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Invoice template in google docs for Research and Development

greetings salutations and all good things in between what's up everyone matt here so one of the most common requests for information i get is about email templates what can i do what can i do how can i get it to work uh yeah what do you do to make it look nice and this that whatever um so in this video i'm gonna go over i have some modifications i need to do to my workflow template i'm gonna bring you along for the ride let's do this okay so what actually happened is i sent an email off to a client with an invoice inside it and the invoice is actually generated from an app sheet app that i have that i've built over the years and if you're a patreon supporter of mine you can get access to this it's ttiota if you just search for that you'll find it it's a sample app you can copy there's a couple of versions of it there's a single company version and a multi-company version so if you want to use it for multi anyways so uh i sent an e an invoice to a client and they came back and they said hey can you update the invoice so that it includes the company name and our address and i got and it got me thinking i was like wait a minute not in there already now when i looked no turns out nowhere on the invoice that i'm generating does is there anything that indicates who this is supposed to go to whoops my bad so i need to modify this email template so that it's got a space that says you know like who is this too um now i have these columns i have columns inside my table right i have a client table that's got the name of the client i've got a project name and like so i have all of this detail already available i just need to put a space inside my workflow template to display that information like at the top of the the email um so this is like the like one of the final outputs what it can look like and what i want to do is so i know that like if you look here you can see there's clearly like a box and so like there's another line so like this box continues like this um so like i know and if we go to the template can show you this um right so i've got a table right here and there's just another another column over here on the side that's empty there's nothing inside it and you can see underneath so i've got like there's this box that says you know the invoice type amount is due or void or whatever what not and then how much it's supposed to be um if we go back to the file right so you can see that's this box here and then there's between between this box and this header for this right go back here there's some stuff that conditionally shows up so if i have bill two details they will show up and if i have make payable to they will show up and they're inside this little table right here that you you can kind of see right um so i've got a table here that's conditional i've got a line i've got this little thing that says build to invoice details oh that's the also all of that is wrapped inside an if statement right so if there is neither of those this whole section just doesn't show and that's why there's nothing there but like i want to take over this white space right here and i want to put inside there who this is supposed to go to because it's got my information up here and i want to put theirs right here so if i go back here right so like this is just a table and this is just um so like if i make the columns temporary i don't want to do that it'll mess up my it'll mess up this nice little outline that i've got that's isolated by itself so um but like right so here's a column oops did i insert that no okay yeah so there's the this is one giant one and then up here if you look up in the header right i've got one two three columns so this is just for spacing but this is what i want so like in here i want to do something like two and i'm gonna make this bold and like okay so i go back to my app and so all of this executes from the invoices perspective so what i want then yeah is i want to pull the client name from the client table yep so that all right so that gets me the client name um see what else um yeah and their address and their phone and their website i basically kind of want to reconstruct this type of thing but for them so like okay maybe what i want to do is like i'll drop this down leave that there and like leave this here like this and do something like this mirror something like this and this would be like from turn off the bold and then yeah something not what i wanted and like drop that down like that and maybe like that okay but that's going to make this which is three lines right now grow to one so it'll grow from doubling in size which is going to push all of this further down um yeah no yeah we'll see what it looks like maybe i'll get rid of this one extra little space here yeah in fact i think i will do that and i wonder if i can get away with trying nope um okay so if i hard break that can i move this line by itself yep okay yeah there we go sit right at 25 man that's a little too far there we go i could do i i can i can deal with that so it's going to be a hard a hard break for this and we'll put back this to that there we go now to look similar okay and then do a shift enter just to get to a new line in the same paragraph because i want to recreate essentially this so like now i want to do like phone [Music] but i want to wrap this and then if and then like is not blank the phone and then be like phone phone yeah and then and diff so if is not blank now i could go find the name of the phone okay it needs to be a d reference so it needs to be like client link dot phone so like that so if is not blank clientlink dot phone dot client phone then [Music] okay and then this needs to be like that so if it's not like that and then it'll show this and so we'll have phone [Music] with a space and then the client's phone number and then that's it okay that line won't exist if there is no phone okay and then i want the email okay so i need to do the same type of thing like this where i need