How To Customize Invoice Templates In QuickBooks Pro
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QuickBooks Pro has many strengths, but invoice template creation just isn’t one of them. And the last thing you want is to send your clients unattractive invoices.
In this post, I’ll teach you how to take your invoices from this…
to this…
…without having to pay extra for a customized invoice template. Using eight simple steps and a bit of TLC, you can impress your customers with attractive, professional invoices in no time.
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How To Customize An Invoice
Step 1: Select A Default Template
Choose a default template. QuickBooks gives you four choices:
- Intuit Packing Slip
- Intuit Product Invoice Slip
- Intuit Professional Invoice
- Intuit Service Invoice
Once you’ve made your selection, click the blue “OK” button on the bottom of the screen. You should be taken to a screen that looks like this:
Step 2: Add A Business Logo
There are a ton of invoice customizations available. Most of these steps can be done in any order you please, so we’re just going to make our way down the Basic Customization screen.
To start, if you want to add a business logo, check the “Use logo” box. Then click “Select Logo…”
Browse your files to find the appropriate logo. Click on the file, then click “Open.”
Step 3: Select A Color Scheme
Select a color scheme using the drop-down menu. You can choose between:
- Black
- Gray
- Maroon
- Green
- Beige
If you change the color scheme, your invoice will look something like this:
Click the “Apply Color Scheme” button to see your color scheme choice in action.
Step 4: Choose A Font
To alter the font, use the scroll bar menu to choose what you want to change.
At this point, you can choose specific fonts for these sections (there are further font customizations later):
- Invoice title
- Company name
- Company Address
- Labels
- Data
- Subtotals label
- Total label
Once you make your selection, click “Change font.” QuickBooks uses the Microsoft Word font bank on your computer to offer font selections. You can change the font, color, and size.
Once your font looks right, click the “OK ” button in the top right-hand corner.
Step 5: Display the Appropriate Contact Information
Choose what business contact information you want to appear on your invoices. We recommend including your company name, company address, and phone number (at the very least). Check the boxes next to the information you want to include.
You’ll most likely receive a message that says:
Don’t worry. We’ll address that in step 7, so you can click “OK” and ignore that message for now.
If you need to update any of the company information included on your invoice, click the “Update Information” button. Enter the proper information and click the blue “OK” button when done.
Step 6: Decide What Information To Include
To change what information is and isn’t seen on your invoice, click the “Additional Customizations” button on the bottom of the screen. You’ll be taken to a screen that looks like this:
You can customize the invoice header, columns, footer, and print defaults. Simply check the boxes for the information you want to include and change the title if needed. Don’t click the blue “OK” button quite yet (unless you want to save a copy of your progress and continue customizing the invoice later).
Step 7: Customize With Layout Designer
Next, click the “Layout Designer…” button on the bottom of the screen. You should then be taken to a screen that looks like this.
Note: The green boxes on the screen indicate envelope windows.
Here’s where the fun begins. In the layout designer, you can change the size and position of all the information on your invoice. When you select a box, you can resize it, drag it to a new location, or click the “Properties” button for more customization options (like fonts, font colors, borders, fill colors, and more).
You can add images and backgrounds to your invoices as well. The only thing you can’t customize is the fill colors of certain headers (Item Cost, Description, Price, Amount).
We added color to our invoice and an image which we used as a header. We also rearranged the placement of our data to make it more appealing. We also took time to make the invoice due date and total due clear for customers.
Tip: Use the “Copy Format” button at the top of the screen so you don’t have to reenter the same design formatting for every single box.
When you’re done editing your invoice, click the blue “OK” button on the bottom of the screen.
Step 8: Save Your Invoice Template
Take on final look at your invoice preview. If you invoice looks correct, click the blue “OK” button.
You’ve officially customized your invoices; now you can start sending them and getting paid! Follow these same eight steps to customize your estimate templates (simply go to List>Templates to find your estimate templates).
If you have any troubleshooting issues, check out the QuickBooks Community or call QuickBooks directly. Don’t forget to check out the rest of our QuickBooks Desktop Pro 101 Series to learn how to create invoices, create estimates, add sales tax rates, and more.
