# Email templates: write the email once

Version 0.34.0, released 2026-03-13. Source: https://vektortms.com/releases/email-templates

> Keep the subject and body you send with a rate confirmation or a dispatch sheet as a template, with placeholders for the order number, the lane, the carrier and the rate. Pick it when you send, or mark it default and it arrives already filled in.

![Email templates: write the email once](https://storage.googleapis.com/vektor-public-storage/changelog/ea6a11d0-4ed5-4f20-89e0-f5ea38599145.webp)

Sending a rate confirmation is the same email every time, with four things changed: the carrier, the order number, the lane and the rate. Typing it out again forty times a week is how a detail ends up in the wrong place, and how two dispatchers end up sounding like two different companies.

The dashboard now keeps that email as a template.

## What changed

**Settings / Mailing has a Mail Templates tab, with one list per kind of email.** Each kind has its own templates, its own count and its own set of placeholders.

![One list per kind of email. Each template shows who it is for and which one is the default.](https://storage.googleapis.com/vektor-public-storage/changelog/814b4a2d-ef4a-41ae-8762-0bb8faffd5ea.webp "One list per kind of email. Each template shows who it is for and which one is the default.")

- **A template is a name, a subject and a body.** Both the subject and the body are ordinary text with placeholders in braces, so `Rate Con #{friendlyId} {lane} / {companyName}` goes out as `Rate Con #730 (Stanwood, MI -> Janesville, WI) / Freight Lama`.
- **The placeholders sit under the body, and you click one to drop it in at the cursor.** A rate confirmation has 28 of them: the order and reference numbers, origin and destination with their states, the route and the total miles, the pickup and delivery dates, the rate total and the amount due, the carrier's name, email, phone, MC and DOT, the dispatcher sending it, and your own company details. A placeholder the template already uses is outlined, so you can see at a glance what the email pulls in. Right-click copies one instead of inserting it.
- **A preview beside the editor fills the template in with a real order.** Choose an order and you read the email as the recipient will get it: the subject line, who it is from, who it is going to, and the body with every placeholder resolved. No test send needed to check your wording.
- **Each template says who it is for.** All carriers, or a named list of them; for a dispatch sheet, named drivers or a whole driver type. The list carries that in its own column, so a customer who insists on their own wording gets their own template and nobody else's email changes.
- **One template in each list is the default**, and that is the one already filled in when you go to send. Change order sets the order the rest are listed in.

**At send time the template is one field.** Press Send on a rate confirmation and the Email Template field is already on the default, with the subject and the body carrying the order number, the lane and the carrier's name for this order.

![Sending a rate confirmation: the default template is already picked, and the subject and body carry this order's number, lane and carrier.](https://storage.googleapis.com/vektor-public-storage/changelog/5f6c2773-4288-4842-bc1b-5691a9eddbed.webp "Sending a rate confirmation: the default template is already picked, and the subject and body carry this order's number, lane and carrier.")

Edit either one before you send if this order needs a note. The template itself stays as it was, ready for the next one.

## Why it matters

- **The same wording every time.** The email your company sends does not depend on who is at the keyboard, or on how their morning is going.
- **No retyping.** The customer's name, the order number and the lane arrive filled in. You read the email and press send.
- **One place to change it.** New phone number, new sign-off, a broker who wants the reference number in the subject: edit the template once instead of remembering it on every send.

## How to use it

Open **Settings / Mailing**, switch to **Mail Templates**, pick the kind of email on the left and press **Add**. Write the subject and the body, clicking a placeholder wherever a detail from the order belongs, and check the preview on the right against a real order. Tick **Default** on the one you want filled in for you. The next time you send, it is already there.