Explaining WorkflowMax's custom branded templates

WorkflowMax standard branding template

All WorkflowMax accounts have a standard branding theme. This standard branding theme is WorkflowMax's template for how your PDF invoices, quotes, purchase orders, job briefs, statements and tax letters, display the standard elements (e.g. page size, margins, font), which are hard coded and cannot be edited.  If you want to change the look and feel of your printed and emailed outputs then you need to build a custom template. 

Custom templates

With the custom template functionality you can either create your own customised print templates, or download and edit the samples templates provided.  Once you have more than one branded template, you can select which template to use from the print options screen when you generate invoices, purchase orders, quotes, job briefs, statements and tax letters.

With template branding you can set up multiple templates to use in different situations. If you run more than one business under the same company structure, when you print your invoices, quotes, purchase orders, job briefs, statements and tax letters you can choose the appropriate templates to suit. If some clients require more time sheet detail on their invoices for instance you could build a custom template specific for that purpose. If you wanted to include pages and pages of preamble and terms and conditions as part of a larger proposal for each of your quotes then look to use a custom template. You could even create client engagement letters or deed documents that could be printed as job briefs from each of your jobs.

Edit the sample custom branded templates or create your own from scratch

The sample .docx templates do not resemble the standard themed WorkflowMax invoices and quotes. They have their own look and feel and can be downloaded and tweaked to suit your needs or completely overhauled, how you decide to work with the template is your choice. You could decide to start from scratch and create your own template, however we do advise that you first download the samples and begin working with them so that you become familiar with the tags required and the effect of your manipulation.

WorkflowMax only supports .docx files, which have '.docx' as their file extension. WorkflowMax does not support .doc or .dot or files with file extensions other than .docx for customising invoices, statements, quotes/estimates, purchase orders and job briefs. They are a totally different format.

The .docx templates can only be edited and saved in Microsoft Word (2007 or 2010). We provide some help on inserting images, fields and viewing gridlines for the purpose of customising .docx templates, but we don't provide extensive help on using Word. We recommend that you are a confident and experienced Word user, or can get help using Word - if you need to - online or from someone in your organisation.  Use Microsoft's support if you need help navigating, editing or formatting a Word document.

To begin editing the sample templates:

1. Go to Admin-Custom Templates
2. Select the Samples tab
3. Click on the sample you wish to edit
4. Click the 'Download Template' hyperlink at the bottom of the page
5. You can open the .docx template in Microsoft Word (2007 or 2010) and make your required edits. You can add hardcoded messages, change the fonts, layouts, upload images, and remove or add tags that are replaced with the actual data from the invoice, quote/estimate, purchase order, job brief or statement. 
6. Save your template to your computer as a .docx, e.g. you might name your file 'InvoiceNew.docx'.
7. Back in Admin-Custom Templates screen click the "New  ___ " button to create a new template, give it a name and then choose the .docx file from your computer and click Save.
8. You will notice several options dependent on the type of template you create:

• Remove heading row from empty tables - Tick this option if you do not wish the Heading, Description, Quantity, Rate and Amount to display when there aren't any costs or tasks on the quote/invoice
• Group similar tasks onto a single line item - Use this option if you have Tasks with Labels on your quote/invoice but only wish the client to see the grouped value. For instance you have Design - Business Cards and Design - Logo as two separate items, but when you print the quote/invoice you want these grouped together so that it just displays Design with the total for each.  NOTE IT ISN'T POSSIBLE TO USE THIS OPTION IF YOU HAVE THE ENABLE TIMESHEET OPTION AND PRINT TIMESHEET TABLE ON YOUR TEMPLATE
• Group similar costs onto a single line item (invoice and po) - Use this option where you may have a number of the same cost items added to a purchase order or invoice but only want to display one line to the client. For instance you have 10 couriers on a job in one month, however on the invoice you only want to show a single Courier line item with the sum of all costs.
• Print 'TBC' for zero value task, cost and option line items (quote) - Where you don't know the value of a line item, if you set it to be zero and this flag is ticked then the zero will be replaced with TBC
• Timesheets (Invoice only) - include the timesheet entries in the body of your invoice, or at the end of the invoice.  Using the Time table details (below) add the time table to display timesheet details and notes.  The options are
1. None - no time sheets are printed on the invoice
2. All - all individual time sheets are printed
3. Task/Staff - time sheets are summarised by task, then staff
4. Task/Date/Staff - time sheets are summarised by task, date then staff
   