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Chelsea Krause
Managing Editor - Accounting
Chelsea Krause is a writer who has specialized in accounting for over three years and is a QuickBooks Certified User. She has a BA in English & Creative Writing from George Fox University and studied at the University of Oxford as well. She has been quoted in Forbes and her work appears in Startup Nation, Small Business Bonfire, and Women on Business.
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I have a version of quickbooks from 2007. And overall, I very much like Quickbooks. It’s worked wonderfully for all these years,
Recently, I’ve been trying to change my receipts, and there is a field that keeps printing in the description section of my receipts that is not at all visible when I go to customize the template.
How do I find delete this, if I can’t find it in my template?
Cheers
Hi Ma,
I’m afraid I won’t be of much help without seeing which field you are talking about. If you can’t find the field when you go to customize the template, I recommend checking your company settings. If you can’t find the answer there, I would contact Intuit directly. Or, you can email us a screenshot of the issue you are having, and we’ll do our best to help.
Best wishes,
-Chelsea Krause
Hi, For some reason, our due date is not printing on the invoice, although it shows on the invoice in QuickBooks. It is marked off under “additional customization” but maybe there is somewhere else I need to select?
Hi Heather,
I’m so sorry that you’re having issues with your QuickBooks invoices. I’ve replicated the issue on my end, but am not sure how to add an “exact” due date to an invoice. By using the “terms” box on an invoice you can set terms like Net30 (meaning the invoice is due 30 days from the date on the invoice), but I don’t know of a way to change that to a specific data like May 30, 2019. I would recommend talking to QuickBooks’ support team directly to see if this is possible or asking the QuickBooks Community to see if any other users have a fix for this.
Best of luck,
-Chelsea Krause
If you have the terms set (to Net 30 or whatever) the correct due date field will populate based on the date you selected for the invoice.
Hi Deanna,
We’ve been using a PO template in Excel for years. I am trying to duplicate it in QuickBooks Pro to make life easier. The problem is that our existing excel PO template is in landscape format instead of portrait format. I am having trouble figuring out how to make a QBS template landscape. Please let me know how to do this.
Many thanks,
Anne
Do you know of any additional options/add ons or options that who’ll allow for major customizatizations? We are trying to get the totals & our terms to only print on the last page of a several page invoice.
Thanx
Deanna
Hi Deanna,
I’m not sure how you would be able to get your totals and terms to print only on the last page of an invoice. I do know that you can purchase a custom-designed invoice from QuickBooks, so maybe they could design a template like this for you.
Has any of our other readers had any luck with these sort of changes or know a good workaround or integration to solve this? We’d love to hear from you!
-Chelsea Krause
Hi Stacy,
Thanks for reaching out! So you clicked the “Other” box on the Custom Layout page, like in the picture below, right?
What you’ll want to do instead is go to the “Layout Designer” button at the bottom of the Custom Layout screen. Right-click anywhere on that Layout Designer screen where there’s not already a box. You should see a little pop-up menu. Choose “Add” and then choose “Data Field.” You should then see a list of data options, and if you scroll down you’ll see “Customer Phone.” Select “Customer Phone,” then click the blue “Okay” button and move the box to wherever you’d like it to appear on the invoice. Once you save your changes in Layout Designer, you should see your customer’s phone number automatically populated on your invoices. (You can create an invoice and view a preview of the invoice to make sure it worked correctly.)
I hope this helps!
-Chelsea Krause
I’m trying to add a customer phone number to my invoice and in Custom layout I checked other and changed the name to customer phone # but it isn’t adding it from the customer screen. We have to type it in manually. Can you help?
When I accidentally had a field go over the margins, the formatting tool automatically moved the offending windows to the upper left of the layout design field.
When I moved the Description box back into place, the inner box borders had been stretched up and can not be stretched down again.
I’m wondering if you ever had this happen and what is the solution?
Hi Tracy,
We haven’t seen that problem before so we wouldn’t want to advise you on something we aren’t totally sure about. It might be best to check the QuickBooks community to see if anyone other QuickBooks users have had the same or similar issues. Best of luck to you!