How to put your letterhead on a PDF
Word templates break, accounting programs export plain PDFs and designers send the letterhead as a PDF anyway. Apply it directly to the finished PDF instead.
Prepare the letterhead once
Ask for (or export) your letterhead as a one-page PDF of the same paper size as your documents, with the logo, colors and footer in place and the rest empty. If the first page should be different, make a two-page PDF: first page and following pages.
Apply it
Open Letterhead / overlay, add your document, choose the letterhead PDF and keep “Behind the content”. With a two-page letterhead choose “Page by page”: page 1 goes on the first page and page 2 repeats on the rest.
If the letterhead does not show
Some programs export pages with an opaque white background that covers anything behind it. Choose “On top of the content” instead: the letterhead is drawn over the document, which works as long as its empty areas are transparent.
Finish the document
Add a header and footer with page numbers, sign it and, if it goes to a public body, convert it to PDF/A.