Templates are the reusable designs behind everything you send. There are two kinds:
Email templates - for messages you send by email.
Document templates - for things you print (letters, statements) as PDF.
Standard templates come built in - giving statements, gift receipts, monthly statements, in-kind receipts, and more. You can use them as-is or copy and customize them.
Custom templates are ones you create and design yourself.
Templates use merge fields - placeholders that fill in per recipient when you send. Common ones include:
Organization - your name, address, logo, tax ID.
Donor / contact - name, address, email.
Contribution - amount, fund, date.
Date range & summary - the period and totals used on giving statements.
You drop these into the design and CoolFocus fills them in for each person.
In the template editor, click into a text area where you want the field, then type an opening curly brace {. A searchable "Insert a field..." list pops up - start typing to filter, then pick a field to drop it in. It's inserted as a token (like {{FirstName}}) that fills in when you send.
The list shows the fields for the record type you're building the template for (a donor's name, a contribution's amount, and so on), plus system fields like Current Date and Full Address. For richer layouts - such as a table of contributions on a giving statement - use the editor's / (slash) menu to insert a data block instead of a single field.
Beyond simple text, the editor's slash menu supports several data block types you can drop into a template layout:
Data table - a table built from a record's own fields (for example, a list of a donor's contributions).
Sub-collection table - a table built from a related list of records (for example, the contributions linked to a household), with an optional row limit.
HTML block - free-form rich text/HTML, useful for custom notes or disclosures that include merge fields.
Social links - a row of links to your organization's social profiles, with each platform toggled on or off.
Letterhead - your organization's logo, name, address, phone, email, and (optionally) tax ID, with a divider line under it.
Amendments - a compliance section for chart print/PDF templates. It lists the entity's addenda (late entries, addenda, and amendments) and any unlock history, with author, date, and reason for each. This block prints nothing at all, no heading included, when the chart has no addenda or unlock history, so a clean chart never shows an empty "Amendments" section. See Locked Records and the Addendum Flow for what gets recorded.
These block types render the same way whether the template is used for an email (HTML) or a printed/emailed PDF document, so a document template with a letterhead, HTML block, social links, or a sub-collection table will look consistent in both formats.
Templates are managed in the templates area (and you can start a new one from the + More menu when sending from a record). Building or editing templates requires the manage-templates permission, so it's typically an administrator task. A template can be set to show on actions so it appears in the Email/Print picker for the right record type.
