How to customize your sales form

1 - Sales Form Customization (Custom Form Styles)

Customize your Sales Forms to add personality and showcase your brand. This article will show you everything you need to know to get started.

Accessing Form Customization

To customize your forms, click the Gear icon > Custom Form Styles (Alternately, Gear Icon > Company Settings > Sales > Customize > Customize look and feel) 

Logo Upload

On the right side of the page, you will see an option to upload your logo. 

Click the arrow to the right of the logo preview to expand options. You can zoom, drag, and crop your logo. You can also re-upload a new logo of your choice.

Click the arrow to the right of the color preview to open expanded options. Select from a pallet of pre-defined colors or you can select a color from your logo by placing your mouse over the color you would like to use.

If you'd like, you can also input your own color by entering the color as a hex value. Be sure to format your hex code like this #404040, and leave the # in front of the value.

Make Adjustments Page 

The make adjustments page allows you to fine tune your form even further.

• Logo placement - select left, right, or center.

• Font and line height - Select your font, sizing, and line height

• Page Margins - Determine the size of the margins on your form

• Printing - Select printing preferences for your form

• Window envelope compatible and pay stubs - allows you to format your template to fit into a window envelope when folded.

Note: Window envelopes support only left-justified logos for Friendly styles, right-justified logos for Airy and Modern styles or no logos, small font size, condensed line height, and 0.50" top margins.

• Use Letterhead Paper - Easily disable printing of logo and company information to avoid redundancy when printing on your own letterhead

• Show Tables - Account Summary -Turning on account summary will add a table to your invoices that will display your customer's balance forward, total of new charges, and total amount due.

• Form Names - Change the term used to designate your sales form here. For example, if you use the term Quote instead of Estimate, you can change that verbiage here. You can also remove the display of your form name by un-checking the box for Show form name.

• Company - Put a check box next to the information about your company that you would like to appear on your sales forms.

• Customer - Select which fields you would like to display to your customers.

• Custom - Enter up to three custom fields that will appear on your sales forms. For example, I could enter a field for Sales Rep. This field will appear when creating my invoice, and I can enter data that will display on my form.

• Columns - Select the order, label, and width for each column that appears on your form. You can uncheck columns that you'd rather not display

o Service/Product 

o Description - Option to include Quantity and Rate in the Description column.

o Date

o Quantity

o Rate

o Amount

• More - Additional options to fine-tune your form

 o Group activity - This will determine how activity is displayed on your invoice. You can chose to group lines by Day, Week, Month, or type. You can also choose to subtotal your groups here.

o Collapse activity rows - Save room on your forms by collapsing lines that have the same rate and description. This will omit dates for these line items.

o Show markup on billable expenses - This will display any markup you've entered on billable expenses to your customers

o Show billable time - This will display billable time entered to your invoice. You can select whether or not you'd like to include the employee name, or whether to include hours and rate on your line items.

Enter a customized message or footer to appear on your sales form.

• Message to customer - Use this field to enter a default message displayed to customers. You can edit this message when creating your form

• Footer - Add test to appear on the bottom of your form

To Create a New Form Style 

You can create and save multiple form templates to use on your sales forms. To get started, click New Style on the top of the page 

Managing Form Styles

Select which type of form you would like your new template to be used for. Continue modifying your form using the guidelines above.

Selecting Default Form

You can select a default template to be used for each type of form you have created. For example, I can set a default style to use for invoices, a default style to use for sales receipts, and a separate default style to use for estimates.

To do this, click the arrow next to the edit button in the Action column. Select Make Default from the drop down.

Note: The Standard style is always applied as the default style for any form type for which you have not specified a different default.

Additional Management Options

You can preview, rename, or delete your form style by clicking the arrow next to the edit button in the Action column. Select Make Default from the drop down.

Using Form Styles

Once your form styles are set up and ready to go, you can choose which template you'd like to use directly from your sales form. 

Do this by clicking the Customize button at the bottom of your form, then selecting the style you'd like to use.

2 - Difference between Invoice, Bill and Statement

Invoice and Sales Receipt:

Invoice is a term used by vendors/suppliers when they want to collect funds from their customers.

When you create transactions to receive money from your customers you would refer to it as an Invoice or Sales Receipt.

Invoices are the individual sales transactions that partially comprise a statement of a customer's account activity.

Invoices are sent to customers who are not paying immediately when specific work items or goods/services sold are completed or fulfilled (when you are expecting a payment at a later date from a customer). Receive Payment is used in conjunction with Invoice at the time the customer payment is received.