like the whole thing but i want the email um let's see i have i have like [Music] i thought i had a current contact in here rotated users related contacts i don't see their current contact here we go oh i made it an actual comma uh an actual thing okay so i'll have to [Music] chaining draft oh chaining d references check out the documentation for that it's fun stuff now the chaining deref to get whatever the current contacts email is okay so uh yeah so i think the thing that i really want to do is i want to do like the client name the client's phone the client's address yeah so i'll do like phone do their address if it exists so i guess i need to do this whole line essentially over again but change this first of the phone to the address yeah all right it's getting a little muddy inside here getting a little hard to keep things separated so i'm going to temporarily space everything out so i've got the name i've got the phone i've got the address and then underneath that i want their web address if they have it like if i have that in their thing it will make this look nice you know um yeah so we have the client name their phone the i can get rid of this little placeholder thing at the front so i just want their address on the address line and their website yep here we go that's all i want what i want to do kind of clean that up all right so let's excuse me let's go try this and see what it does right so go back to my app and all i need to do i don't need to save or update or do nothing because as long as it's long as everything's correct right let me just check really quick make sure syntax is good i'm not missing any closing parentheses i'm not missing an end yep see like this end if is missing one of its little closing carrot things which means this one is two so if is not blank this that whatever yep client that's that whatever yep fine website fine okay good thing i did that final check all right so now yeah like i said i don't need to go through and do like any kind like i don't need to come over here and mess with this or do anything don't need to do it all i need to do is trigger the that template to get used so like i'm gonna come in here this is that this is that invoice that i opened earlier and i want to update the invoice all right so if you see it when you're when you're doing something like this all right you see how long it takes it's taking that's a good sign you see still taking a long time all right that's a good sign whenever you're testing a uh an email template or like if you're making a pdf or making a file or anytime that you're doing something like see it's still it's still sitting there chewing on it like anytime that you see something where you're trying to get it to make a file or update something like that and it takes a while for that sync to go through that's usually a good sign that means that the system's actually doing something you know what i mean and your thing's probably gonna happen if it just stops right away you probably encountered an error and you need to go back and look so since that took forever to process um let's see if this updated the file okay now that so helpful hint the the links that you have inside of your app sheet app they technically contain a link to like a cached version of the file so like when you load the app the app downloads everything that it needs and it stores it on your device right okay uh that link that's inside there that i'm kind of hovering above right here this guy like that is the cached version and in 24 hours somewhere in there like it's less than that i don't know what the exact number is but like in 24 hours the new version of the file will appear um if you go to your google drive and you look in the folder where the file was saved the new file is there the file is updated it's 100 like it's supposed to be it's just when you click the link inside your app sheet app that link is to the cached version inside the app so just fyi that's why when i clicked on it it took me to something that looks exactly like the original one which is up here um but if i navigate to the file where folder where it was saved so now i gotta i'm gonna find i gotta find the individual thing right so let's see if i go here uh okay so it's just inside invoice files and then it's just creating the invoice yeah so the folder is literally just inside an invoice files i'm not folderizing this oh my god that needs to be put in all right so if i go to my google drive and i search for this folder forgive me as i do this off screen okay so i found it now and so what i got to do now is i need to find this invoice files folder yep okay sort this by last modified come on come on come on come on okay or not um man i'm not there we go google is not working for me right now i don't want the drop down oh there you go okay all right here we go yeah there we go and if i open this and another thing here we go boom there we go so same invoice right it's this 4410 that's like a test invoice i just threw a whole bunch of stuff inside here to see what it what it would look like if it was big right uh you've got this from multi-tech visions the setting whatever up at the top you have a two multi-tech visions yeah because this is the the the client is a test client which is me so totally makes sense but yeah no you could totally see it so like you know what i mean like this is all my info and then this is all the info that i pulled from my client reference so like if i go back to this template right so i typed in all of this from stuff and all of this other stuff down here was programmatically derived using all of the client name the client phone the client address oh yeah so the address is inside there yep because i got an address inside the thing and the website that actually looks that actually looks alright the thing that i might do is move this into this blank section right here because i know that it's it's relatively gonna fit and like i can move this over i didn't break anything no okay so like i can move that over and like i could can i smush it even more okay like