Many existing transaction forms/templates are available in QuickBooks, such as invoice, sales receipt, estimate, credit memo, purchase order, and so on. There are a few options to customize forms and QuickBooks makes it very easy. You can tweak minor contents, such as company name and address display, or modify the format of the contents.
Three options are available for customizing forms:
1. Basic Customization
2. Additional Customization
3. Layout Designer
We will discuss basic customization below, while the other options will be discussed in the next blog.
Basic Customization
You can access available templates from
• Lists > Templates > click the Templates drop-down menu on the bottom left side and select Edit template, or
• Open any form, for example Create Invoice, and select the Formatting button on the top of the page, select Manage Template and press OK,
to open Basic Customization dialog box.
Manage Templates.
Pressing this will open Manage Templates dialog box to copy, delete, or download templates. You can do basic customization with existing template, but you have to make a copy of existing template if you want to do Additional Customization and Layout Designer.
Logo & Fonts.
Check the Use Logo box if you want to upload your company image and display it in your invoice. Selecting this box will open the Select Image dialog box to allow you to choose image from your source.
Select Colour Scheme.
Click the drop-down arrow to choose available colour and then press Apply Colour Scheme to apply it to your invoice.
Change Font For.
You can select from available menu to change their fonts and press Change Fonts bar to open fonts dialog box. You can then choose font, font style, size, and colour.
Company and Transaction Information.
Check any box to print the information in your invoice and uncheck it if you do not want to print it.
Press Update Information bar if you need to update your company information, such as, address, phone number, etc.
Anything you modify will be displayed in the right Preview pane. To make sure your modification works as you wish, you can also select Print Preview on the bottom right side.
There is no option in My Preferences tab in this Payroll and Employees Preferences. You have to use administrator login to access Company Preferences tab. To open this preferences, select Payroll and Employees from Main Menu > Edit > Preferences:
Full Payroll.
Select Full Payroll for running your payroll where additional subscription is required. Choose options that you prefer by simply checking the boxes, such as “Recall quantity field on pay cheques”, “Recall hour field on pay cheques", and other options.
If you need to modify Paystub and Voucher Printing, click Printing Preferences to open Payroll Printing Preferences dialog box:
You have two options to select printing preferences on:
1. On Pay Cheque Vouchers Only, and
2. On Pay Cheque Vouches and Paystubs.
Just check or uncheck any available option boxes to display or not display them in your printing forms. The screenshot above is the program default.
No Payroll.
If No payroll is selected, all but “Display Employee List By” option and “Mark new employees as sales reps” box will be greyed out. This is automatically selected if you do not subscribe to QuickBooks payroll.
Employee Default.
Press this option to open Employee Default dialog box. For detail explanation of Employee Default, please refer to Setting up Employees: Part I of II
You can email forms (invoice, estimate, sales receipt, purchase order, paystub, etc.) with customized cover notes directly from QuickBooks. This Send Forms Preferences deal with how you can set up and use your email program.
To open Send Forms Preferences, go to Main Menu > Edit > Preferences > Send Forms.
My Preferences
Auto-check the “Email Later” checkbox if customer’s Preferred Delivery method is email.
This box is turned on automatically so that if the customer delivery method in Customer Profile > Payment Settings > Preferred Delivery Method is configured as E-Mail, the Email Later box in respective form is checked. This is to prevent forgetting to email your form.
Send E-mail Using.
You can select Outlook if it’s installed already in your computer and QuickBooks will configure it automatically.
Or, you can select Web Mail > Add which will bring you to Add Email Info dialog box:
Fill in your Email id with your email address and Email Provider. If you select other than available Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail/Live, you have to enter Server Name and Port manually.
Company Preferences
The program populates standard messages for each form available in the Show drop-down menu.
To customize your message in invoice above, you have to Add Template first. Adding template means creating a copy of default template so you can modify its content.
Once you see the copy of the template in the Template Name column, highlight it, and click Edit. You can then change and/or insert field in the content here. Save it when it’s done.
QuickBooks automatically sets this copy template as a default template.
In the Report menu or Report Centre, you will see a lot of available reports in QuickBooks, starting from Company & Financial reports down to List reports. Let’s generate a Balance Sheet Standard report from Company & Financial and see how to print, save, and e-mail it.
Printing Reports
To print is easily done by clicking the Print bar in the toolbar at the top of the report. You can print it to a paper or a file.
The Print Reports dialog box offers usual printing options like any other programs, which are self-explanatory. In the "Print to” pane, there is an option to print the report to a file: ASCII file, Comma Delimited file, or Tab Delimited file.
After you select to print your report to a file, press Print to open “Create Disc File” dialog box to offer you a file location of your choice.
You can also export your report to Excel as discussed in Exporting Reports.
Saving Reports as PDF file
One of my favourite tools is saving a report as PDF. To save your report as PDF, go to File menu > Save as PDF and you will be prompted with a “Save document as PDF” dialog box to select a location to save the file.
Emailing Reports
Emailing reports is also a breeze. Select the Email drop-down menu in the toolbar where you have two options: send report as Excel and send report as PDF. After your selection and depending how you set up Send Forms preferences, the report will be attached to your default e-mail.
One of the reason many small businesses using QuickBooks is because there are so many third party integrated software available in the market to fill your specific business needs. Intuit does not develop software for every business needs, but they provide ecosystem where developers can make and integrate software with QuickBooks, both desktop and online versions.
To find available third party integrated software, you can go to Intuit Marketplace website at http://marketplace.intuit.com/ where you can search by industry or by business need. Make sure you select “Canada” in Check Products Compatibility if you are using Canadian QuickBooks.
Then you can choose which industry you are in or move to By Business Need tab and choose from an alphabetical drop-down menu, from Account Receivable Management to Trucking Solution.
A new window appears with all available software, each with description, reviews, rating, free trial, and if they are Gold/Silver Developers. Gold and Silver Developers have passed Intuit technical test. Gold Developers have completed additional criteria—receiving a passing score on an extensive customer survey, submitting customer case studies and more.
Generally speaking, software with Gold/Silver Developer certification ensure you that the software is working. However, it does not mean it fulfills your business need. My suggestion is to always test drive it before you buy to make sure it works according to your need.
Another way to find QuickBooks third party integrated software is to google it. If you try “QuickBooks third party integrated software”, you will find much more software out there, where the Intuit Marketplace is one of them.
For mobile apps, you can go to Intuit Apps Centre http://apps.intuit.com/ where you can find apps for Mobile, CRM, Billing and Invoicing, etc.