How to Create a Customized Invoice Form in QuickBooks 2010
Although you can choose a predefined invoice form template for your invoices, QuickBooks 2010 gives you more flexibility than that. You can also create custom invoice form templates to design an invoice that looks just the way you want.
Choose Customers→Create Invoices.
The Create Invoices window appears.
Click the Customize button.
QuickBooks displays the Customize QuickBooks Forms window.
Click the Customize Data Layout button.
If you click the Customize Data Layout button, QuickBooks should display the Basic Customization dialog box.
Alternatively, click the Create New Design button to go to a Web site that steps you through a full-fledged graphic design session for the invoice form. Simply follow the Web site’s instructions, which appear on the Web pages.
Click the Manage Templates button.
The Manage Templates dialog box appears.
Select the invoice template you want to customize.
QuickBooks initially supplies a custom invoice template and a finance charge template you can customize.
Alternatively, you can select one of the existing templates and then click Copy to create and then customize one of these templates while keeping the original.
QuickBooks closes the Manage Templates dialog box and returns you to the Basic Customization dialog box.
To add a logo to your invoices, select the Use Logo check box.
QuickBooks displays the Select Image dialog box.
Select the graphic image file that shows your logo in the Select Image dialog box.
The Select Image dialog box works like a standard Windows open file dialog box.
To add color to your invoices, select the color scheme you want to use from the Select Color Scheme drop-down list, then click the Apply Color Scheme button.
Add color only if you have a color printer and don’t care if you spend a small fortune on colored ink.
To change the font, select the bit of text you want from the Change Font For list box and click the Change Font button.
QuickBooks displays the Example dialog box.
Use the Example dialog box's Font, Font Style, and Size options to specify what the selected bit of text should look like.
The Example dialog box includes a Sample box that shows how your font changes look.
When you complete your specification of the font, click OK.
The Example dialog box closes.
In the Company & Transaction Information section of the Basic Customization dialog box, select the check boxes that correspond to the information you want to include.
If you want the company name to appear on the invoice form — this means you aren’t using letterhead or preprinted invoice forms — select the Company Name check box.
(Optional) Click the Additional Customization button.
If the Additional Customization button doesn’t appear at the bottom of the Basic Customization dialog box — and in some versions of QuickBooks, it doesn’t — click the Cancel button.
QuickBooks displays the Additional Customization dialog box. You can’t use the Additional Customization dialog box if you’re working with one of the default invoice templates — only if you’re working with a copy. Accordingly, QuickBooks may prompt you to make a copy of an invoice template.
In the Header tab, enter the information you want to appear in the top portion of the Create Invoices window and in the top area of an actual printed invoice form.
This information provides the invoice number, the invoice date, and the billing and shipping information.
Use the Default Title check boxes to specify whether the form title should appear on the screen version of the invoice and on the printed version of the invoice.
The screen version appears inside the Create Invoices window.
In the Default Title text box, enter the form title.
Type whatever descriptive phrase you want to appear at the top of your invoices.
Use the Date check boxes to specify whether the date should appear on the screen and print versions of the invoice.
Also include what label should be used to describe the invoice date.
Click the Columns tab of the Additional Customization dialog box.
The Columns tab opens.
Specify what columns you want to appear by selecting check boxes and entering descriptive labels in the Title text boxes.
Use the Screen and Print check boxes to indicate whether a particular piece of column-level information should appear as a column on the Create Invoices window or on the actual created invoice.
Place the columns in the order you want by entering values in the Item Order text boxes.
If the item number or code should appear in the first column on the left, for example, you enter the value 1 in the Item Order text box.
(Optional) Click the Prog Cols tab.
In this tab, you can add and remove information such as the ordered amount, the previously invoiced amount, and any backordered amounts.
Click the Footer tab.
In this tab, you can specify what information appears on the Create Invoices window beneath the columns area and on the actual printed invoice beneath the columns area.
If you want some bit of footer information to appear, select the Screen check box and the Print check box; to change the bit of text that QuickBooks uses, edit the contents of the Title text box.
The footer information includes a customer message, the invoice total, payments and credit information, a balance due field, and (optionally) a longer text box.
Click the Print tab.
In this tab, you can control how QuickBooks prints invoices that use the template you’ve customized.
Select a radio button at the top of the tab.
The radio buttons at the top of the tab let you specify that when printing this particular invoice template, QuickBooks should use the regular old invoice printer settings or other, special print settings.
QuickBooks saves your changes and closes the Additional Customization dialog box.