Designing Invoice Forms
Anyone have any tricks and techniques for custom invoice/quote designing. Getting things aligned properly is hard, would like to know if anyone has any tricks.
Anyone have any tricks and techniques for custom invoice/quote designing. Getting things aligned properly is hard, would like to know if anyone has any tricks.
Comments
Can't wait to hear if anyone has some tricks! But if you need any help, just let me know, Mike!
I asked around the office here, and I'll see if I can get more, but one trick someone mentioned was for Quotes and using "Good, Better, Best" style.
So, you may want to have three different prices on your Quote, but you don't want to see the Total at the bottom, since it will compound all the items and give you a grand total for all three: Good, Better, Best.
Instead, what you can do, is go into the Layout Designer and modify the "Total" block so that the Font Color is "white."
This will result in all the prices being hidden, unless of course you print on dark paper, lol.
Pretty neat trick that can be applied in any scenario where you want to "hide" something on a Printed Invoice; just set that field to print in white!
The biggest struggle I am having is getting items centered in boxes. If you could align the text vertically and horizontally, it would make life easier, then you can just make your text box as big as your block and center vertically. Right now you can only center horizontally.
Couldn't agree more!
That being said, I have more more tips!
If you use the arrow keys on your keyboard, you'll be able to move items more accurately.
Also, for fine print, type all of it in word and then blow up the text to normal size and screenshot the text using a program such as Greenshot (it's free). Then you'll import that image into your document, just like you would your logo, and then align the image (fine print) somewhere you want it on the form and then increase/adjust the size of the image so you can see your fine print.
And, right clicking on the main body of the Parts, Descriptions, Price Field, will allow you to hide or show columns, as well as re-order them.
Arrow keys is amazing, how easy is that.
Mike,
Use the line tool and draw a straight horizontal line across the page, align to it, then delete the line. Yes, it's clunky, but at least the end result doesn't look like it was done by a 3 year old.
Rick.
Line tool is awesome! Once you have that down, it's really handy to make some very professional, sectioned off, areas - Frames.
Glad you like the Arrow Key trick, Mike!
Scott
It would also be handy to be able to add a text box, not just a text line.
The other thought I had, seeing as we can export reports to excel, there is obviously a cross functionality at work, so make the form design template look like an excel spreadsheet, so you can just put borders on cells, and align within each cell.
Great feedback, Mike, thanks!
Mike,
While I appreciate the ability to export reports and data, have you tried it? The export program, which I don't think dESCo wrote, is a formatting nightmare. Generally if I export a report, I just want raw data so I can manipulate it. The Excel exports have an attempt at making the data resemble a finished report, with merged cells, extra cells, etc.. So step 2 after the export is trying to strip all the crap out of the spreadsheet so you can actually use the data.
If you actually just want that report, you're better off with the reports within ESC.
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