Templates

Templates are .docx or .csv files that contain placeholder tokens. When you generate a document, Missing Toolkit: Templates replaces those tokens with live data from your connected data source.

Missing Toolkit: Templates can also design templates for you — no file needed. See Designed Templates.

Uploading a template

Go to Templates in the sidebar and click Upload Template
Document: choose your .docx or .csv file. Missing Toolkit: Templates reads it and tells you how many placeholders it found and what it looks like it's for.
Set up: check the name, what the template is used for, and how many copies one record makes. These are filled in from the document, so most of the time you just confirm them.
Review and fix: each possible problem is shown where it sits in your document, like a misspelled placeholder or quotes Word turned curly. Click Fix to correct it, or Fix all safe issues to fix every one we can. Click Ignore for anything you mean to keep.
Preview and save: pick one of your recent records and see the first page filled in, with a list of any placeholders that came out blank and why. Then click Save template

Fixes are made to a copy, and nothing changes until you save. If you'll keep editing the document in Word, you can download a corrected copy from the top of the review step, so the fixes come with you.

To change the document of a template you already have, open it, click Edit, then Replace document. You get the same checks before anything changes.

Creating a template

Use Microsoft Word. Other editors can save a .docx, but Word fills in details — fonts, spacing, image formats — that other tools leave out, and those details are what keep your PDF looking like your template. Templates built elsewhere may convert differently than they appear on screen.

Insert placeholders anywhere in your document using the ${PLACEHOLDER_NAME} format. For example:

Invoice: ${INVOICE_NUMBER}
Date: ${INVOICE_DATE}
Customer: ${CUSTOMER_NAME}
Total: ${TOTAL_AMOUNT}

Placeholders are case-sensitive and use UPPER_CASE with underscores.

Line items table

For line items, place the ${LINE_ITEMS} placeholder in your template. Missing Toolkit: Templates will generate a table with columns for Description, Quantity, Rate, and Amount.

Tip: If you place ${LINE_ITEMS} inside a styled table in your .docx template, Missing Toolkit: Templates will preserve your table's formatting (borders, colors, column widths) and apply it to the generated table. If the placeholder is in a plain paragraph, a default table style is used.

Copies

When you upload or edit a template, choose how many copies one record produces:

One copy per record is the usual choice. The template is filled once for each invoice, estimate, or other record.
One copy per line item fills the whole template once for every line item on the record and joins the copies into one file, with a page break between them. Use it for a work order or traveler for each part on an estimate. When you generate, you choose which line items to include.
One label per box fills the template once for every box a line item ships in. See Box labels for how the boxes are worked out.

Both repeating choices apply to .docx templates only. A designed template renders as one document.

CSV templates

A template can also be a CSV file. Use it when you need rows of data rather than a document, for example a list of an invoice's lines to import somewhere else.

Build it in Excel. Put any headings in the first row. In the next row, put a placeholder in each cell, like ${INVOICE_NUMBER}, ${LINE_DESCRIPTION} and ${LINE_AMOUNT|plain}. The row that contains line item placeholders repeats once for each line item. Rows above and below it, like a totals row, appear once. Then save it as CSV (Comma delimited) and upload it like any other template.

Invoice	Description	Amount
`${INVOICE_NUMBER}`	`${LINE_DESCRIPTION}`	`${LINE_AMOUNT\|plain}`

The file you get back uses the same separator as your template, so a template saved with semicolons gives you semicolons. A CSV template always produces a CSV file: one per record, or one per period for a sales register.

A register template lists one document per row instead of one line item. Some register templates are written for certain kinds of document only, like a schedule of credit notes. Those choose the kinds they need when you generate.

File name

Each template can name the files it makes. Set it when you upload the template, or later: open the template, click Edit, open Advanced, and enter a File name. Placeholders and filters work here, for example ${INVOICE_NUMBER}-${CUSTOMER_NAME} or Lines ${INVOICE_DATE|date:Ymd}. Leave it blank to keep the usual name.

If a value the file name uses is blank, like a Tax ID you haven't entered, the sales register page warns you before you download.

Starter templates

When you first connect QuickBooks, Missing Toolkit: Templates adds starter templates for invoices, estimates, statements and purchase orders, so you can generate straight away. They're on Letter paper in the US, Canada, Mexico and a few other countries, and on A4 everywhere else. A company in a country with its own starters, like Sri Lanka, gets those too.

More starters, including a CSV Sales Register, can be downloaded from the matching pages on our website and uploaded like any other template.

Managing templates

On the Templates page you can:

View a template to see its detected placeholders
Download the original template file
Delete a template you no longer need

Tips for best results

Use simple formatting in your templates — bold, italic, font sizes, and colors all carry through
Avoid placing placeholders inside text boxes or headers/footers (use the main document body)
Test with a single entity first to verify your layout before generating in bulk

Missing Toolkit: Templates checks each template when you upload it and flags anything that may not convert cleanly, so you don't have to know these details in advance.

Fonts and PDF output

When Missing Toolkit: Templates produces a PDF, it draws your document without the fonts installed on your computer, so a font we don't have is replaced with the closest one we do. Most replacements are exact and your layout is untouched. A few are not.

Use one of these and your PDF will match your Word document:

Aptos (Word's default), Calibri, Cambria, Segoe UI, Arial, Arial Narrow, Times New Roman, Courier New, Helvetica.

These come out slightly larger, which can crowd a fixed-height table row or push the last few lines onto an extra page:

Georgia, Garamond, Franklin Gothic, Tahoma, Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Corbel, Book Antiqua, Palatino.

Missing Toolkit: Templates tells you at upload if your template uses one, so you don't have to check this list.

The reliable fix: embed your fonts

If you want a PDF that matches your Word document exactly — whatever fonts you used — embed the fonts in the template. Your fonts then travel inside the file, and we draw with those rather than a substitute.

Windows: File → Options → Save → Embed fonts in the file
Mac: Word → Preferences → Save → Embed fonts in the file

Tick Embed only the characters used to keep the file small, then save and upload the template again. This is worth doing for any template you send to customers.

Two other things that shift a PDF

Text boxes don't always convert the way they look in Word. Put anything that must appear in the PDF in the body of the document or in a table.
Tables wider than the page. Word quietly shrinks a table that overhangs the margin; a PDF converter may not. If a table looks like it reaches past the right margin in Word, drag it back inside.

Word output is unaffected by any of this — a .docx opens in your own Word with your own fonts, exactly as you built it.