Sales Receipts are generally used for goods/services rendered at the time of a purchase (sometimes referred to as a "point of sale" purchase), or if customers give you immediate payment.

Bill:

Bill is a term used to describe transactions that are owed to vendors/suppliers.

When your vendors/suppliers send you an invoice to collect money from you, it is referred to as a Bill.

Since you are a customer to the vendor/supplier, you will receive an invoice from them and enter it as a bill that you are expected to pay.

Statement:

A Statement is simply the status of the customer's account at a particular point in time.

Each line item on a statement represents sales transactions, credits, and payments for a given period of time. It doesn't offer as much detail as the individual sales transactions.

Statements are often sent out on a regular basis (for example, monthly). They let your customers know where they stand and if they still owe you any money.

For further information about the two types of statements available, please see our Help Topic, Balance Forward and Open Item statements.

3 - Recording Daily Sales

When recording your daily transactions in QuickBooks Online, you can create a Sales Receipt template to be used at the end of each day to report from the cash register you use for your daily sales.

You will need to create Products/Services associated with the following account types:

Sales categories = Sales Income account

Sales tax = Sales Tax Liability account   *Australia customers use BAS Liabilities Payable

Overage/underage (for drawer shortages) = Expense and Income accounts (one each)

Cash= Undeposited funds 

Checks/Cheques= Undeposited funds 

Credit Card = Undeposited funds

Now you are ready to create a Sales Receipt for each day based on what was counted for your sales drawer:

Note:  By recording all of the Sales as positives and all of the Payments of the negatives, the net amount of the sales receipt would be Zero.

For example, at the end of the day you have 186.92 in Sales, 13.08 in Sales Tax. The drawer count is for Cash is 105.00, Checks/Cheques is 25.00 and Visa is 65.00; the sales report for the drawer that day shows 200.00 in Sales.

The Sales Receipt would have the following line items:

       Sales:                      186.92

       Sales tax:                13.08

       Cash:                       -105.00

       Checks/Cheques:     -25.00

       Credit Card:             -65.00

       Over/short                -5.00

When added together the total amount is zero.

Finally, go to Undeposited Funds and record the deposit for the amounts actually deposited in the bank.

4 - Should I Use An Invoice Or A Sales Receipt?

- Depending on when you'll be receiving the payment there are two ways to deal with sales transactions:

For a deferred payment, create invoices and receive payments against them.

For an immediate payment, use sales receipts.

Invoicing:

Choose the Create "+" icon > Invoice to create the invoice.

Choose the Create "+" icon > Receive Payment to close out the invoice.  If you deposit a payment from the Bank Deposit screen after entering an invoice, the payment won't be linked to the invoice and the invoice will appear as unpaid in your books.

Using Sales Receipts:

Choose the Create "+" icon > Sales Receipt to create the sales receipt. 

Here, the payment portion is part of the transaction.  Enter the payment information at the same time you are entering the sale.

5 - Invoices/Sales Receipts/Estimates/Statements And Emailed Reports Are Not Being Sent To My Customers Or Being Bounced Back.

If you have recently imported QuickBooks Desktop data into a QuickBooks Online company, you may need to reset your email address:

Click the "Gear" icon > Company Settings.

Review each email address in the Company Information area and make changes as needed.

When finished, click Save and Done.

If you have not recently imported QuickBooks Desktop data, review the following information.

If you are sending invoices, sales receipts, estimates, statements or emailing reports to your customers, but the emails are not being sent or are being blocked:

First, have your customer double-check their junk mail and spam folder. If the email is still not found try the following to correct the issue: 

Click the "Gear" icon > Company Settings.

In the Company Contact Info section click Email.

Clear the Company email address field and enter the desired address, even if it appears correct as is. Be sure not to use any extra characters or spaces before, within, or after the address you enter.

Once you've completed the change, click Save and Done.

Send yourself a test transaction.

If you still don't receive the email, try using a different email address that has a different domain (for instance, if you were using a gmail email address, try a hotmail or yahoo address instead).

If this fails, you may need to ask your IT department to add QuickBooks Online (QBO) mail server host names and IP addresses to your outgoing mail servers.

Many email programs utilize various blocking mechanisms on their mail servers. For example, e-mail addresses, mail servers, networks, dynamic IP addresses, and host names are used to source unwanted email, primarily spam. In addition, many email servers do not accept mail from server IP addresses without reverse DNS entries that match the domain name that the server alleges to be representing. This is an anti-spam measure to prevent spammers from pretending to deliver mail from well-known domains.

