Laserfiche Field Formulas - A Magic Potion for Laserfiche Document Templates

By Kyle Knebel

Consultant Corner – October 2026

Laserfiche’s latest version 12 has added something magical to templates when used in the Web Client.  This enhancement is found in the Cloud and On-Premises systems. You can now run field formulas, just like the ones you know from Laserfiche Forms, within a template.

Let’s take a look!

Here are a couple of examples of where Field Formulas might be useful.

1. In Invoice Processing, you may need to set an “Approval Level” based on the invoice amount. Workflow could then use that calculated field for document routing or other Workflow decisions.

2. In Human Resources, you could calculate an “Eligibility” value based on a date field, such that Workflow or staff could review that value to determine if the document needed retention review.

Configuring a field formula begins in the template editor in the Web Repository Administration console. Note: This is not available through the Windows Administration Console.

Select Metadata, then click the Templates tab, then select the check box next to the template that contains the fields you will be using. With the Preview tab selected (the default), look to the right side for the Modify Template (pencil) icon. Pressing this icon will take you into the field designer mode.

Scenario 1:

For our first scenario, let’s take two fields:

1. “Invoice Amount” (a Number field)

2. “Approval Level” (a Text field)

We’d like to have a result like the table below:

Invoice Amount	Approval Level
<1,000	Supervisor Approval
>=1,000	Manager Approval
>=10,000	Executive Approval

Once you have selected the Approval Level field, click on the “Advanced” tab on the right side of the editor screen.

Here’s the field formula that should be in the Approval Level field.

=IF([FIELD("Amount")]>=10000,"Executive Approval",IF([FIELD("Amount")]>=1000,"Manager Approval","Supervisor Approval"))

Make sure your formula begins with an “=” sign. Then you can add the function, either by typing it or clicking on the “Insert function” button. The fields and logic will go inside the parentheses of the function.

It’s best to use the “Insert field” button to add the source field to the formula.

Then choose your “Update Strategy” for the field, deciding if it always updates when the source field changes, or only updates if the field is empty.

Below are sample results one might see on the template.

Note: The formula stays with the template/field combination.  If you were to copy this field onto a different template, the field would not have the formula. It is template-specific.

Scenario 2:

For our last scenario, let’s take two fields:

1. “Document Date” (a Date field)

2. “Eligibility” (a Text field)

   
   

We’d like to have a result like the table below:

Document Date	Eligibility
Older than 7 years from today’s date	Eligible
Less than 7 years from today’s date	Not Eligible

Here’s the field formula that should be in the “Eligibility” field.

=IF(YEAR(TODAY())-YEAR([FIELD("Date")])>=7,"Eligible","Not Eligible")

Below are sample results one might see on the template.

Because these calculations happen right in the template, your workflows don’t have to perform them. Instead, they can use the calculated values to make faster, better decisions and take action. 

We hope you enjoyed learning about Laserfiche’s secret potions to make fields more magical.

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