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Create a Print-Friendly Invoice Page

Danielle Kellogg Updated by Danielle Kellogg

Scenario

You want to create a print-friendly invoicing page in your app. This page will include your company logo and billing information, customer information, and order details.

In this guide, we will walk through the process of creating a print-friendly invoice page as seen in our Quotes and Invoices demo app.

Requirements

To create this page, you will first need your app to be set up with the objects and connections outlined in our How to Build an Orders App guide. That includes objects for: Orders, Line Items, Products, and Customers.

You will also need to activate users and add at least one user role to your app. In this guide, the user role will be called Sales.

We will be using Rich Text, Table, and Details views to create the invoice print page.

Steps

Add a Status Field to the Orders Object

In the Data section of the Builder, click on the Orders object. Add a new multiple choice field and name it Status.

The Status field will have three options: Quote, Invoice, Paid.

Add a Page to View Orders

Now, go to the Pages section of the Builder. Click the green "+" button to add a new page.

For the new page, enable logins and restrict access to the user role that should have access to the invoices page. Give the page a name, in this example we will name the page "Manage Invoices".

On that new page add a table view displaying Order records with the following selections:

  • A table view to display Orders
  • Links to view each Order records on a details page
  • An Orders details view
  • A table view to display Line Items connected to the page’s Order record.

On your new Manage Invoices page, click the table displaying Order records to edit the view.

In the Source section of the table view editor, add a filter to only display Order records where “Status is Invoice.” This is how we will restrict this view to only show our invoices.

You can also rename the view from “Orders” to “Invoices.”

In the Live App you will have a table view displaying all your Orders records in the Invoice stage:

Create the Invoice Print Page

Now we are going to edit the order details page to turn it into a print-friendly invoicing page. First, navigate to the details page you recently created by clicking on the “Order Details” link below your Invoices table view:

On the Order Details page, you will see an Orders details view and a table view displaying the connected Line Items.

The final goal is to achieve a page with all the relevant order information and company branded when printed:

We will create this print-friendly page using a combination of rich text, details, and table views.

It displays:

  • Company logo and address
  • Customer information and invoice details
  • Line items belonging to the invoice
  • Invoice tax and total
  • Thank you message

The top part of the page is static for all invoices. It displays the word “Invoice,” a company logo, and company billing information. We can create this page in Knack using a rich text view.

On the Order Details page, add a rich text view by clicking the "Add View" button in the top menu and selecting the rich text view type.

The rich text view will be added below your other views. Drag it so it is above your other views in the Builder. It will contain the content for the top of the print page, so the view must be arranged above all the others.

Then, click on the view to open the rich text view editor.

Add your static content to the rich text view. In this example, we added the word Invoice across the top and the company name and address.

You can read more about how to add the logo to this Rich Text view in our "Rich Text: Adding Images" help article.

Below the rich text view, we will use the existing details view to display the rest of the invoice information.

Click on the details view to open the view editor. Remove the details view title from the Settings section of the view editor.

Details views can display fields in three columns. Now you can arrange your fields in the details views.

The right column will contain the Invoice Date and Invoice Number fields, so click on those fields in the left-hand Fields column and drag them to the right group if needed:

The left column will contain data from the connected Customers record. To access that data, select the orange arrow next to Orders in the left-hand Fields column and click on Customers. Add the name and address fields to the left group:

Hover over the Customer Name field and click on the pencil icon.

Update the settings to “Hide Label” and change the style to H2:

Submit and hover over the Address field to click the pencil icon. For this field, simply select “Hide Label.”

This view is now complete. Save changes to go back to the order details page.

On the order details page, click on the Line Items table to open the table view editor. In this table, hover over and click on the trash can icon for fields you don’t want to display on the invoice.

Click on the pencil icon next to the “Line Items” title to edit the title, deleting the default  “Line Items” text.

Once you have only the fields you want to display on the invoice, this view is complete. Save changes to go back to the order details page.

Now, we’ll add another details view to display the order subtotal, sales tax, and order total. Select a details view from the top view bar:

Add a new details view displaying this page’s Order record:

Once you add the new details view, click on it to open the details view editor. Like you did with the first details view, delete the field group and title.

In this view, you will only need to add a field in a single row. In that group, add your order total field:

Save changes to go back to the order details page.

Enable Printing

The last step is to enable printing on this order details page. To do so, go to the page’s Settings tab. Click on the box to “Show Print Link” and save your changes with the “Update Settings” button:

Now you are finished! Go to your new invoice print page in the Live App to preview it:

Click on “view” to see the print-friendly page for a single invoice. You can print this page using the button in the top right to mail or email to your customers.

This is what it looks like in the print preview:

How did we do?

How to Add Inline Editing to a Table

How to Click on an Image to Go to Another Page

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