Variables

Availability: Essentials, Business, and Enterprise plans

A variable is a merge field designed to save you time by auto-filling any information that frequently occurs in your documents. It's a piece of text surrounded by square brackets, like this:

The variable will not have the yellow background when a recipient is viewing the document, it only appears this way in the editor so you can easily distinguish between text and a variable.

Important Information about Variables:

• You can add variables in both templates and documents
• Variables will work in three pricing table fields: Name, Description, Plain text column
• Variables will only work in the document body. They will not work in the document name, saved messages, or email subject/body

Click here to take our self-paced learning course on how to create and use variables.

How to add variables to your template/document

1. Select a text block where you'd like to place your variable
2. Type a square opening bracket and either choose the name of a variable from the dropdown or type your own and press Enter

Alternatively, click Variables on the right, click the plus sign and enter a variable name, next press Enter. The variable will show up in the Variables section.

Next, click the Copy icon to copy the variable name, paste it where you need it in your template/document.

To fill out a variable with actual info, click on a variable in a template/document or open the variables list under Variables on the right, and enter a value. The information is populated throughout the template/document through the variable used.

To delete a variable, first, delete it on the document body. Next, click on Variables on the right panel, click on the Not used dropdown and find the variable in the list. Hover over it and click the bin icon to delete the variable from your variable list. 

Types of variables

There are 4 types of variables:

• Role variables
• System variables
• Pricing table variables
• Custom variables

Role variables

These variables automatically populate information about your recipient when they're assigned to a Role. They can populate your recipient's first and last name, email address, phone number and company, as long as the information exists in PandaDoc Contacts. If your recipient doesn’t exist in your PandaDoc Contacts, you can add them when you create the document.

1. Create a Template Role (you'd have to be in a template to do that)
2. PandaDoc will automatically generate the default role variables: first name, last name, email, company, phone, title and address
3. Click Variables in the right panel, next find the default role variables by the Role name at the beginning, e.g. Client.FirstName
4. Copy a variable and paste it where you need it in the template

Next, click on Use this template and create a document out of this template, assign recipients to Roles, and click Continue. Role variables will have been populated upon document creation.

System variables

These variables have been predefined by PandaDoc. They will automatically populate information about your document, specific to that individual document and its content (such as document created date, document sent date, reference number, document value, etc.).

Pricing table variables

Pricing table variables help you easily reuse data from the pricing table footer in your template, document, or form. Each row you add to the footer of your pricing table will appear as a variable, as long as it has a value.

To access the list of variables, first click on a pricing table in your template, document, or form. Then, click Properties on the floating panel and select Variables on the right. Finally, click the copy icon next to the variable name and paste the variable into your document’s content.

You can also find pricing table variables in the Variables tab on the right. 

Custom variables

These variables act as placeholders for any information you need to populate manually when creating a document. You can name them whatever you want, and they’re useful if the information doesn’t exist in your Contacts.

To add a custom variable open the square opening bracket, next type the name of your variable and click Enter.