer to our article on Work with option lists for more information.

Hidden fields

A hidden field works almost exactly like a text field, except that the user will be unable to see or update it. Hidden fields can be used to add a static amount to a form that cannot be changed. For example, if your application form has a $50 fee, you can use a hidden field to add that amount.

1. Add a Hidden Field to your form (found under Standard Elements).

2. Open the element settings and check off the "Use this field for currency" option.

3. Add a default value for the field.

Negative values

Currency fields can be set up with a negative values to subtract from the overall submission total. (See Add coupons or discount codes for a practical application of this.)

By default, any form submitted with an overall dollar value that is less than zero will be displayed as "0.00" in the forms report in the Results Tab - the actual total will not be calculated if it is negative. This allows you to easily see if any user is owed a credit, while preventing any automatic debits from being applied to a financial account. Admins must complete these debit transactions manually.

You can override this behavior on the Payment tab of Forms Manager if you want to automatically accept negative dollar amounts for a specific form. Open the Payment tab, scroll down to the "Other" section, and uncheck the box next to “Minimum monetary total of 0.00.”

With this box unchecked, any forms that are submitted with a negative dollar amount will be processed automatically by Forms Manager, the negative value will be sent to the credit card processor, and the Results Tab will display the actual calculated negative value rather than "0.00." This transaction will fail, however, because credit card gateways cannot automatically pay in to a purchaser's credit card account by design. You will still have to enter the appropriate transaction manually to your credit card processor.