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Placeholders & Mapping ​

A template only knows what to fill in once its placeholders are mapped to database fields. This page covers the placeholder syntax and the two ways to do the mapping: automatically with AI, or by hand.

Placeholder Syntax ​

Wherever a value should be inserted, type a placeholder in double braces:

Invoice for {{Client Name}}
Amount due: {{Total}}

Name the placeholder after the thing it represents — {{Client Name}}, {{Invoice Date}}, {{Total}}. When you generate a document, each placeholder is swapped for the matching field's value from the row.

Other bracket styles are recognised too

Ascend also detects <<Client Name>>, [Client Name], and {Client Name} if that's how your document already marks its blanks. Double braces {{ }} are the recommended, least-ambiguous style.

Two Ways to Map Placeholders to Fields ​

Option A — Let AI do it ​

When you upload with "Let AI add the tags for me" enabled, AI reads the document, finds the variable parts, and maps each to the best-matching database field — then reports what it did and what it couldn't place. This is the fastest path and it works even if you didn't type any {{placeholders}} yourself: the AI infers them from the wording.

AI tagging uses AI credits and is only offered when you have credits available.

Option B — Map them yourself (no AI) ​

  1. Add {{placeholders}} to your document wherever values go.
  2. Upload it. Ascend automatically detects those tokens.
  3. Open the template's Configure dialog.
  4. For each detected placeholder, choose the database field it should pull from.
  5. Click Save.

No AI credits are used. The first time you generate, Ascend wires the placeholders to your fields deterministically from those mappings.

Configure: Reviewing & Editing the Mapping ​

Configure (the gear/settings action on a template in the Documents tab) is where the placeholder → field mapping lives. Use it to:

  • map placeholders the AI couldn't place,
  • correct a mapping the AI got wrong,
  • map placeholders you added by hand, or
  • re-check the mapping after editing the document.

Each entry pairs a placeholder found in the document with a database field. Leave a placeholder unmapped and it simply won't be filled.

Highlighted Placeholders ​

To make merge fields easy to spot, Ascend highlights the placeholders inside the editable template (the copy you get when you download it). The highlight is only a visual aid for editing — it is completely removed from every generated document, so your finished files are always clean.

Why this matters

You can hand the downloaded template to a colleague to tweak the wording; the highlighted {{fields}} show exactly where data will land, and none of that styling ever shows up in the documents your clients receive.

Line Items & Repeating Sections ​

Some documents repeat a block per item — invoice line items, quote rows, agenda points. These are powered by a subtable property on the database: each child row becomes one repeated row in the generated document (description, quantity, price, amount, and so on). The pre-built Tax Invoice template is the clearest example.

See Property Types → Subtables for how to add a line-item column to a database.

Next ​