Drag and Drop Editor
How to design a document template from blocks and sections: adding and arranging them, typing on the page, variables, the items table, styling, drafts and saving.
The drag and drop editor is where you design a document template from blocks: invoices, quotes, worksheets, letters and job documents. Open it with the pencil on a template’s row in Settings > Document Templates, with Edit design on its details page or in its preview, or by creating a template with Create from scratch and Drag and drop editor. It fills the screen, and the page is drawn as it prints.
Templates made in the Simple editor, in HTML or as text messages open in their own editors instead.
The Top Bar
- Back arrow: Goes to the template’s details page.
- Name: Click it to rename the template. Enter, or clicking away, saves the new name straight away.
- Undo and Redo: Step back and forward through your changes.
- Save status: Shows Saving…, then Draft saved with the time. All changes saved means there’s no draft yet.
- One copy and Whole sheet: For half and quarter page templates. Whole sheet shows where the other copies print on the sheet, as grey boxes labelled Copy.
- Preview & test: Shows the design filled in with a real record or example details, and can download it as a PDF or email you a test. See Preview & Test Popup.
- Save & quit: Makes the design the one that prints. See Saving your work below.
- The three dots: The editor’s menu, below.
Adding Blocks
The panel on the left has Content and Style down its side, and Content has three tabs: Blocks, Sections and Saved. Drag a block onto the page and a line shows where it will go; drop it between two sections to start a new one. Or click a block to add it after the selected block, at the end of the selected column, or in a new section at the end of the page.
- Title: A heading, from H1 to H4, typed on the page.
- Text: Paragraphs, headings and lists.
- Image: A picture from your media library, or from an address.
- Button: A link styled as a button. You type its label on the page.
- Logo: Your logo from Organisation settings. It’s left out of the document while you haven’t uploaded one.
- Social: Icons linking to your social pages. A new one starts with the pages in your brand library.
- Divider and Spacer: A line across, or a gap of the height you choose.
- HTML: Your own HTML, for anything the other blocks can’t do.
- Table: A table you fill in yourself, the same on every document.
- Items table: One row for each item: each job on a worksheet, or each line of an invoice or quote. Only worksheets, invoices and quotes have it.
- Field: One detail, such as the customer’s name, with text before and after it if you like.
- List and Quote: A bulleted or numbered list, and a quotation with who said it.
Adding Sections
The Sections tab has ready-made sections in folding groups: Headers, Customer and job details, Items and totals, Payment details, Notes and terms, Footer and signatures, and Empty columns in six layouts. Only sections whose details your kind of document has are listed, so a quote isn’t offered bank details. Click one to add it at the end of the page, or drag it between sections. The Saved tab holds sections you’ve kept to use again; see Saved Sections.
Changing What’s on the Page
Click anything on the page to select it. Its settings take the panel’s place, and a toolbar under it has a handle to drag it somewhere else, Select parent, Move up, Move down, Duplicate and Delete. A section’s toolbar adds Save section, and a column’s has Remove column, keeping its blocks, which moves its blocks into the column beside it. Esc selects whatever the selection sits in.
- Columns: A selected section has a plus on each side to add a column, up to four, which makes them all the same width. Drag the line between two columns to resize them in twelfths, or use the arrow keys on it. The section’s settings have the six layouts as pictures under Columns, and Line up columns sets whether columns line up at the top, middle or bottom.
- Layout: Every block has a Width and a Block alignment. Tables and fields also have Text alignment, and blocks with text have Line height.
- Spacing: Padding inside the block and Margin above and below it. Sections also have Space between columns and Space between blocks.
- Background: A colour or an image behind the block or section.
- Corners and border: Rounded corners, and a solid, dashed or dotted border with its colour and width.
- Content visibility: Always show this block, Only when a field is filled in, or Only when a field is empty. Use it for things such as showing your VAT number only when you have one. The block’s tag on the page says when it shows.
- The block’s own settings: For example an image’s Alternative text, Caption and Link; a button’s Label and Link; the field a Field block shows; a table’s rows, columns and Header row; and the networks, size, shape and style of social icons.
- Section names: A section’s Name only shows in the editor, to help you find your way round a long design.
Typing on the Page
Titles, text, quotes, lists and button labels are typed where they sit on the page. While you type, a toolbar is pinned above the page with Text style (Paragraph or Heading 1 to Heading 4), Font, Font size, bold, italic, underline and strikethrough, Text colour, Highlight, links, Text alignment, bulleted and numbered lists, subscript and superscript, Clear formatting and Variables.
- Variables: Details Work Planner fills in when the document prints, such as the customer’s name or the invoice total. Pick one from Variables and it goes in where your cursor is, written like {{customer_name}}. It’s ordinary text, so you can format it like the words around it, as long as you format the whole of it. Each kind of document has its own list.
