In any business, maintaining consistency and efficiency is essential. Productive's document templates help you simplify your workflow by ensuring that every invoice, proposal, and purchase order follows your company's standards.
A document template determines what information your exported PDFs include, such as:
Grand totals
Language and date formats
Attachments
Custom label overrides
Additional notes
Section layouts
Combined with a custom document style (created using the Document Style Editor), you can set up professional, branded PDFs that align with your company's identity.
Using these templates saves time, reduces errors, and ensures consistency across your business documents.
Accessing Document Templates
Permissions
By default, only account admins can access Document Templates in the Settings. However, with the Permission Builder, you can enable the Manage Document Styles and Templates permission, save it as part of a new permission set, and assign it to a teammate who needs access to customize your PDFs.
Settings
1) To begin customizing your document templates, navigate to Settings > Document templates.
2) Click on "Add document template" to create a new template or select an existing one to adjust it.
Tip: Duplicate an existing document template by opening the three-dot menu and selecting Duplicate to quickly reuse its settings, including style, notes, footer content, and layout adjustments. Select Delete to permanently remove the template if it's no longer needed.
3) You'll be redirected to the template editor, where you can personalize your document. The preview panel on the right provides real-time visual feedback. Define the following settings:
The document type: Invoice, (Budget and Deal) Proposal, Budget (Status), or Purchase Order
The document style: created in the Document Style Editor
Any Localization, Customization, or Email settings
The subsidiary dropdown allows you to preview the document as you make edits. This dropdown does not modify the template itself; it simply lets you see how the document will look based on the selected subsidiary (logo, address, company name).
Document Template Types
Productive supports four types of document templates:
Invoice
Proposal (used for both Budgets and Deals)
Budget (used for exporting budget statuses)
Purchase Order
When creating a template, you'll name it and select its type, ensuring it applies correctly to the intended documents.
Document Style Editor
The Document Style Editor lets you create a custom visual style and apply it to your document templates by selecting one of the styles from the Style dropdown.
For detailed guidance, check out the our dedicated article on the Document Style Editor.
Customizing Document Templates
When customizing a document template, after selecting the document type and style, you'll configure sections such as Localization, Customization, and Email (email settings apply to invoices only).
Localization
Choose the document language (which also determines the date format).
Example: English (US) → MM-DD-YYYY, English (UK) → DD-MM-YYYY
Enable custom label overrides to rename fields within the document.
Customization
This section allows you to configure the header, table, notes, footer, and attachments in your document.
1) Header Options
Choose a layout that determines how your logo and company info appear.
Apply styling from the Document Style Editor (e.g., Heading 1, Heading 2, Body Text).
Enable "Repeating Header" to display the header on every page.
2) Table Options
Customize text styles using the Elements section.
Adjust which fields appear in your document tables. Use Show/Hide Fields to control their visibility (click the eye icon to hide an element).
Tip: The Unit and Quantity fields can be linked (e.g., "30h" appears under QTY) or unlinked (e.g., "30" in QTY + "hours" in Unit).
3) Note Options
Select a layout for notes and apply text styling from the Document Style Editor.
Place the note above or below your table.
Use custom fields to dynamically insert predefined content.
4) Footer Options
Choose between layouts and element styles.
Insert a custom footer message (with the option to include custom fields).
5) Attachments
Upload a custom file to be attached to all documents using this template.
The Email section allows you to draft invoice emails that will be prefilled when sending an invoice.
Customize the subject line (editable before sending).
Add recipients, CC, and BCC.
Use dynamic fields (ℹ️ icon) to automatically insert values like PO numbers or project names.
Format emails using bullet lists, strikethroughs, quotes, links, and emojis.
Using Document Templates
Once saved, document templates can be used across different areas of Productive.
Invoice
When creating an invoice, select the desired template from the Document Template dropdown.
Note: This PDF uses the template created with the "Invoice" document type.
Use the Download dropdown to Download the invoice PDF or View the PDF, select Send to Client (pre-filling the email based on the template).
Deal Proposal
To generate a Deal Proposal PDF:
Open the Deal and navigate to the PDF tab in the sidebar.
Scroll to the Proposal Document section and click Edit Document Info to update the template or add a custom note.
(Optional) Add a Tax Rate to display totals with tax included.
Click Export Proposal PDF to download the document.
Note: This PDF uses the same template for both deal and budget proposals, created using the "Proposal" document type.
Budget Proposal
To generate a Budget Proposal PDF:
Open the Budget and navigate to the PDF tab in the sidebar.
Scroll to the Proposal Document section and click Edit Document Info to update the template or add a custom note.
(Optional) Add a Tax Rate to display totals with tax included.
Click Export Proposal PDF to download the document.
Note: This PDF uses the same template for both deal and budget proposals, created using the "Proposal" document type.
Budget Status
The Budget Status provides a snapshot of your current budget, showing the used versus total budget, billable amounts, services, and billing types.
To generate a Budget Status PDF:
Open the Budget and navigate to the PDF tab in the sidebar.
Scroll to the Budget Document section and click Edit Document Info to update the template or add a custom note.
(Optional) Add a Tax Rate to display totals with tax included.
Click Export Budget Status PDF to download the document.
Note: This PDF uses the template created using the "Budget" document type.
Purchase Orders
While drafting a purchase order, select the desired template from the Template dropdown.
Note: This PDF uses the template created using the "Purchase Order" document type.
