Customizing Your QuickBooks Invoice Template

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QuickBooks gives you some boxy looking invoices by default and many people are ok with this. Others are more concerned with what they send out to customers and how that reflects upon you as an individual or company. This web casts demonstrates briefly how you can customize you invoice template to make it beautful. Please enjoy.

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Closed Caption:

hello and welcome to another webcast
with nerd enterprises incorporated my
name is Seth David and i'll be your host
for the next 10 minutes or so we have
promised to deliver a webcast on how to
customize your invoice and quickbooks
and i plan to deliver exactly that so
bear with me while I get through some of
the promotional stuff saturday July
eighteenth is our steps to success
webinar you have to sign up for this
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want email us and i'll send you our
independence day newsletter which kind
of talks a little bit about that but it
gives you the steps that i'm going to
discuss in greater detail during the
webinar the basic gist of it is this i
came to California about 10 years ago
when I was 28 years old and I was
completely broke and I built up a
business little by little I started out
as a full-time employee and I recognize
that I wanted to do something more than
I want to be able to create something of
my own and little by little I started to
build my business
well fast forward til today I've got a
business that's doing plenty well in a
so-called bad economy and there are
certain steps I've taken i believe which
have been integral to creating that
developing that platform from which i
can operate now and i'd like to share
that with people because I think anybody
can do this and it's not a matter of you
having to create a business like my you
can create a business doing what you
want to do take whatever it is you love
to do figure out a way to make money
doing it and then apply a few basic
principles to growing a business and I
think that's what I can share with you
that you'll find valuable is you know I
don't have a marketing system to sell
you're not gonna make $20,000 next month
if you sign up for my program it's
nothing like that it's more hear some of
the things I've done and here's some of
the programs i've used that have helped
me along the way and some of the the
tips I've taken and used that have
helped me thrive and succeed as a
businessman and with that I bid you good
luck I hope you sign up for the webinar
I really think you'll enjoy and get
something good out of it july 18 go to
the Learning Center in our website the
live webinars I'll take you there at the
end of this webcast but for now I want
to get right into the heart of matters
here which of course is
the quickbooks how to customize your
invoice webcast
let's do it let's do it and if you're
watching this when you wanted to learn
how to customize a webcam invoice on
this webcast there's a good chance
you've already got a business and I
still think you can get something out of
the webinar i'm going to share of the
things i'm going to share with you in
the webinar on the 18 because i'm going
to show you things that you can if
you're not already doing them you can do
them and help your business grow and
even if you already doing them i can
show you how to take things to the next
level terms of the web presence and some
of the other stuff now you're looking at
a quickbooks sample company file and we
want to customize our invoice so
invoices a template which is in a list
so we go to lists and we go to templates
that exciting this fun then we're going
to go to templates down here and we want
to go to download templates because
quickbooks has been good enough to
provide us with the forum in which we
can easily get templates that other
people who are frankly better at this
than I am have created i'm going to
scroll down past the credit memos and
the estimates are going to get to the
invoices and browser find the one that
you like best
i'm going to demonstrate with the one
that we use for new enterprises
incorporated we want to click the
download button and save it save it save
it save it will close that then I can
close this screen back to my templates i
click templates again and now i want to
choose import I click my import button i
scroll down to where I saved it i click
it I click open and it's going to open
up the basic customization dialogue for
me then I'm going to take you right into
the layout designer now incidentally
this is the same place you can go with a
basic quickbooks invoice template and
you can clear everything out and start
from scratch if you want to I just think
it's handy to start with something that
somebody else is already created which
is plenty nice now the first thing i
want to do is I want to change the
background because this is a nice enough
looking logo but you probably wanna put
your own low
go on it so what you'll do is it comes
up selected you'll see that I've got the
whole background selected and it happens
to be that that is in fact the image
that's in the background if you're not
sure you can do what I'm gonna have you
do anyway which is click here on
properties and sure enough it shows you
that you look at the properties of an
image and it gives you an image of the
image an image of the image that's good
so we can click browse and then we can
browse to our logo so I've already got
mine in there
I've done this before now bear in mind i
did not take the time for the purposes
of this webcast to customize my logo
specific for this invoice template the
one that I use in real life so to speak
is actually customize I've water market
so it's a little more faint because then
what I want to do is I want to enlarge
this and put them in the background
and then what you can do
is you've got the image selected still
you can right click it and go to order
and send backward that way you can make
sure your image stands behind everything
and again if you if this is properly
water marked then it wouldn't be
drowning out the information that's here
the way it apparently is now let me
cancel this and go back to the original
design because i want to show you a
couple of other things very quickly
before we wrap up go back into the
layout designer i canceled my changes so
i'm back to the original design and a
few things to know what they've done
I go to my p.o number data field for
example i double-click it and I go to my
border options here and you'll see what
they've done is they've chosen rounded
corners and they've got medium now let's
say you want to use this template but
there might be data fields you want to
take out and there might be new ones you
want to put in well what you want to do
that as you want to take note of the
color that they've used on their borders
we're in the borders of properties click
on color and go to define custom colors
and you'll want to take note of these
number sequences write them down on an
index card just jot them down an Excel
spreadsheet so that you have them
because if you bring in a new field is
going to come in with a dark border and
you're going to have to customize the
colors so that it matches important
thing to note the other thing is it's a
very important note is the proper
balance when you're designing a template
like this between the information that's
on here and that's needed by the end
user and balance that with having a
nice-looking template it's great to have
a gorgeous template but if the person
who receives your invoice and who has 2
input that invoice into their
bookkeeping system can't find the
information they need it can be
frustrating and sometimes I can speak
from the experience of being an AP clerk
where I would get an invoice and I
couldn't find the four basic things that
are important to be able to find when
you're entering an invoice I need the
invoice number i need the invoice date I
need to do day and I need the amount if
I can't find those four things and five
seconds or less I'm going to put it to
the side and gets the rest of the pile
you have to imagine that the person
receiving your invoice that might have a
huge stack of invoices to enter and they
don't have time to ogle over how
gorgeous the invoice is that might do
that but more importantly they need to
get the critical information that they
need in order to get the invoice
properly entered and that is the invoice
number which will see right here
the top left is very prominent the
invoice date also the top right now very
prominent the balance due of course is
at the very bottom here and then we have
the due date in here and not my ideal
location but again its balance i have a
nice-looking template here if I stick
the due date up here under the date
which is ideally where I'd like to have
it it's going to throw off the balance
aesthetically of the invoice and it's
not going to look at pretty so I can't
necessarily have my cake and eat it too
something like that bottom line is I've
got the basic information it's not that
difficult to find the due date here so i
can click ok on this or cancel because i
haven't changed anything and that's
basically how i can get in and start
changing these invoices and if you want
to see what its gonna look like on a
preview you can click print preview here
and you'll see it's a very nice
professional-looking invoice quickbooks
has a habit lately of doing something
weird when you go to the Print Preview
in 2009 but here it is blown up in full
view and it looks great so that's
basically at now you'll see also it
didn't
there's some overlapping stuff here so
you can go back into the custom the
layout designer and move some things
around so that you don't have that
happening anymore but that's basically
it so as I said you visit us on the web
go to our learning center you'll see
that we have our live webinar scheduled
in the learning center here go to live
webinars and you'll see the three times
we've scheduled July eighteenth these
are all pacific time one two three four
to six and seven and nine and of course
while you're here I have a look at some
of the classes we have for download we
have quickbooks classes for download
excel classes for download and really
low prices most of our only about twenty
dollars so join us
download our classes tell me what you
think I'd love to get your feedback and
i look forward to seeing you around
online come back next week for a great
new and free webcast