What is conditional visibility?

Conditional visibility is a rule that shows a question or section only when a condition is true. Vendors also call it skip logic, branch logic, or smart fields. The condition can be a previous answer, a location attribute on the store profile, an audit type, or a region. If a store has a drive-thru on its location record, the drive-thru section appears. If it does not, the section never shows.

The problem it fixes is the audit-template anti-pattern that shows up at almost every multi-unit brand. Ops builds one mega-template with every possible question for every possible format, then asks district managers to mark "N/A" on the 30 to 80 items that do not apply. Xenia's own brand standards audit guide names the cost directly: district managers waste time marking "N/A" on 50-plus irrelevant questions per visit. That is click-tax that produces no insight.

Conditional visibility pairs with nullify scoring, the feature that removes a hidden question's points from the math so the percentage stays honest. A nullified question does not get zeroed, assumed-pass, or assumed-fail. It simply does not exist for that submission. The two features are the answer together, and they read as a single workflow once you set them up. For the underlying scoring logic, see how weighted audit scoring sets critical and minor point thresholds before you layer visibility rules on top.

Conditional visibility lets you ask different questions at different locations without penalizing stores for N/A items. One audit template handles 100-plus format variations instead of a folder full of forked per-format forms.

Worked example, conditional visibility in action

Here is the pairing on a real format variation. A QSR brand runs 20 stores. Ten have drive-thrus. Ten are inline-only. The master template carries 32 questions. The 5 drive-thru questions (window-time target, speaker test, order-confirmation board, second-window staffing, drive-thru cleanliness) are tagged to the drive-thru attribute on the location record.

When a DM audits an inline store, those 5 questions never appear. The auditor sees 27 questions. Nullify scoring removes the 5 hidden questions from the denominator, so the inline store is scored out of 27, not 32. When the same DM audits a drive-thru store, all 32 appear and the store is scored out of 32. Both formats can score 100%. Neither is punished for what it does not have.

A unit without a fryer does not fail on fryer temp logs. A location without a patio does not get dinged on patio cleanliness. That is the nullify-scoring outcome operators want: the audit reflects what the store actually does, not what the template thinks it should.

Here is the rule logic in plain English:

| Store tier / condition | Audit type | Question groups shown | Question groups hidden |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drive-thru attribute on location record | Standard weekly audit | Food safety, line check, dine-in service, drive-thru operations | None |
| Inline-only, no drive-thru | Standard weekly audit | Food safety, line check, dine-in service | Drive-thru operations (5 questions removed from denominator) |
| Patio attribute on location record | Standard weekly audit | Food safety, line check, dine-in service, patio and outdoor | None |
| Beer cave attribute (c-store format) | Standard weekly audit | Foodservice, cooler temps, beer cave temps | Fuel dispenser items if no fuel attribute |

The same pattern carries the other Xenia trigger actions. The Xenia Logic Builder can require a corrective task, require a photo, send an alert, or pose follow-up questions when an answer trips a rule. So a beer cave temp reading above 38F can open the cause, corrective action, and photo questions automatically. The denominator grows only by the newly relevant questions. Stores where the temp was in range are never penalized for a follow-up that never triggered. For the same logic applied to forecourt formats, see how operators run one c-store audit template across tap-system and fuel-only sites.

How does conditional visibility differ from static audits?

A static audit shows every question to every store and forces the auditor to mark N/A by hand. A conditional audit hides the question automatically and removes its points from the score. The difference matters most at the dashboard, where leadership reads store scores and decides where to coach.

Here is the side-by-side.

| Approach | Behavior at N/A items | Score impact | Template count required |
|---|---|---|---|
| Static audit | Auditor manually marks N/A on every irrelevant item | Depends on config: N/A often stays in denominator at zero and under-reports the score, or is scored as Yes and inflates it | One mega-template or one forked template per format |
| Conditional audit with nullify scoring | Inapplicable questions hide automatically by location attribute | Hidden questions leave the denominator entirely, so percentages stay comparable across formats | One template that flexes across every format |

The static approach breaks coaching. Leadership sees Store 14 at 78% and Store 22 at 91% and assumes Store 14 needs intervention. In reality Store 14 just has a smaller menu and a template that did not adjust for it. The score reflects format variance, not performance variance. That is a false negative, and it sends the DM walk to the wrong store.

