Most small businesses already have their templates. They're called "Quote - FINAL - Botha v3.docx", and every new quote starts with Save As and a careful hunt for last client's name.
That works until the hunt misses one. Turning the document into a proper template takes about half an hour, and after that the details fill themselves in.
Mark the gaps as fields
Open your best recent version of the document. Read it top to bottom and find every piece that changes from one client to the next: the name, the address, the date, the quote number, the amounts.
Replace each one with a field. Where the letter says "Dear Thabo", write "Dear {{client.contact}}". Leave everything else alone. The fonts, spacing and tables you spent time on stay exactly as they were, because you only changed words.
Name fields after what they hold
Give each field a name that says what goes in it, with a group in front: {{client.name}}, {{quote.number}}, {{quote.total}}. Avoid {{field1}} and avoid abbreviations only you understand.
Good names pay off twice. Whoever opens the template next year knows what each field is for. And the names line up with your data, so a spreadsheet column called client.name fills the matching field without any mapping.
Use conditions instead of copies
Most businesses end up with near-identical versions of the same document: the quote with the deposit clause and the one without, the contract for permanent staff and the one for contractors. Every copy is a place where an update gets missed.
A condition does the same job in one template. It shows or hides a paragraph depending on the data, so the deposit clause appears only when there's a deposit. One template, both cases, one place to fix a typo.
Use a repeating section for line items
A quote with one line item and a quote with thirty need the same table. Mark one row of the table as a repeating section, and the template repeats that row once per item. The table grows to fit and the total sits underneath where it belongs.
Leave the letterhead out
Don't bake your logo, address and registration number into every template. When the details change, and they will, you'll be editing every file you own. Put them in company stationery instead, set up once and applied to every document. Our guide to company letterhead and stationery covers how.
Test with awkward data
Fill the template with the data most likely to break it: a very long company name, an address with five lines, a quote with forty items, a quote with none. See where the text wraps and whether the table runs onto a second page cleanly.
The template that survives your most awkward client will handle everyone else.
How it works in E·BIZI Papers
In E·BIZI Papers you upload the Word document you already have. Papers finds the fields you marked, plus repeating sections and conditions, and shows you a filled preview with sample data straight away. From there each document is filled from your data or a spreadsheet and comes out as a PDF, ready to send for signature.