Availability: Essentials, Business, and Enterprise plans

A template is a master copy of your document. Let’s say you have a generic proposal that you send to the majority of your customers, and you only need to change a couple of specific things on the document but the rest of the information remains the same. In this case, you can create a template and use it over and over again.

Creating editable templates

Go to the Templates tab in Documents app and select +Template in the top left to create a new template. You will have a few options:

+Blank allows you to create a template from scratch using the PandaDoc editor
Choose a template from our Template gallery. Do check it out, they look awesome!
You can mix and match the first two options inside the document later.

Alternatively, you can convert a .docx file into an editable PandaDoc.

Note:

Template/document title shouldn't exceed 250 characters.

Creating uploaded templates

Click on Select files or drag and drop your file to the upload area.

Supported file formats for upload: .pdf, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, .jpeg, .jpg, .png.

You may run into an error uploading your document if it meets any of the following criteria:

Password protection is enabled
It contains form fields, embedded fonts, or comments
It exceeds 50 MB or contains more than 500 pages
It’s a .doc, .xls, or.ppt file from Microsoft Office 95 or older
It’s a PDF consisting of several layers (to learn how to flatten your PDF, read this article)

Learn more about common upload issues here.

Tip:

If you need to change content on an uploaded PDF file, you can add a text block over the text that needs some edits, then hide the original content with a background color and type the needed text over it.

If you’d like to replace uploaded content while keeping blocks and fields in place, there is an option to use Replacing a source file feature.

Bundling templates

There are several ways you can bundle your documents on the template level.

Start by creating a single template, then add documents to it. Use several templates you already have, add templates from our template gallery, or upload files.
Upload several documents to create a batch you can sequence yourself. To do this, select Create from your template list, then either select Upload file to choose files from your desktop or simply drag and drop several files into the upload area.
Select several templates to create a batch. To do this, first select Create from your template/document list. Next, select the templates you’d like to include, then select Add items. Alternatively, select the templates/documents you'd like to bundle in the template/document list and click Bundle at the top of the page.

Learn more here.

Template roles and role variables

Alright, you have started your template. The very first thing to do is to add your roles. Roles are placeholders for future recipients, like Client, Accounting, Signer, etc.

Each role generates role variables. Variables are used as placeholders for dynamic information about your recipients that will change from document to document - Name, Address, Company name.

Add content through content blocks and fields for the recipients to submit information. Assign the fields to the template roles.

How to create documents

Now that you have set up your template you can generate a document. You can start a document from:

Inside the template by clicking Use this template in the top right
From the document list by selecting +Document > and selecting your template the list
From the template list by hovering over the template and selecting Create document

Then assign actual recipients to the template roles and click Continue. And that’s it!

Your variables have been filled out with the recipient’s info, and fields have been automatically assigned to the recipients. It’s that easy! Set up a template once and save time generating professional-looking documents in a couple of clicks!