Competitors handle the denominator differently, and operators get burned by the gaps. SafetyCulture lets you set a neutral response so N/A contributes nothing. GoAudits documents the opposite: its guide tells admins to score N/A the same as Yes, which keeps the percentage looking right but inflates the compliance rate. Bindy disables whole sections by store type but routes critical items through separate flag logic. This denominator behavior is the practical line between platforms, and it is the displacement driver in a head-to-head Xenia and Zenput comparison for multi-format brands.

How to set up conditional visibility in Xenia

Set up the pairing in six decisions, in order. Get the order wrong and you end up rebuilding the template.

1. Model the store before you write questions. Define location attributes first: has drive-thru, has patio, has alcohol license, kitchen format for restaurants. For c-stores, has fuel, has beer cave, has food service, has car wash. Xenia targets recurring work by attributes like 24-hour operations or drive-thrus, so the attributes you set here drive everything downstream.
2. Build one template, segment by section. Tag each section to an attribute instead of forking per-format forms. "Drive-Thru Operations" shows only where the drive-thru attribute is true. One template keeps cross-store comparison valid.
3. Set weights at the question and section level. Use the three-tier framework: critical items at 10 points (food safety, safety hazards), major items at 5 points (operational inconsistencies), minor items at 1 to 2 points (cosmetic deviations).
4. Confirm the engine recalculates the denominator. This is the failure mode operators hit when migrating off paper or PDF. Run the audit at a drive-thru store, then a non-drive-thru store. Scored identically on visible items, both must produce the same percentage. If they do not, the platform is hiding the question visually but keeping it in the math at zero.
5. Pair visibility with conditional actions. Use the Logic Builder to require a corrective task, a photo, an alert, or follow-up questions when an answer fails. Visibility is not only about hiding items. It is about expanding the right ones at the moment of failure.
6. Lock down audit-creator permissions. Conditional visibility breaks the moment a regional admin adds a question without an attribute filter. Treat the template like a controlled document: version it, gate edits, and require a test run across formats before publishing. The same discipline carries into drive-thru versus dine-in conditional audits and franchise-tier conditional audits where one brand runs different questions for corporate, franchisee, and licensee units.

Where do operators see results?

Operators see results first on the leadership dashboard, where the pairing turns audit scores into executable insight instead of format noise. Once nullify scoring and conditional visibility are both live, district-level rollups compare stores on an applicable-question percentage. The regional manager sees real performance variance, not the artifact of a store having fewer questions.

Three concrete payoffs show up fast:

• Repeat-finding tracking gets honest. A store that fails the same drive-thru speaker check three visits in a row is a coaching priority. A store that "fails" drive-thru because the engine could not suppress the section is just noise that buries the real signal.
• Trend lines survive template changes. When ops adds a section that applies to only 20% of stores, the other 80% of scores do not move. Year-over-year comparison stays clean.
• Field time goes back to the work. Removing 50-plus N/A clicks per visit hands the DM back 30 to 45 minutes per audit. That time goes into the store walk, not the form.

The directional lift is visible in the category. Crunchtime, the company behind Zenput, reports that operators using its platform see a 20% improvement in audit scores and time savings of 8 hours per week for field managers. A meaningful chunk of that score lift is the denominator effect. Stores stop being penalized for questions they should never have answered.

The format spread that makes this matter is widening, not shrinking. The National Restaurant Association State of the Industry report shows most restaurants now run at least one off-premises channel that adds format-specific audit items. On the forecourt, the NACS State of the Industry report shows c-store format mix runs from full kitchens to beer caves to car washes, with almost no site running all three. A single brand template has to flex across all of it. Build the program right and pair it with closed-loop corrective action tracking so a flagged item becomes a task, not a line in a report. Ops leaders building these programs can start from the conditional audits hub and the broader audit management hub, or see how it lands on the floor across the restaurant operations platform.