Offer Letter Template Formatting

11 min

This guide covers tips and tricks to help ensure your offer letters upload and are validated smoothly. For more information on how to upload your templates and generate offer letters from them, check out Offers and Offer LettersOffers and Offer Letters.

Offer letter format

Here are some basics to bear in mind when creating your offer letter template.

Ensure your offer letter template is a .docx file.

There is a size limit of 8MB.

If you are uploading .docx files that have been created or edited in Microsoft Word, ensure that any content controls are removed, as they can affect generated offer letters and e-signature documents.

Use a single font throughout your offer letter template

We recommend using only one font throughout your offer letter.

If Ashby detects multiple fonts, this may cause issues with how the e-signature placeholders render, and you may see placeholders overlapping with signatures.

For more information on e-signatures, check out our E-Signature OffersE-Signature Offers and E-Signature DocumentsE-Signature Documents guides.

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Opening and amending your offer letter template in Pages can automatically change the font of some characters upon saving, which causes the placeholder rendering issue to persist.

Checking your substitution tokens

You can run into errors when validating your template if your substitution tokens haven't been added in correctly. Before uploading your offer letter template, follow these steps:

Search the document for {{ and then }} and make sure the number of results match.

If the number of {{ and }} brackets is not the same, find the missing or incorrect brackets in the document and correct them.

Upload and validate the offer letter template again.

Also search for {{{ and }}} in case an extra bracket has been added by mistake.

When checking over your tokens, also be sure to check they match the tokens on the Offer Tokens page in your Ashby account.

Adding _RAW to the end of any numeric or currency substitution token strips formatting from the field.

For example, a large number MY_FIELD might be formatted as 1,000,000, but MY_FIELD_RAW would be rendered as 1000000.

This can avoid problems when using Word Tables.

Spacing and conditional tokens

If you're opting to use conditional tokens (more on these at Offer and E-Signature Document Conditional TokensOffer Conditional Tokens), to avoid any spacing issues, ensure that the token is added immediately after the previous sentence or paragraph.

Screenshot showing a conditional token placed immediately after the preceding sentence, with no space between them

If you need to add a space, add it after the opening tag of your conditional token, then add your text.

Screenshot showing a space added after the opening tag of a conditional token, followed by the text content

In the case of having two conditional tokens back-to-back, ensure one is listed directly after the other, as pictured.

Screenshot showing two conditional tokens placed directly after each other with no gap between them

If you have line breaks that should only be added as part of the optional text when conditions are met, ensure the line breaks are included after the opening tag and before the closing tag, rather than outside of the conditional token tags.

This example shows a line break both before and after the optional text.

Screenshot showing line breaks placed inside conditional token tags, both before and after the optional text

If you have conditional tokens that will populate additional items in a numbered or bulleted list, ensure that (if needed) any line breaks and the additional information are added after the opening tag and before the closing tag.

Screenshot showing additional list items and line breaks placed inside conditional token tags

Pages that should always start on a new page

If a section must begin on its own page, such as policy acknowledgements, avoid using repeated line breaks created with Enter or Return to push the section onto the next page.

Conditional tokens and multi-line substitution text can expand when Ashby generates the offer. This can shift the document layout and move content between pages. Instead, insert a proper page break immediately before the section that should start on a new page. Keep the page break on its own line, separate from any conditional token, e-signature token, or token with substitution text.

A proper page break keeps the section at the top of a new page even when conditional content or longer substitution text is added.

Screenshot of adding a proper page break into a document

Ensure all comments on the offer letter template are resolved before uploading

Before uploading your offer letter template, ensure that any comments left on the offer letter template are resolved.

If you do not resolve comments on the template document, this can result in errors when creating an offer.

Screenshot of an offer letter template document showing unresolved comments in the comments panel

FAQs

Why is my content showing in the middle of a page?

Conditional tokens and multi-line substitution text can change the amount of space used in the generated offer. If you use repeated line breaks created with Enter or Return instead of a page break, the content can shift and appear in the middle of a page.

To keep a section at the top of a new page, insert a proper page break before the section instead of adding multiple line breaks for spacing. Keep the page break on its own line, separate from any token with substitution text.