how close can i get to that and then take all of this and just boop drop it in there [Music] all right okay so now what is that let me make sure that's empty okay so now if i do that what does this look like now okay so now i just made a test so this is the cool thing about workflows like this as long as you're not as long as you don't break it you know what i mean like as long as you don't remove one of the necessary carrots or like like i just moved everything as long as i made sure that i moved everything and there was nothing left over like i didn't break it i just kind of moved stuff around and so the cool thing is that you don't have to do a full refresh of your app or anything you just literally need to go and run the thing again that's what i love about it it makes it so easy to test the changes in your workflow because you don't have to go through like a save your app sheet or nothing you just go back to your app and trigger it again wait for it to upload the thing that takes forever the thing you do have to wait for is gotta wait for it to do wait for it to actually process and come up with its thing and do what it's supposed to um all right so this is what it looks like now right and then okay it's done so now i'm in my uh if i go back to my google drive and i see yep just updated so this is a new version yep there it is there's a new one if i open this in a new window now you can see what it looks like so clearly you know i need a little a little cleanup here a little formatting so that like i you know this doesn't or there's really nothing i can do to avoid that sort of thing because it's gonna happen no matter what um because their url for their website could be really long you know that could encompass three three just same thing with the the address you know what i mean like i know one of my clients addresses is a very long string and so it's gonna be like four or five lines inside there um yeah i think i want let's other little things so like it'd be kind of nice if this would float at the top like these are floating at the top and maybe it'd be kind of nice if i could combine these together so you remember like there's a box right here be kind of nice if i could like get that to flood down inside that that would kind of shrink that whole section i don't know if i can because i think these are two separate tables another one okay so maybe if i are these merged unmerged cells yep okay so there you go so now you can see the two separate cells and like can i merge vertically oh that's sweet and then merge vertically okay and then [Music] the line needs to be white yeah and then like this one the line needs to be i can't remember what it was not that one this one there we go okay and then like this cell here if i go to table properties go to the alignment the cell vertical alignment yeah it's at the bottom i want it on the top yeah so this invoice number should be at the same line now as this two versus floating down here so like all of this should smush down and it looks like i could move this over you know whatever however far that is so like even if it doesn't look good on the template it doesn't matter if it doesn't look good on the template like i was saying i could move it like that far so like even though it did that here when i output that uh you know everything gets like a little a little expansion like there's like all the padding gets like a couple more pixels it kind of seems like so you know it doesn't matter what it looks like in the template it matters what it looks like when you do the output um all right so grouped at the top shrunk this back a little bit okay let's run that one more time this is also one of the downsides of working on like when you're trying to make files and all that is that there's no fast way to do this like and if i'm if i have to validate then i have to go back through an app sheet save cycle and so like just this let me see how long it takes for this file to to finish generating itself right so like every time that i make one little change i've got to sit here and fiddle my thumbs there we go it's finally done and now i can go and open the file again this is looking a lot better that's looking a lot better yeah i'm liking that i'm liking that a lot yes a lot all right the only one of the final little bits that i notice is like it seems like this and this maybe you're using a different font size so like i'll grab the format painter and just nope it's the same thing all right fair enough but i do think that i want to shrink these like i could shrink all of this text to like that and do the same thing for mine just make a little smaller and you know if i do that then that means that i could move this over just a little bit more yeah give and give the client to space just a little more just a little more for it all right let's push that but yeah this is starting to look it's starting to shape up and look pretty nice this is a lot better i can't believe that i've i've gone this long like i've been using i've been using this system like this little output this invoice since the beginning and nobody has ever said to me hey man the like the invoice doesn't have my name on it or doesn't have my company's name on it like there's no indication of who this invoice is supposed to go to it's just an invoice at least now there's some information on it okay that's done processing come over here open the file we can see the final see that looks nice i'm liking that that that's looking real nice that's looking real nice yeah so this is what it kind of started as this is what we moved it and then we did this and now it's that looks nice i like it well hey everyone i want to thank you for watching i do appreciate it i hope this gave you some insight on how to work with workflows and this that and this that and whatever inside the thing if you like stuff like this i would appreciate a subscribe if you look at how many subscribers i have i'm getting dangerously close to a thousand be nice to break a thousand all right y'all i'll see you in the community [Music] you