- Links: Add link asks for the web address and adds https:// if it’s missing. Remove link shows when the cursor is in a link.
The Items Table
On the page the items table shows its header, one row of the item’s details, and Repeats for each item underneath. Select the table, then click a column’s heading or a cell to choose that column. Its toolbar has Move left, Move right, Add a column after and Remove column, and you can drag headings sideways to reorder them.
- A column’s settings: Heading, which detail it Shows, its Format (Text, Money, Date, Formatted text or Tick box), Alignment and Width. On worksheets, Show can follow your worksheet print settings, so a column only prints when that detail is chosen to print.
- The table’s settings: Header row, Borders (Grid, Lines or None), Border colour, Header background, Text size and Space inside cells.
- Detail row: Show a detail row adds a line under each item that you type into on the page, with the item’s details as its variables. On worksheets it can show only for jobs that have equipment.
Styling the Whole Design
Style, on the panel’s side, sets the look of the whole design. Only fonts that print exactly as they look are offered.
- Brand: Shows your brand colours and fonts from Organisation settings. Apply brand sets the design’s fonts and colours from them, and Undo puts them back.
- Page: Background, Background image, Margins and Direction, for languages written right to left.
- Text and Text styles: The font, size, line height and colour for the whole design, then the font, size, weight and colour for Text and each heading from H1 to H4.
- Links, Buttons and Tables: How links look, how buttons look, and the header, borders and cell padding tables start with.
Saving Your Work
- Drafts: Every change is saved to a draft about two seconds after you make it, and leaving a box you were typing in saves straight away. Ctrl+S, or Cmd+S on a Mac, saves the draft now. A draft doesn’t change what prints.
- Save & quit: Makes the design the one that prints, keeps a copy in Version history, and takes you to the template’s details page.
- Coming back: If you left with a draft, the editor opens with it and a note saying when it was saved. Discard changes on the note puts the design back to how it was last saved.
- Leaving: A draft waiting to save is saved as you leave. If it can’t be, you’re asked whether to leave anyway.
- Templates from the old editor: A template designed in Work Planner’s older editor opens with a note saying its design can’t be shown here. What you build replaces it once you save.
The Menu
- Template details: The template’s details page, for its name, page size, layout and how it’s used.
- Version history: Earlier saved versions, to look at or restore. See Version History Popup.
- Discover the editor: A short guided tour of the editor.
- Save as template: Saves the design as it is now as a new template, in Your templates, leaving this one as it was.
- Import and Export: Bring a design in from a file, or download this one. See Importing and Exporting Templates.
- Open in the HTML editor: Turns the design into the HTML it prints, for editing as code. See Moving Designs Between Editors.
- Discard unsaved changes: Shown while there’s a draft.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Use Ctrl on Windows and Cmd on a Mac. Ctrl+Z undoes, and Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y redoes. Ctrl+D duplicates the selected block or section, and Delete or Backspace removes it. Esc selects whatever the selection sits in, or stops typing. Ctrl+S saves the draft. Apart from Ctrl+S, shortcuts do nothing while you’re typing in a box.
On a Phone
The page takes the whole screen and the panel slides up over it. Press Blocks at the bottom of the screen to open it, and Hide panel to put it away; it also opens when you select something. On narrow screens the top bar leaves out undo, redo and the save status, and Preview & test becomes an icon.
Pay Now Link on Invoices
Invoice templates have Pay now link and Pay now QR code variables. Pick one from Variables while you type, or choose it as the detail a Field block shows. The link is the invoice’s own card payment link, so the customer can pay what is left on the invoice by card online, and the QR code opens it from a phone’s camera.
- When they are empty: Both print nothing unless your business has ticked Add a Pay now link to invoices on the Payment Providers screen. They are also empty on invoices that are paid, settled, written off or cancelled, or have nothing left to pay.
- Wording around it: A Field block’s text before and after still prints when there is no link. To show words such as Pay online: only when there is one, put them in a block whose Content visibility is Only when a field is filled in, with Pay now link as the field.
- Leaving them out: An invoice whose template uses neither gets a Pay online box at the end when it’s printed or emailed, with the QR code and the link. Preview & test doesn’t add the box.
- Using only one: Either one is enough to leave the box off, so a template with only the Pay now link prints no QR code.
Related articles
- Simple Editor: Writing letters on your letterhead.
- HTML Editor: Designing a template in HTML, with a live preview.
- Saved Sections: Keeping a section to use in your other designs.
- Editing a Document Template: The details page, where the page size, layout and how a template is used are set.
- Branding and Business Details: Your logo, brand colours, fonts and social links.
- Guided Tours: The Discover the editor tour and the others.
- Sending a Card Payment Link: How Pay now links on invoices work and what they ask the customer to pay.