Printing a Temporary Tag

This article covers printing the tag and the rest of the paperwork after a registration has been issued. It is not about issuing one — see Creating a Temporary Tag Registration — and it is not about a printer that jams, smudges or prints crooked, which is Printing Troubleshooting.

How long

Two print jobs: the tag, and the package

What it costs

Nothing — printing and reprinting are free

Have ready

The issued registration, and tag paper in the printer

Before you start

The registration has to be issued already. Until then there is nothing to print.

Have temporary tag paper loaded in the printer, and know which way it goes in the tray. See Obtaining Temporary Tag Paper.

Note

Printing costs nothing, and neither does printing again. Documents are rebuilt every time you open the registration, so you can print a second copy, or print on different paper, without issuing anything again.

The one thing that surprises people

The tag and the paperwork print separately, and they are meant to.

The big Print PDF button at the top gives you the package — the registration, the authorization, the insurance affidavit. It does not include the temporary tag itself. The tag prints from its own card, on tag paper, on its own. That split is deliberate: the package goes on plain paper and the tag does not, so putting them in one file would mean swapping paper mid-job.

Step by step

Open the issued registration

From Registrations, find the record and open it with View. An issued registration opens on its Documents tab, which is where everything below lives.

Print the tag

On the Documents tab, the Temporary Tag card shows a preview of the tag. Under it, Print opens the tag on its own, ready to send to the printer with tag paper loaded.

Print PDF

Temporary Tag

tag preview

Print

Registration

document preview

Print

IllustrationThe Documents tab of an issued registration. The blue Print PDF button with its arrow, top right, opens the whole package. Below it every document has its own card with a preview and its own white Print button — including the Temporary Tag card, which is the one that prints on tag paper and separately from everything else. Where your dealership has a way to reach the customer, the tag card carries a second small button beside Print that sends the tag straight to them.

Print the rest of the paperwork

Print PDF at the top of the page opens everything else as one file. On a narrow screen the same button reads just Print.

The arrow beside it opens a short menu:

Menu item	What it does	When you see it
Print combined PDF	The same package the button opens	Always
Send to customer	Sends the documents to your customer instead of printing them	When document sending is switched on for your dealership
Open Temp Tag Image	Opens the tag as a picture rather than a PDF	On a Temporary Tag transaction, once the picture is ready

Print PDF

Print combined PDFSend to customerOpen Temp Tag Image

IllustrationPrint PDF is a split button: the left half prints the whole package, and the arrow on the right opens a menu of three items — Print combined PDF, which repeats the button, Send to customer, and Open Temp Tag Image. The last two are conditional, which is why the menu can look shorter than this.

Every document also has its own card lower down with its own Print button, so you can reprint one page without reprinting the set.

What is in the package

Which documents exist depends on what the transaction was. You do not choose — the app generates what the transaction is entitled to.

Transaction	Documents
Temporary Tag	Temporary Tag (printed on its own), Registration, Temporary Tag Application
Pre-Printed Temporary Tag	Registration, Temporary Tag Application
Metal Plate Transfer	Registration
Title and Registration	Title Application Receipt, Registration, Registration (8 × 8.25 in.), Fee Calculation
Quote	Fee Calculation

An Insurance Affidavit is added whenever the registration has an insurance company on it. The larger Registration (8 × 8.25 in.) sheet is left out of the combined file when a metal plate was issued, because the decal goes on the plate instead.

If it prints blank

A temporary tag that comes out of the printer as a blank sheet is almost always the same problem, and it is a printer problem rather than a My Dealer Jacket one. The app puts it plainly:

Sometimes Temp Tags come out of the printer blank because your printer doesn’t support the fonts used in the PDF. The image version avoids this — it prints as a picture, so there are no fonts to cause issues. Try printing the image instead.

Print the image instead of the PDF. A picture has no fonts in it for the printer to be missing.

There are two ways to reach it, and both offer the same file:

• The arrow beside Print PDF, then Open Temp Tag Image.
• The question-mark icon in the corner of the Temporary Tag card, which opens Temp Tag Printing Help with an Open Temp Tag Image button in it.

Temp Tag Printing Help

Sometimes Temp Tags come out of the printer blank because your printer doesn't support the fonts used in the PDF. The image version avoids this — it prints as a picture, so there are no fonts to cause issues. Try printing the image instead.

CloseOpen Temp Tag Image

IllustrationTemp Tag Printing Help explains that a tag prints blank when the printer does not have the PDF's fonts, and that the image version has no fonts in it. Its one action, Open Temp Tag Image, opens the picture.

Two things to know before you go looking for it:

• It is only offered on a Temporary Tag transaction — the one you print yourself. A pre-printed tag already carries its own number and is not printed here at all.
• It appears a moment after the page does. The picture is prepared alongside the PDF, so on a slow connection the option can be missing for a few seconds. Wait and look again.

If the image prints but lands in the wrong place on the paper, that is a different problem — Printing Troubleshooting covers alignment, scaling and heavy paper.

If it will not print

What you see	What it means
A gray placeholder where Print PDF should be	The package is still being built. It appears on its own.
Documents are still being prepared	Same thing, said out loud because you pressed early. Wait a moment and press again.
Something went wrong on a document card, with Retry Generation	That one document failed. Press retry; the others are unaffected.
Nothing happens at all	Your browser blocked the new tab. See Printing Troubleshooting.

After you finish

The tag goes on the vehicle and the paperwork goes to the customer. Temporary Tag System Compliance covers where the tag must be displayed and how long you have to keep the records.

If the tag itself is wrong — wrong vehicle, wrong buyer, wrong dates — printing it again does not fix it. See Editing or Canceling Temporary Tags.

If you need a second tag for the same sale, Issue Another Temp Tag under the tag preview starts a whole new registration, carrying this one’s vehicle, buyer and insurance across. It is a new transaction rather than a reprint.

The price on that button is the record lookup it spends the moment you press it — it re-checks the VIN with Florida straight away, before you see a single wizard screen. The temporary tag fee itself, and a second control number out of your stock, are spent later when you issue the new tag.