When you send a sales form/statement to your customer, the emailed invoice looks as though it's coming from your mail server when, in fact, it's being sent from a QBO mail server. Your mail servers might have this type of "spoofing" blocked. To allow mail to pass through your mail servers, configure your server to accept QBO mail server host names and IP addresses.

Note: The steps to add the host names and IP addresses depends on your e-mail setup.

You will need to allow the following:

Host Name     IP Address 

mailout11.intuit.com   206.154.105.172

mailout12.intuit.com   206.154.105.173

mailout13.intuit.com   206.154.105.174

mailout14.intuit.com   206.154.105.175

mailout21.intuit.com   206.154.105.176

mailout22.intuit.com   206.154.105.177

mailout23.intuit.com   206.154.105.178

mailout24.intuit.com   206.154.105.179

lvmailout01.intuit.com  199.16.139.16

lvmailout02.intuit.com  199.16.139.17

lvmailout03.intuit.com  199.16.139.18

lvmailappout10.intuit.com       199.16.139.20

lvmailappout11.intuit.com       199.16.139.21

lvmailappout12.intuit.com       199.16.139.22

lvmailappout13.intuit.com       199.16.139.23

lvmailappout20.intuit.com       199.16.139.24

lvmailappout21.intuit.com       199.16.139.25

lvmailappout22.intuit.com       199.16.139.26

lvmailappout23.intuit.com       199.16.139.27

mailout1b.intuit.com    206.108.40.7

mailout2b.intuit.com    206.108.40.8

mailout3b.intuit.com    206.108.40.9

mailout4b.intuit.com    206.108.40.10

mailout101.intuit.com   206.108.40.11

mailout102.intuit.com   206.108.40.12

mailout103.intuit.com   206.108.40.13

mailout104.intuit.com   206.108.40.14

mailout201.intuit.com   206.108.40.15

mailout202.intuit.com   206.108.40.16

mailout203.intuit.com   206.108.40.17

mailout204.intuit.com   206.108.40.18

mailout4a.intuit.com    206.108.40.28

mailout1a.intuit.com    206.108.40.89

mailout2a.intuit.com    206.108.40.90

mailout3a.intuit.com    206.108.40.91

mailout5a.intuit.com    206.108.40.92

If you need to specify a subnet mask, you can use 255.255.255.255.

6 - What Are The Different Forms In Quickbooks Online Used For?

If you are new to using accounting applications, some of the terms used can be confusing. Below is a basic description of what each form does in QuickBooks Online.

Invoice

Invoices are sent when your customers are not paying immediately for goods/services sold and you are expecting a payment at a later date.

For more information on how to create an invoice, search the In Product Help for Create and Save an invoice.

Receive Payment

Receive Payment is used in conjunction with Invoice. When a customer is paying an invoice, you can record receiving the payment.

For more information, search the In Product Help for Receive a payment on an invoice.

Estimate/Quote

An estimate/quote is created when you want to give your customer a quote, bid, or proposal for work you plan to do. The estimate/quote form looks very much like an invoice, but its purpose is to help you begin negotiations with your customer. Later, once the estimate/quote is accepted and you're ready to bill your customer, you can add data from the estimate/quote onto an invoice.

For steps on entering estimates/quotes, search the In Product Help for Create an Estimate/Quote.

Sales Receipt

Sales receipts are generally used for goods/services rendered at the time of a purchase (sometimes referred to as a "point of sale" purchase), or when customers give you immediate payment.

For steps on entering a Sales Receipt, search the In Product Help for Give a customer a sales receipt.

Statement

Statements allow you to share with a customer their sales history in a professional manor. It would include the invoices, credit memos, sales receipts you have created, along with the payments you have received for a given period of time. You can choose to show all activities dated between a particular start and end date or all transactions that have an open balance (an amount still owed). As such, it doesn't offer as much detail as the individual sales transactions.

For more information on creating a statement, search the In Product help for Create a statement.

Bill

The Bill screen is used to record the invoices you have received from vendors. Since you are a customer to the vendor, you would enter the invoice as a "bill" you are expected to pay.

For more information on how to add a bill, search the In Product help for Add a Bill. 

Pay Bills

Pay Bills is used in conjunction with Bill. When you are paying a vendor bill or multiple bills, you can record the bill payment.

For more information on how to pay a bill, search the In Product help for Pay Bills.