Creating and Editing Document Templates

A document template is simply a document that can contain place holders for fields in the Gym Assistant database.  For example, you might include a member’s name and address at the top of the document and refer to that member’s next payment due date and the amount due for their next payment.  Once you develop a template for a given situation (e.g. a “payment past due” letter) then you just need to send that letter to the appropriate members.

Opening a Document Template

1. Select Edit Form Template or Edit Letter Template from the Documents menu. 
2. Gym Assistant will ask “Do you want to create a NEW form/letter or edit an EXISTING form/letter?”

Note:  We recommend that you copy and rename one of the existing templates rather than always creating a new template from scratch.

• Click New to create a new template.  A new blank document will appear.
• Click Existing to edit an existing template.  A list of existing Form or Letter templates will appear (whichever you selected from the Documents menu).  Select a template to open and click Open.

Inserting Merge Fields

Place the cursor at the desired location in the document and click Insert.

Select the desired field and click Insert.  The name of the field will be inserted at the current cursor location enclosed in square brackets.

Note: If you know the name of the field that you want to insert then you can simply type the field name and brackets into the documents (e.g. “[LastName]”).To change the font/size/style click Font.

Formatting the Document

Font Selection

Formatting for forms and letters is limited to a single font, size and style.  If you want to align columns vertically by padding with blank spaces then select a mono-spaced (fixed-width) font like Courier New.

Margins

To change the margins on the printed page click Margins.

Note: Emails will be sent as plain text, so any Font or Margins changes will not affect emails sent.

To view/print a sample of the letter click Print Sample.  The letter will be generated with sample member data and printed automatically.