A Letter or Email Template Does Not Show Up in Your List

This article covers why a specific letter or email template is missing from one person's list or from one store's list: which module and category it was filed under, the Custom versus Library tabs, the "save this letter as a template" checkbox, and state-tagged templates that a lot only sees when its state matches.

Questions this answers

• "My manager said she made a new email template for us but I don't see it in my dropdown when I compose - where did it go?"
• "We have a letter template that's supposed to be state-specific, and one of our stores can't find it at all - is it broken?"

This article is only about letter and email templates being absent from a list. If the template opens fine but a merge field prints blank or a footer will not attach, see the article on merge fields and header and footer templates.

First, the thing it is not

Custom letter and email templates are not private to whoever created them, and there is no per-user or per-role visibility setting on them. Once a template is saved into your settings it belongs to the whole dealership and everybody sees it in the matching list. So "she made it and I can't see it" is never a permissions problem on the template itself. It is one of the four things below.

1. It was never saved as a template

This is the most common cause. If your manager wrote the letter or email directly from a deal, vehicle or customer account, she was creating a one-off document, not a template. To keep it, she had to tick the checkbox in that editor offering to also save the letter as a template to settings for future use.

If that box was not ticked, the letter went out and nothing was stored. Ask her to build it again and tick the box, or to create it from the settings side instead.

2. You are looking at the wrong list

Templates are filed by module and by category, and each list only shows the templates filed under that exact combination. Under Settings, the Letters group holds one list each for Inventory, Deal and Customer Accounts. Other categories have their own lists elsewhere in settings, such as consignment agreement templates under inventory and OFAC report templates under contacts.

A template saved into the deal list does not appear in the inventory list, and a template saved under a specialised category does not appear in the general list for the same module. When you compose from a record, you are offered the list that matches that record's module and category, so a template filed in the wrong place is effectively invisible from where you are working.

To check, open each of the lists under Letters in turn and look for the name.

3. It is sitting on the Library tab, not the Custom tab

Every template list has two tabs. The first holds your dealership's own templates. The second holds the templates AutoManager supplies, and each of those has an Add link that copies it into your own list.

A Library template is a starting point, not a live template. Until someone uses Add to bring it across, it will not behave like one of yours and will not appear where your own templates appear. If your manager edited a Library template without adding it first, there may be nothing on your side to see.

4. The template is tagged to particular states

Some templates are tied to one or more states because the document only makes sense there. A template tagged that way is shown only on lots whose state matches the tag. On every other lot it is filtered out of the list completely, with no message and no greyed-out row explaining the absence.

This is why a multi-store group can have a letter that one store uses every day and another store swears does not exist. Templates with no state tag are shown on every lot.

What you can check

1. Open Settings > Organization > Lots and check the lot that cannot see the template. Confirm its country and its Operating State are correct. A store set to the wrong state, or missing one, is the one thing on your side that changes the outcome.
2. Correct the lot if it is wrong, then reopen the template list from that lot.

The state tag on the template itself is not something a dealership user can view or change - it is maintained by AutoManager. If the lot's state is right and the template still does not appear, contact support, tell them which template and which store, and ask for the template's state coverage to be checked.

One thing that genuinely is per store

Header and footer templates are different from letter templates: they are kept separately for each lot. A header or footer created while working in one store does not exist in another store's list at all, and has to be created again there. If the thing your co-worker made was a header or a footer rather than a whole letter, that is the explanation.

Checklist

1. Ask whether the template was saved into settings, or just written on a record and sent.
2. Check every letter list under Settings > Letters, not just the one you expected.
3. Check both tabs of the list - your own templates and the supplied library.
4. Confirm the template is not deleted; deleted templates disappear from the list for everyone.
5. Check the state on the lot that cannot see it.
6. If it is a header or footer, recreate it in the store that needs it.

When to contact support

Contact support if a template appears on one store's list and not another's, the lot's state is set correctly on both, and the template is on the same tab of the same list in each case.