Seller terms

For: Sellers · buyers · Cypress Managers

Some sellers sell on conditions of their own: a return window, an arbitration clause, a rule about condition disputes. Seller terms let an organization publish those conditions on Cypress so the buyer agrees to them before the first offer, and so the agreement is on the record instead of in an email thread.

Seller terms are optional and off by default. An organization that never turns them on sees no change anywhere.

Writing and publishing your terms

Open Settings → Terms & Conditions. Give the policy a title (for example, Vehicle Sale Return & Arbitration Policy) and write the body.

• The title is up to 120 characters and the body up to 4,000.
• The body supports bold, italic, underline, and bulleted or numbered lists. Images and links are not supported. The numbers on a numbered list read the same on screen as on the printed policy.
• The terms must fit on the one-page Seller Policy the buyer signs at pickup. Terms too long to print are refused when you save, so a signed copy never cuts a clause off.
• A switch shows or hides the terms. Turn it off and buyers stop seeing and accepting them; nothing is deleted. Turn them back on and everything, history included, is still there.
• Changes save from the bar pinned to the bottom of the page.

A Cypress Manager can edit any business organization's terms from the organization's admin page, on the Terms & Conditions tab.

Versions

Every changed save is a new version. Saving without a change does nothing. The version history shows who saved each version and its full text. Old versions are kept, because each offer remembers the exact version its buyer accepted. Editing your terms never rewrites what an earlier buyer agreed to.

What the buyer sees

When the terms are on, buyers see them on your listing pages, and must tick an acceptance box before they can:

• Make an offer, logged in or through the express (no-account) offer
• Buy Now
• Re-offer after a decline or an expiry
• Accept a counter-offer on an offer made before your terms existed

The submit button stays disabled until the box is ticked, and the server refuses the action without it, so no door skips the check. If you change the terms while a buyer has the form open, the form swaps in the new text and clears the tick; the buyer reads and accepts the current version.

What gets recorded

Each offer stores the version accepted, the time, the buyer's IP address and browser, and whether Cypress accepted on the buyer's behalf (a Cypress Manager entering an offer for a buyer). Your offer panel in Seller Hub shows it as a line such as Accepted Vehicle Sale Return & Arbitration Policy v2 · Oct 6, 2026.

The Seller Policy at pickup

Acceptance on the offer is the agreement. The Seller Policy is the same terms as a signed document at the end of the deal. It is a closing document kind with a Cypress base template, Cypress Seller Policy, and it is opt-in per organization:

1. A Cypress Manager adds a Seller Policy slot to the organization's Pickup step, from Admin → Closing Docs or from the template designer.
2. It is only allowed on Pickup, never on the base checklist, and only when the organization has active terms. Without terms the slot is refused.
3. The slot is always required.
4. When Pickup opens, the document is generated from the exact version the buyer accepted, fixed when the closing starts and never refreshed, and goes to the buyer for e-signature. See Documents & e-sign.
5. The policy is never issued wrong. If it would print blank, cut off or with altered terms, it is refused. Only a Cypress Manager can upload a file into the Seller Policy slot.
6. Pickup cannot complete until it is signed. A Cypress Manager can waive it for a single deal; the waiver is audited.

In the template designer, the preview of a Seller Policy shows the organization's own terms, so you see the page the buyer will sign.

If you change your terms later

A later edit never changes a deal that already exists: its Seller Policy prints the version that buyer accepted. A new offer accepts the new version.

Business rules

• Terms are per organization and versioned, with simple formatting.
• A buyer cannot offer, buy or accept a counter without accepting the current version while the terms are on.
• An accepted version is permanent on its offer; later edits never change it.
• The Seller Policy prints only the accepted snapshot, never newer text.