Document templates

A template is the contract, letter or policy you send for signature. Cadre fills in each employee’s details when you send it, so one template serves everyone.

Who can create and edit templates: Owner, HR admin.

Go to Document templates in the menu. Your templates lists your organisation’s own. Cadre’s library lists the starting points Cadre provides.

Two kinds of template

Text: written in Cadre, or imported from Word. Cadre prints it as a PDF with the employee’s details filled in, under your letterhead if you use one.
Uploaded PDF: a PDF you already have, signed exactly as it is. You place where each signer’s signature, name, date and initials go.

Every save is a new version

Saving a template publishes a new version. A document already sent keeps the exact version and text it was sent with, so what someone signed never changes after the fact.

To stop offering a template, open it and select Archive. Documents already sent are not affected. Tick Show archived to see archived templates.

Start from Cadre’s library

The library has templates written for Cadre as a starting point, such as a permanent employment contract, an offer letter and a confidentiality agreement.

Under Cadre’s library, select Copy to your templates beside the one you want.
Give your copy a Name and select Copy. It becomes version 1 of your own template.
Edit it to suit your organisation.

You can open a library template to read it, but not change it: it is read-only until you copy it.

Write a text template

Select New template.
Enter a Name, choose a Category (Employment contract, Offer letter, Confidentiality agreement, Policy or Other) and, if you like, a Description.
Write the Template text. Start headings with #, ## or ###, lists with - or 1., write **bold** and _italic_, and leave a blank line between paragraphs. A template can be up to 50,000 characters.
Put the cursor where an employee’s detail belongs, and select it under Merge fields. It is inserted as, for example, {{ person.fullName }}.
Choose the signers under Signers, in order. See Signers.
Select Save template, or Save as a new version when you change an existing one.

Merge fields

The merge fields cover the person (such as full name, home address and email), their employment (such as job title, start date, contract type, department, manager and worksite), the organisation (the legal employer’s name, registered address and RC number), pay (monthly and annual gross pay, and your own pay components) and today’s date.

Organisation details always come from the employee’s legal employer, so an agency’s contract for a client’s worker names the right company.

Import from Word

In the template editor, select Import from Word and choose a .docx file of up to 5 MB.
Read the report Cadre shows about what came across and what didn’t.
Check the text, then save. Nothing is saved until you do.

Headings, paragraphs, bulleted and numbered lists, bold and italic come across. Tables become one paragraph per row. Images, drawings, text boxes and embedded objects are left out. Merge fields typed in the Word document as {{ person.fullName }} stay merge fields.

The document’s own header and footer come across as the template’s Page header and Page footer, as plain text. Page numbers are not needed: Cadre numbers every page itself.

Macro-enabled Word files (.docm) and older .doc files are refused. Save as .docx first.

Upload a PDF

Select Upload a PDF, choose the file, enter a Name and choose a Category, then select Upload.
In the editor, choose the signers under Signers, in order.
Under Fields on the pages, choose what to Place (Signature, Full name, Date signed or Initials) and For which signer, then click the page where it goes. Drag a field to move it, or select it and use the arrow keys. Delete removes it.
Select Save fields and signers.

A PDF can be up to 10 MB and 50 pages. Password-protected PDFs, and PDFs with scripts or forms that send data, are refused. Pages stored rotated are shown upright, and you place fields as you see them.

Every signer needs a signature field before the template can be sent. When everyone has signed, Cadre draws each field in its place and adds a page of signature evidence. Nothing else in the PDF changes, and no letterhead is added.

Letterhead, header and footer

Your organisation’s letterhead is set under Settings → Organisation → Documents. It is off until you turn it on. It can carry your logo, an address block of up to six lines at the top right of the first page, a one-line footer on every page, and rules in your accent colour. See Organisation and branding.

In each text template, under Sending:

Print the organisation’s letterhead on documents from this template turns the letterhead on or off for this template.
Footer for this template replaces the letterhead’s footer with one line of your own.
Page header (up to six lines) and Page footer (up to two lines) print on every page, but only when Print this header and footer on every page is ticked and no letterhead heads the document. When the letterhead is on, it wins.

The letterhead is always the legal employer’s. At an agency, a document for a worker employed by a client prints the client’s letterhead, never the agency’s.

Signers

Each template has default signers, which you can change when you send. Each signer is one of:

Employee: the person the document is about. They are always one of the signers, and sign once.
Line manager: the employee’s manager at the time it is sent.
Named member: a particular member of your organisation.
Anyone with a role: the first member holding that role to sign, for example any HR admin. The employee never fills this place.

A document can have up to six signers, and nobody can fill two places.

Signers sign one at a time, in order. Tick Signs together with the signer above to put signers in the same stage: they are asked at the same time and sign in any order, and the next stage is asked once all of them have signed.

Preview before you save

Under Preview, choose an Employee to fill in their details, or leave it empty to see it with sample data, then select Preview. Cadre makes the PDF exactly as it would be sent, from the text as it is in the editor, saved or not.

A preview with sample data is marked Specimen — sample data.
A preview for an employee lists any details that are missing for them.
Every page is marked as a preview, not sent for signature.

Nothing is saved or sent. If you change the text afterwards, select Preview again to see the change.