Updated Aug 25, 2023
Personalize your client experience without manual work by adding smart fields to your form. After the form is added to your client’s project, those smart fields autofill client and project details!
What are smart fields?
A smart field is a text placeholder used in form templates and canned emails that will autofill when added to a project. Dubsado smart fields can be identified by their double curly braces.
For example, if you use the smart field {{client.name}} in a contract template and then send that contract through a project, the smart field will be replaced by the client's first and last name.
Here are some examples of what can be autofilled in a form with smart fields:
Client contact information
Your business contact information
Invoice details
Today's date
Package details (within a package element on a proposal)
For a full list of every smart field available, check out our smart field reference guide. Please note that not all smart fields on the list can be used in form templates.
Insert a smart field on a form
Go to Templates >> Forms and open a form.
Click or drag the Text Box element. A text box will appear in your form.
In your form, double-click on the text box to edit.
Click on the area in the text where you would like to insert the smart field.
From the toolbar, click Smart Field.
Select a smart field. The smart field will be inserted into the text box. For a full list of every smart field available, check out our Smart field reference guide.
While editing your template, most smart fields will not populate with any information. This is because the form has not yet been added to a project and does not have any information to display.
Smart fields and your process
For a smart field to autofill a client's name or an invoice total, that information must already exist within the project where you're sending the form. Otherwise, the smart field will have no data to pull from and appear blank.
This means that the order of the steps in your process is very important! For example, if you want the project date to appear on your contract, you’ll need to collect the project date on another form (with a mapped field) or manually set it on the project before sending out the contract.
Pay close attention to the sequence of sending your forms and emails to ensure that any smart field being used will have information to pull from.
Avoid smart field errors
When a smart field has not been inserted correctly, it may be invalid. An invalid smart field in a form will appear blank and not populate any information. To avoid this error:
Always insert a smart field by using the smart field menu in the text editor toolbar.
Never edit a smart field or type it from scratch.
When applying text formatting to a smart field, be sure that the entire smart field is formatted. For example, when underlining a smart field, the underline should be applied to the curly braces as well.
Copying and pasting a smart field will work in certain situations (like adding a smart field to a canned email subject line), but as a rule of thumb, always insert it from the smart field menu!