Customize Invoices in QuickBooks Online for Management

Customize invoices in quickbooks online for Management

and let's talk about customizing invoices so if you were gonna set up a brand-new QuickBooks Online account and you were to do nothing in terms of customization your invoices would look pretty standard this one standard look for the invoices so when you click on the quick create button which is that circle with a plus sign and then you go down to invoices okay that's gonna open up a brand new invoice that's the screen that we do to create a brand new invoice some we're gonna first start with a standard invoice so I'm gonna click here where it says customize on the bottom of the screen and I notice that this says standard this is the standard invoice that was set up by default so if you want to create a new brand new style or a brand new template you would click on new style so once we click on new style we click on yes okay and in in this one we're gonna be able to give it a name again this is only quickbooks online so only quickbooks online okay so we're gonna give this a name we're gonna call it template one invoice okay then the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna click on where it says dive in with template there's five standard styles or template that QuickBooks gives you one is called the Erie classic which is this one that you see here the other one is called modern which is that one that you see there the third one is called fresh which kind of gives that a gray background a little bit like a sort of a light gray background that we have bold which gives it a basically are color background and then we have friendly okay so you have to pick from those in order to figure out which is the one that you like the best so we'll pick that same modern so we'll start with modern then we're gonna click on add unique logo so we're gonna click on the add logo button and then we're gonna go look for a picture or a logo in you know computer somewhere so I'm gonna find a headshot of myself and we'll make that the logo okay and then that takes usually a few seconds to process then I'll click on save I noticed our QuickBooks automatically puts the logo on the top right of the screen now I can change the placement so there's a couple buttons I can press here to change the placement so I can choose where I want it so I'm going to put it on the Left I can also go small medium or large so that's a small most much customization we have with a logo anyway then we're gonna click on splash some color we're gonna pick basically a color theme all right so I can go through the different colors and pick the color theme that makes the most sense usually you want to match that you might want match your logo or match one of the colors of your logo it's really up to you what you want to do here I'm gonna go in and pick the bright red one here for now then we're gonna click on get juicy with funds and then we'll there's basically four fun choices here so I'll pick Helvetica and I'll pick 12-point but I have four I mean three point sizes and for a font options then when it says when in doubt printed out that's really asking you about margins so this allows you to change your margins up so I'll show you I'm gonna click on preview PDF so you can see for a second what that looks like and then this is what the PDF would look like right so you have basically a preview of what that looks like if you want to increase those margins that white space at the top on the sides or in the bottom then we're going to change the margin levels in in this screen right here so when we go to edit print settings we can change the margins and if I wanted to give it maybe a three inch margin at the top I can do that and leave that blank space at the top and that would be useful if maybe you're using a letterhead or if you're if for whatever reason you want to have some some space at the top now I'm going to put this back to half an inch there's also fit pre printed form with pay stub window envelope so what this is is this will change the organization of the invoice so you can basically follow the invoice in three and fit it into a window envelope that's what that checkbox means and then use letterhead paper that it's meant to for you to configure it for you for you to have about an inch or so in the letterhead in the top and QuickBooks will not insert your contact information so I'm going to click reset so you can get back get back to normal here and then I'm going to go ahead and click on done okay that's the overall look of the invoice now we can also change these fields like which fields do we want to see in the invoice right so I'm gonna click on customize again and I'm going to click on edit current ok actually then we go back for a second let me go back and I'm gonna change the templates I'm gonna click on customize change it to my template number one I have to be on that and then I'll click on edit current because I need to be on that template in order to be able to edit so we're gonna go to content inside content you can have three boxes you have the header box at the top we have the table box in the middle which is often referred to as the columns then we have the footer box in the bottom so based on you know what which area you want to edit you would just click on the one that you want to edit so I'm gonna click on the top one first and then I'm gonna add a phone number I can change the company name I can change the email I can click on address and modify the address if I want to I can hide country right because it says US I can hide the country and I can modify the website remove the website if I want to so I have total flexibility there also if I don't want this to say invoice and I wanted to say something else let's say final invoice or pro forma invoice whatever I want I could certainly do that just by changing that that number up there that name up there now we also have the phone number so that's the invoice number that you see right here where it says final invoice number I can uncheck or check that if I want to show the invoice number typically we always show the invoice number and also it says custom transaction numbers that allows me to edit or modify the invoice number before I print it up before I mail it so if I don't click on custom transaction numbers QuickBooks will assign a default invoice number if I click on this check box I'll be able to change that if I want to now notice that you can also change enable or disable the shipping address the terms and the due date so all these things can be added or removed if I want to okay so no all these things can be added or removed if I want to okay so that's where those boxes there then we have custom fields and I'm gonna click on manage custom fields and that's gonna take me to the custom fields screen now this is only available in QuickBooks Online advanced this is the most expensive version of QuickBooks is about one hundred and fifty dollars a month if you want to create custom fields you would have to be on this edition anyway let me go back to the invoices again and edit the template okay so I'm not gonna mess with the custom fields cuz custom fields might require an entire webinar dedicated to talking about why you would need them and how they would be useful so that's the custom fields area so I'm gonna click on the second area in the middle which is the table and this is where I can show if I want to show an account summary so notice that I can do an account summary so if this customer owes me for multiple invoices in the past do I want to show the