QuickBooks Customizing Forms and Writing QuickBooks Letters

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This is QuickBooks lesson: customizing forms and writing QuickBooks letters.0003

Now, in QuickBooks, we have a variety of reasons to write letters and create different invoices.0007

Luckily, QuickBooks allows us to customize our invoices and customize our forms to work better with our business and, of course, adding our logo to it.0015

So, in order to customize, now, we are going to go ahead and open up our invoice window.0025

And what I will have you do is go to your Icon bar and click on Invoice, or you can go to your Customer Center.0030

Once you are in your Customer Center, we can go ahead and create a new invoice. OK, I am not going to have a person in there just yet.0038

So, when we have our new invoice up, we will notice up in the very top, we will have our Icon bar in our Create Invoice window.0049

It says Previous and Next and Save and Print and Save and Send and Create and Ship blah, blah, blah.0058

But, until we get over to this little icon that says Custom, and it has a little ruler and a pencil there, and we can actually customize our invoices.0063

We can actually create and customize a new design or a layout or manage the existing templates that we have.0076

First off, we want to see how we can actually customize or design our invoices, so with this particular invoice, let's customize that.0082

I have a couple options there. We can say Manage templates, so under Customize, I am going to say Manage templates.0093

And those will show us the templates that QuickBooks has already created for us.0099

There is a Progress Invoice, Finance Charge, Packing Slips etc. Progress Invoice is there, too.0103

This is a Rockcastle form. This particular entity has a standard invoice, and we will use the standard invoice here.0111

And we will see the display of it on the right side.0119

When we hit OK, it will bring us into some options of this invoice and how we can customize that and do different things.0126

We can actually pull in our logo if we wanted to, and in order to do that, it gives us the option of logo on fonts, and we can use the logo.0133

And we can select logos from our image category that we might have downloaded, and then, we can pull that in there.0141

So, this is how we, kind of, get around to it, and this is what we can do to customize our invoices.0153

The next section that we want to do is how to use these forms and look at some new forms, too, so that is our managing those.0159

But, if we want to download some additional designs and invoices, we can do that by using the Customize button and say Customize design layout.0167

Now, here, we can customize data layout, and that is customizing the data layout on our form, and we can add or remove columns etc.0179

Or we can create a new one, so we can do a new design by saying Create new design.0188

And it is going to go online and look at some Intuit forms that are available for you to download.0192

And it has some colored forms and things that you might find appealing to you.0198

So, here, under this section, here are some different invoices. This is a blue circles invoice.0202

You might have seen people using this. As a customer, you might have received invoices with this type of form, or you can do a blank one.0208

You can look at a blue screen here, and see what that looks like, and so the blue screen looks nice and appealing.0219

You can look up a variety of templates that they have available through online.0231

Here is a clover one. There is a bakery, hays and etc.0238

So, there are lots of different available things that you can actually download and get for free from Intuit.0244

So, once you like it, you can go ahead and download it down for yourself.0251

I am going to get out of that area, but that gives you an idea what you can use.0257

Going back to the design and layout area, we can actually customize the layout, and that goes directly to the invoice that we are in.0260

And this is where we can customize our invoice.0268

There are a couple of ways of getting to this section, and I will show you. You can either go to through the custom bars, the custom design and layout.0272

And by choosing Customize data layout, it brings you right to this.0282

Or if you go into your Manage templates, and you say, OK, by choosing which template you want to use, you say OK.0287

It will bring you to that same area by saying the Additional Customization.0297

And it will pull it right here, as well, so now, you have the same section that we were just in.0304

And this uses some options where you can say "Well, I can change the title", and send the same invoice here.0310

I can say Pay me now bill. I can change and say Pay me now, and it will change that.0315

Say OK, Great. Now, it says Pay me now.0325

Cool. How does that look?0327

I can do whatever I want here. I can say "Well, I do not want to print it" or "I do not want it on my screen", whichever.0329

And that gives you an idea of what you can do with that.0337

Under the other tab, it has columns. This is where you could change the order of where things appear on your invoice.0341

Say "Well, I do not want the item first", or this is on the screen, but maybe I want to print it, so it is going to add item.0350

Or maybe I do not want the description here. Maybe I do not want the description in no. 5, and how is that going to look?0357

You could change things to whichever order you want them in.0366

So, this one has item description quantity, units of measurement, rates and etc.0372

So, you can do as many things you look and add to it, or you do not want it to print, and you can change it to which columns are going to appear out.0378

You really customize existing templates that are there and various other things.0388

You can go to the footer. You can go the progress columns.0396

Here, you have estimate and your progress going here, and here is the progress going on your estimates, which have been used in this template.0400

Or you can go to the footer, and you can change things at the footer, and you could do all sorts of customization.0408

The one that I prefer using is the Layout designer, and this is where we actually can learn how to adjust the width of the columns,0415

