Customizing Forms in QuickBooks 2019 – Part 2

Watch QuickBooks 2019 video tutorial, we will continue talking about customizing forms and show you how to modify the columns, progress columns, footers, and print setting.

Okay, welcome back! We are on part two of Creating Reports. I wanted to go ahead and continue where we left off, and talk about the customization of your different templates in QuickBooks.

We just finished up with the Header tab. Now let’s look at the Columns tab. When you go down the list, you can again choose (if you’d like to see each of these options on the screen) and/or choose to print them. But, you can also show the order from left to right you’d like the columns to appear in.

Let’s go down the list and look at this.

We could choose to have the service date if we’d like. We could also choose to have the item print. Now, I want you to notice that item will always be on the screen. Because you have to see it here! In order to choose an item. But, you do not have to print it. And I probably wouldn’t!

If you remember, I told you when we talked about items, that’s when you set up items. You can name them anything you want. Because you’re the only one that will see them.

Your customer will see the description. However, they’ve got the manufacturer’s part number. They’ve got quantity, unit of measurement, rate amount. And you can see the list down here!

Now, a couple of things I want to tell you. This quantity field right here. This is a calculating field. So, if you have a situation, where you need to say quantity ordered and then, quantity shipped. This needs to be the quantity shipped field. You would come down to the other down here. And, make this quantity ordered.

That way this one will calculate for you. Let’s say you don’t want the unit of measurement and rate is always at the end and the amount is the very end. So you always have the rate and then the amount. You can’t change that. The amount is always the last one. So it looks like now we’re going to have the item, which is not going to print, the description, the quantity, the rate, and the amount.

Now let’s go over to the Progress columns. This is pretty much the same. It has to do with estimating jobs. If you want to know how much has already been estimated and you want to show all that on an invoice you could go down and do the same thing here.

Then you have the Footer tab. Now, I want you to notice down at the bottom, this is what’s in the footer now. They’ve got the subtotal. They have the sales tax, the total, payments and credits, and balance due. That is way too many fields to have at the bottom of your template.

I would probably do something like this. So, first of all, customer message is going to go right in here! That’s going to be things like “Have a nice day”, “Thank you for your business”.

I would probably take off subtotal. I would take off sales tax. Now sales tax will always print up here underneath the last line item. So, you’re not telling QuickBooks you don’t want to see the sales tax.

You’re just not going to show it down here: Payments and credits and then balance due. So, typically this is what you’ll see on a generic invoice in QuickBooks.

Now, every now and then. You may have a customer that says, “Can you send me an invoice that shows me the balance due on an invoice”, if they have been making payments, for example. If that’s the case, then, you would do something like this. Where you have the total, the payments, and then the balance due. We’ll leave it like that.

The last tab is Print. Here! You can choose some printer settings. If you want to get to these options, you have to check Use specified printer settings below. But here! You could have your orientation portrait or landscape. You could tell QuickBooks, you want two copies automatically. If you have a different size paper, you can set that up as well.

It’s going to print page numbers on any forms that have more than two pages. And you probably want the trailing zeros. That’s basically if something cost $54 it’ll actually put the point-zero-zero in there for you.

And that’s really all you have to do for the additional customization options.

What I’d like to do now is take this even further and go into the Layout Designer and show you how to actually make these columns look the way you’d like them to look, move the picture, and make it just look like you would want it to look in your business.

Cindy McGuckin

Cindy McGuckin is an IT trainer with over 20 years of experience. Cindy currently manages the IT Training Department at Trident Technical College, she's a Member of the Association of IT Professionals, Charleston, SC chapter and the Treasurer of the South Carolina Association of Continuing Higher Education. Cindy is a Microsoft Office and QuickBooks expert and her online courses have received hundreds of 5-star reviews. Her no-nonsense approach to teaching complicated topics makes her classes engaging and interesting.