   

Editing the .docx template

So you have opened the sample template file you want to customise. You'll see it's formatted with standard details such as Date, Job Number etc, but that it's made up of tables containing fields that correspond with data fields in WorkflowMax. (You'll be familiar with these fields and this type of concept if you've used mail merge features in MS Word 2007 or 2010.). WorkflowMax uses the fields in the template to pull corresponding field data from the database.

Once you have the file open in word you can begin to manipulate the layout, the fonts, add additional fields or remove unwanted fields, include your own text or even add a second page of terms and conditions. However before you do all of this read the detail below to get an idea of what fields can be used where and what restrictions are in place.

Default fields in the downloaded .docx templates and what they mean

Before you add to, move or delete fields from each .docx template, you'll need to know:

• what default fields apply to which templates
• that you mustn't delete mandatory TableStart and TableEnd fields (marked * in this table)
• what the fields relate to in WorkflowMax.

Merge Field Names and where they can be used (X marks what printed output these fields can be used on):

Customise your downloaded .docx templates. You can:

• Change the font to any of these fonts we support

  With .docx, you can use any of these fonts:

  • Standard web-supported fonts
  • Arial Unicode MS to display extended character sets e.g. simplified or traditional Chinese characters, Korean, Russian.
  • Barcode font code 39 to display barcodes within your template by installing this free font on your computer.

  If you use an unsupported font, WorkflowMax will still produce the PDF but will automatically choose an alternative font which may not be what you want.

• Moving, deleting or adding fields

  You can move or delete any of the default fields in the template, or add additional fields to the template.

  You might find it easier to view the tables in the template layout by enabling View Gridlines in Word.

  Move or delete most of the default fields in the template, just as you would using a standard Word document. The exceptions are the TableStart and TableEnd fields which you mustn't delete.

  As well as having default fields on each template, you can insert additional fields to display on each invoice, statement, estimate/quote, purchase order and job brief by:

  • typing static text into the template, e.g. your standard payment terms and conditions
  • inserting a field into the template: Insert > Quick Parts > Field, select MergeField from Field names, then enter the template field name into the Field name. 
  • In Word for Mac 2011, to insert a field: from Categories choose: Mail Merge and for field name choose: MergeField. Then in the Field code box MERGEFIELD "Fieldname" (eg MERGEFIELD QuoteName).  Click OK
    
    
    Use the Merge Fields table above to see what fields you can insert into your templates.

• Add your logo to a custom .docx template, follow these steps:

  Create and save your logo to your computer.

  Your image's file type must be a .jpg, .png (non-interlaced) or .gif.

  1. Go to Admin-Custom Templates.
  2. Locate the template you want to change, click on it and and click the Download link
  3. Open the template you want to change
  4. Either select the image icon to insert your logo, or insert it like you would any other picture.
  5. Find and select the logo you've saved to your computer.
  6. Click Upload.
  7. Change the position of your logo, if you want to by dragging and dropping your image within the document
• Add terms and conditions to quotes/estimates and invoices

  If you have your own terms and conditions, which could potentially be pages long, then add a page break to your .docx  template and include your terms and conditions on a secondary page. You can choose to paste them in from another document or format them in a table format that you are comfortable with.

Delete a custom template

It isn't possible to delete a custom template. We have removed this functionality to prevent users from accidentally deleting a template that they would like to still use again.

So to remove a template that you no longer use from your list of template options:

1. Go to Admin-Custom Templates
2. Click on the template you wish to remove
3. Untic the Active checkbox
4. Save the changes to the template