Receipts and documents · Step 6 of 6
Point Mich at your own Word templates and decide where generated files are filed.
Receipts are merged from your documents, so they carry your letterhead and your wording.
Go to Settings, then Templates & Folders.
The template currently in use is shown (A); Choose File (B) replaces it.
There is a template per document type: donation receipt, in-kind receipt, pledge payment receipt and pledge acknowledgment. Mich ships a working default for each, so you can start immediately and replace them when you are ready.
A template is an ordinary Word document with {{TOKEN}} placeholders where Mich should substitute data. There are 185 of them, covering the donor, the gift, your organization, and running totals such as lifetime giving and year-to-date.
The String Mapping tab lists every token with live sample data beside it, so you can see what each produces before committing it to a template. Click any token to copy it.
A token can be written three ways, depending on what you want to happen when the field is empty. The next section covers all three; the tab carries the same summary above its list.
Some fields are genuinely empty for some records. A donor with no address on file, a gift with no payment method recorded, a pledge with no next payment due.
Say your template has this line, and the gift has no payment method:
Method: {{DON_METHOD}}There are three ways to write it, and they differ in how much disappears:
| You write | If the method is missing | If it is present |
|---|---|---|
Method: {{DON_METHOD}} | Method: N/A | Method: Check |
Method: {{DON_METHOD?}} | Method: | Method: Check |
{{#DON_METHOD}}Method: {{DON_METHOD}}{{/DON_METHOD}} | nothing at all | Method: Check |
The plain form is the default for a reason. A missing value shows as N/A, so a gap in your records is visible on the document rather than silently absent. Use the other two when you have decided that is not what you want.
Add ? when an N/A would read as noise. It prints the value or nothing — useful mid-sentence, where there is no label to worry about:
{{DONOR_CITY}} {{DONOR_STATE?}} {{DONOR_ZIP}}A donor with no state gets Ashford 12401 rather than Ashford N/A 12401.
Use the # / pair when your own words have to go too. This is the one thing ? cannot do. In Method: {{DON_METHOD?}} the word "Method", the colon and the table row around them are yours, not Mich's — so they still print, and you are left with a label pointing at nothing. Only the pair takes them with it.
The bundled templates use the pair for the donor's address lines, the optional organization footer fields, and the contextual rows such as method, designation and next payment due — so you will meet it the first time you open one to edit.
Three things to know about the pair:
{{#DON_METHOD}} opens and {{/DON_METHOD}} closes. A marker with no partner is left in place rather than guessed at, so a stray {{/...}} will print on the receipt.?. There is no list of which tokens qualify, because they all do.
Choose the output folder (A) and how documents are arranged within it: a sub-folder per year (B), and a sub-folder per document type (C). Both together file a receipt under 2026 / receipt.
Paths are stored relative to that folder. Move the folder, update the setting, and every "open" link keeps working with no database change. Changing the folder offers to move or copy the existing files for you.