How to Generate a Foundation Order

Send a clean, focused document to whoever is pouring the foundation, with the base size, foundation size, and grave details on it.

Written By Dennis Rodin

Last updated 13 days ago

A Foundation Order tells the cemetery (or a third-party contractor) exactly what foundation needs to be poured for a monument. It's cleaner than the shop ticket because it only includes what the foundation pourer needs.

To generate one, open the order, click Document Generation at the top right, and select Generate Foundation Order from the dropdown.

The popup

Most fields auto-fill from the order:

  • Cemetery, section, lot, and grave

  • Memorial type

  • Decedent name (or names if there are multiple), printed in bold on the PDF

  • Base size

  • Foundation size

You can also fill in:

  • Number of graves the foundation covers

  • Centering: where on the lot to center the foundation

  • Notes for whoever is doing the pour

Everything you enter here prints on the Foundation Order PDF, so the installer gets the full picture on one page.

If your order doesn't have plot data filled in, those fields stay empty and the popup re-balances on its own. On the PDF these appear as line items, with a Base row and a Foundation row (Item / Size / Type / Qty.).

Who is doing the pour?

At the top of the popup you pick who you're sending this to:

  • Cemetery (default): the document will be addressed to the cemetery on the order, using the cemetery's contact info.

  • Vendor: switches the recipient to a third-party contractor. A vendor search field appears, and you pick whichever vendor is doing the pour.

The recipient block on the PDF updates accordingly. Only one mode is active at a time.

Foundation type

You can also note the foundation type or thickness. This is a free-text field, so type whatever describes this pour. For example, a thickness like 8", or a label like recessed or above ground. Whatever you enter prints on the Foundation row of the PDF. Leave it blank to leave it off the document.

Drawings

If you've uploaded design drawings to the order (with the Drawing category), you can attach up to two of them to the Foundation Order. The popup shows thumbnails for each.

Important: Files only appear in the drawings selector if they have already been uploaded to Notes & Files on this order with the Drawing category. To attach a sketch or drawing, upload the file first under Notes & Files, choose Drawing as the category, then come back here and open the popup. Files saved with any other category (Instructions, Financial Document, Other, etc.) will not show up in the selector. This applies to every file you want to attach during document generation.

Sketches built in the Sketch & Inscription step of the wizard automatically save as Drawing-category files on the order, so they appear in the selector here without any manual upload step.

If the order has exactly one drawing, it is selected automatically, so most of the time you just confirm and generate.

After you click Generate

The PDF is created and automatically saved to the order's Notes & Files. Like the other generated documents (invoices, receipts, contracts), the Foundation Order is stored as a Financial Document, and it is not forced to internal. Only the shop ticket is locked to internal-only Instructions. By default the Foundation Order is customer-visible, so if you don't want it in the Customer Portal, flip it to Internal using the External / Internal toggle on the file. You can download it from the popup or from the Notes & Files tab anytime later.

Every page of the PDF also carries your company name in bold above Powered by MonuDesk in the footer, with the page number in the bottom corner.

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