Or I do not want all these bars here printing out. I do not want that.0423

So, I can just go to the Layout designer from the Additional Customization and click on Layout designer.0427

And under the Layout designer, I have the ability now to change the fonts, the size. I can remove borders if I want.0433

I can do any of that, so by clicking around at the various sections, I can remove these borders.0447

I can say "Well, gee, I do not want these borders here". So, I can get rid of them.0454

I can move them if I want. I can do whatever I want.0461

So, in order to get rid of, say, a border, I do not want a border around the date in the invoice must it say.0464

So, I can highlight that, and when I highlight it, I can look at the Properties, or if I double-click on it, it will open up Properties.0470

And I can go straight to the border and say "I do not want a border". Uncheck that.0482

Click OK, and the border is gone, and I would have to do that individually to each one of these.0488

But, after a little bit of time and effort, I can get rid of all of those borders.0494

If I wanted to change the font on something here, and say "I want a different font", if I double-click on it or highlight it and say Properties,0499

I can go to the Font, and say "You know what, I want it to be a different font", so I will click on Font. It will pull up my fonts.0509

After a wee bit of time, and I can say "Well, I want a different font here. I want something crazy, do something fun here, and I am going to do this".0518

And I will change the color, if I want. I will change the color and say I want it to be blue.0532

And I change that often, and oh, pay me now. It is not nearly large enough, so I will make it a little bigger here.0538

So, now, pay me now is much larger, OK?0547

I can change the word. I can make it center on this section: Pay me now.0553

So, we can customize. The Layout design is one of my favorite features of your invoices, and it is one of the greatest features that QuickBooks has.0560

It is being able to customize your invoices and your forms in this manner by using the layout design, OK?0572

So, I am going to click OK on that. Now, I have Pay me now.0580

It is no longer an invoice. How fun is that?0582

I do not think people are going to want to pay me if I do it that way.0586

So, now that we have learned how to do all of our forms and the Layout designer and customize those invoices,0588

there is a time when we need to actually start using letters and designing letters for our customers.0595

And so, there is a variety of ways that we can do that, and one of the greatest ways is doing collections letters.0603

So, if we look at it, we can see under a particular customer, if we want to create a letter for them,0608

we pull up that invoice or create a new invoice, whichever.0618

We can actually create a letter on that, so in the invoice that we are looking at, we can say "Well, I want to create a letter here".0626

And under the icon bar, when we say Create, we can choose Letters. We can prepare an invoice letter or customize an invoice letter.0636

So, I am going to say Prepare an invoice letter, and here it is. It says Cover letter, Invoice with details, or we can create or enter a template.0645

So, I am going to say it is an invoice letter that I am going to send to them.0654

And it is when I follow the sample here, it is just going to give me a Next, and I can fill in the name, who I want it to be addressed to.0659

And it is going to create the letter using Word, and QuickBooks Intuit integrates their Microsoft products using Excel and Word.0668

And this would be using Word at this point in time. It will open up Word, and here is the letter.0678

It says "Hey, this table summarizes your current invoice activity and boom, boom, boom". Here it is, and it is going to give us a little invoice.0682

It gives us the job, what I pulled up. Here it is, and it says Thanks for choosing us boo, boo, boo, boom.0690

So, that is, kind of, an invoice letter that we can use. We can also do collection letters, and I will show you that in just a second.0697

But, like that, we can print it, and it is done, so that is Create an invoice letter.0702

If we want to start going to collection mode, then, we will want to use the Collection center.0708

Now, using the Collection center under the Customer center, we will see on the icon bar0714

there in the Collection center from our right, a little explanation points this Collection center.0721

We click on that. It pulls up an entirely new section.0725

It says "Hey, we have got some people with overdue invoices", and we can actually select and send an e-mail to them.0729

We can create notes. We can look at the notes and write things we want to do and add notes to what is going on here.0737

We can look at the balance that this person owes us. It is the collection deal.0744

If we say Select and send an e-mail, I can select that and say I want to send this invoice number.0751

It is going to say "Hey, here is the e-mail".0756

It is going to include the item in question that is overdue, and we can customize the body of this text in the far right section.0758

And say "Hey, we would like to bring to your attention the attached invoice", and it is, kind of, a collection section. It is really easy.0768

Now, with today's day and age, e-mail is a common factor, and it is easier to get to people via e-mail than it is snail mail.0774

So, we can do that, send it to the customer and say "Hey, please respond to this overdue balance", and get this taken care of when we can send it.0783

I am not going to send it, I am just going to say Back, and that is the Collection center.0790

Again, it will pull in all of our overdue invoices here. We are good, so that is our Collection center.0794

Now that we have known how to customize forms and writing QuickBooks letters and adding letters and doing the Collection center,0807

that completes our QuickBooks lesson for customizing forms.0814

Thanks again for using and visiting us here at Educator.com. We will see you next time.0818