Create an Effective Invoice Design Excel for Research and Development

Invoice design excel for Research and Development

here I'm going to show you how to create a dynamic invoice for Excel and that means that every time you add an item down here a new line will be added for the next item so that you don't have a bunch of these empty rows like this instead it will look like this and every time we go to add another item let's say for Nexus 7 it will automatically add another row and when we're done over here hit enter and we can go to add another item so it makes adding items to the invoice much much easier and when we go to print it it's going to look much better without having all of these extra rows and down here if you want to add a new row you have to right click and add the row if you want to remove it you have to do the same thing but over here all that we have to do delete it and it's gone delete it and it's gone and I'm going to show you how to do it using a table like we have right here and we can change the formatting don't worry and where we have no table like this example right here it's going to work the same as the table example just slightly different formatting and the best part about all of this is that it requires only a single very simple line of VBA and I'm going to show you exactly how to add that and this video is made possible by my full Excel courses that I have on teachexcel.com there I've got a very good VBA and macro course that is going to show you how to automate your workbook in so many different ways to make your life so much easier check the link below this video and you can get a preview of that course as well as check out all of the tutorials that are in it which is well over 200. but now let's get back to this tutorial and let's go over here with our working invoice so the original invoice is exactly the same as the invoice working we just have grid lines that are visible so if I go to view and remove it's the same thing but we are going to start here so what I want you to do is to get your invoice template whatever you use there are only about a million different variations so get yours then all that we have to do add a bunch of rows the maximum amount that we are ever going to use and I am in fact going to add a few here so right click insert and control y to add one more to repeat that action then let's go over here we have a very simple formula and I want to copy that down make sure everything looks good and make sure that all of your formulas down here have updated so we want this to work for every single possible row but we want these values to simply be empty and before we move on make sure that everything is a working correctly so input some values make sure it updates everything looks good then we can go ahead and clear it out and the Magic The Magic is going to be a helper column helper columns are life and all that we want to do here let's make it a little bit bigger is a very simple formula and what I want to do is to input a 1 or a 0 over here we want to Output a 1 if the line above it has values in it there are many ways to check that I like a very simple Len so let's go equals if open parentheses l e n to check the length of the cell and I'm going to use the description column close that up check if the length is greater than zero that means there's something in it we output a one if there's nothing output a zero close it up enter and we shall copy it down so we have a one if there's a value in the row and a one if we are the next empty row and notice this is zero right now but if I input the next is 7 it becomes one and that's how we're going to show the next row when I remove it goes back to zero so the very next thing is to select everything go to a data and filter then we want to go over to the helper column click the drop down arrow and uncheck zero hit OK and there we go notice we have 14 15 16 and then 25. but the problem is that when I go and input a value here it is not automatically going to show the next row I need to have the filter update we could do that by hand one simple way is to go over here hit OK and it'll update and show the next row because there's a one here in the helper column for that row but we want to happen automatically so let's go here delete that and now we need one simple line of code and what we can do is a right click this tab invoice working go to view code and up here in general click a worksheet and for selection change just select change then we can delete this and we input one simple line of code me period Auto filter period apply filter then we can hit alt f11 to go back to the worksheet and and Nexus 7 tab there we go and that's it one simple line of code this guy right here combined with a filter and the helper column but now let's make it look a little bit nicer go back to the worksheet alt f11 and right click the helper column and click hide and of course you want to make sure that you don't have anything above or below that helper column or it will also be hidden and one more thing I'm going to do so it will look a little bit nicer is remove the grid lines and now let's delete that that's so cool and let's go Nexus 7 tab five each one is ten thousand enter now I'm ready to input Nexus 8 and continue on and on so it's easy it's fast and it looks much much better especially when you go to print it and you don't have to worry about right clicking and inserting or right clicking and deleting rows for your invoice now that's all there is to do if you just want to have a simple filter like this but if you do have a table so like this I'm going to show you how to add that right now and it's almost exactly the same we just have to do a little tiny bit more for the code what I'm going to do first is let's bring the grid lines back and unhide this column and remove the filter all right and let us take the filter out okay so you have it like this you want to make it into a table a very simple select everything that you want to be a table and go to insert table or control T make sure my table has headers has been checked hit OK and now we have a table and the next thing to do is to apply the filter of course you can double check all the formulas to make sure they are okay so we will click the arrow and the zero is off the screen I'm just going to deselect the rows with zero hit OK there we go and let's go to table design you can play around with the table Styles over here or completely remove them of course it's off the screen right now but you have many many many many options we'll stick with the blue but what I do like to do is to remove the filter button makes it look a little bit nicer I think and then we can right click the helper column hide that guy now we only need to update the VBA code and then we are done but to do that let's figure out the name of this table so we can go back to table design and under table name it is table two let's rename that to TBL invoice 2 because we already have a TBL invoice so you want to give it a descriptive name started with TBL good idea not required though just make sure that you get the name enter and now when we click away we can verify that it has changed table invoice Two Perfect now right click the tab view code and we are going to comment this guy out with a single quotation mark and make another one me dot list objects that's what a table technically is TBL invoice to the name we just gave it dot Auto filter dot apply filter so slight change to code but not too difficult then alt f11 to go back here and let us try it out to remove Nexus 8 perfect add Nexus 8. perfect and make sure it works perfect and of course don't forget to remove the grid lines and change any other formatting that you want and now you have a nice neat Dynamic invoice with a very little VBA code required but remember this is just the tip of the iceberg for what you can do with VBA and macros automating your workbooks will make your life so much easier and it's going to save you hours of time every week I highly recommend that you check out my full VBA course and see if it's something you'd be interested in I've got a preview video for it at the link below this video and you can give it a look and see if you'd like to take the course or if you have any questions about it you can always message me from teachexcel.com for this tutorial and that's all there is don't forget to like subscribe and hit the Bell icon so you can get all of my new tutorials in the future