current invoice plus anything that they owe me in the past so that's this check box is for then we have this columns section I can mess with a width in each of these so if I want to make any of these columns wider skinnier thinner or whatever like I have some flexibility there of course you know it's restricted to how many columns yeah been there I can also disable some of these columns so if I don't want to see a date associated with each specific line item I could disable that if I want to include the description of the item as well under the item name I can click on that if I don't click on this box then it would be a separate call them all together so I have a couple of choices I can I have a separate description column or I can have a description under the item name so you got total flexibility on on the one that makes the most sense for you then I have their quantity and rate and I can include that or exclude that if I want to I can also change the order so if I wanted the quantity to be the first one all the way in the top I can just change the order of these things until we get to the order that we want so I can move the I can move some of these columns in order and change what I want them so I can change this columns around based on what I want them just by dragging up and down I can I can also click here says show more activities and this is more complex stuff this has to do with whether you have items if you want to group them based on everything you did it based on the day assuming that you're using a timesheet to create an invoice you can collapse the multiple rows if they all have the same date you can do progress invoicing lines that's only if you want to show that you can show markup if you're charging for billable time and materials are we can show maybe if we have time today we'll talk about that if not I will save it for another webinar and then we can include the employee's name if we are billing from a timesheet so these activity options has to do with when I'm using time and materials to create invoices for now I will hide that and if we have time we'll cover that so that's the customization of that table then under in the footer I have a couple of things that can enable I can enable discount which allows me to just add a percentage discount onto the invoice I can add a deposit box if I want to have the invoice show you know as part of the calculation deposits that were received with the first invoice and we have state estimate summary that's only when you have an estimate before the invoice that's attached together so that's what that checkbox is for then message to customers here at the bottom I can say thank you please send payment aisa right and then I could also add another additional text I can say 30-day money-back warranty call 1-800 Hector for service right so whatever is said that we want to add we can add that in there and we can you know left adjust it or right adjust it or Center adjust it so on the footer we have two two sections where we can type information all right that customer message and the additional folder then we're gonna click on emails this is a very important tab this is for the template itself so this is where I decide whether I want to have the default text or type my own text so I can say something like you know thank you for your business your product has been shipped please pay ASAP write whatever you want so that's the default message that it's gonna show up every time you you create an invoice okay you can also change the subject so you can say your ship product invoice okay so something like that right so I can add that in there as the subject line so whatever you want to put there I'm gonna put here from Hector Garcia okay so this becomes the default message that shows up in the subject line this becomes the default message that shows up on the body of the email up here on the top I can choose to attach a PDF version of the invoice or not if I don't attach a PDF version then it would just be this digital HTML email version so I recommend that you are always attached to PDF just in case because you will notice that some of your customers are gonna have some are going to want to save the PDFs for whatever reason people have their own reasons I don't want to do this obviously you want to give them a chance to do that then another reminder email you can say you can type what you want the default text to be when you send your customer a reminder having paid so we can say hey we have not received payment please pay ASAP or set up a payment plan to avoid collections right whatever it is that you wanna type so this text has to do with reminders which are different than emailing invoices we'll cover that so we'll cover that pretty soon okay so that would be it and then we have payments now this checkbox here which is a lot of what we'll be talking about today it has to do with how great enabling payments in quickbooks online is this has to do on whether or not you want the customer to see a little pay now button so if you want your customers to see a Pay Now button or pay invoice button in the in in the message of the invoice so you see that pay invoice green button if I disable this you don't get that so you have to enable it here but before you can enable it here you have to enable it in the account as as a whole so we'll cover what the process is to enable payments but this is where in the template of the invoice you can choose whether or not you want to see that Pay Now button I spotted your default template okay so then we're gonna click on preview PDF so we can see what that looks like and that's which others see that so that's what that looks like that so the PDF looks like we see the 30-day money-back guarantee message at the bottom we see the customer message we see description product name all the fields that we turned on the custom fields built to address ship to address header information logo information about subtotal all that information in there so they'll be reading clothes done and share the screen again and that will be it will go ahead and click on done so that's as much customization as we get when we create an invoice so let me show you what that looks like I'm gonna create a new invoice here and I'm going to disable online payments for a second just so you can see what invoice looks like when you send it to your customer so I'm gonna send the customer an invoice for $1,500 I'm not gonna enable payments for the time being which is these check boxes here because this is the default way that QuickBooks is quickbooks doesn't have electronic payments by default so when i click on save and send and then you see the default message that we wrote so this has to do with the default message that we wrote we have the default subject line that we wrote notice that online payments is unchecked and then I'm gonna click on send and close so I'm going to switch over to my email where I send that to so you just so you can see what the invoice looks like when your customer gets that invoice so okay so this is what the email looks like here's a subject line here's the person the company that sent it here's the - which is this was my customer that we have the name of the company appear we have the text we have the amount - we have the information of the invoice in the details all the way in the bottom we see a PDF so they can download the PDF and view the PDF as well and then they have a print or save button they don't have a Pay Now button because we haven't enabled payments yet so this is the default way that QuickBooks presents invoices via email