Customising Invoice Reports

Phil Longstaff plongstaff at rogers.com
Tue Jul 21 15:33:32 EDT 2009


It's more correct to say that the developer who developed the business code *is* a business user who designed the invoices to meet his own needs, and was happy if other users could make use of it.  Being an open source product has advantages and disadvantages.  The main advantage is that you are free to modify it to suit your needs.  The disadvantage is that there is no marketing or customer service department telling a software department what to produce.  I'm a developer, but not a business user, so I'm not interested in the invoices.  However, I will be doing some work on the budget and other reports since I do use those.

For version 2.3.X (unstable) leading to 2.4 sometime in August or September, there are two items which will affect invoices.  1) The current html display engine is being replaced by a newer engine which has many more features for controlling fonts and appearance, and 2) the current invoice is being augmented by a new invoice which should make things easier to customize.  Currently, the invoice (and all reports) are essentially a program which produces HTML code which is displayed (and which can be printed).  The new invoice is an HTML template which has some pieces of embedded program (to fetch the invoice number or item lines, for example).  This means that for most of the customization you want, you can now edit this HTML template to add logos, extra text, etc.

Do you have a "generate PDF" printer on your system?  Can't you just print to that?

Phil




________________________________
From: Paul Kruger <paul at paulkruger.us>
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 2:39:44 PM
Subject: Re: Customising Invoice Reports


So far this is also the reason I cannot change to Gnucash from Quickbooks.
A business MUST be able to print invoices that are designed with their own
look and feel including logos etc.

So far it does not look like the developers are actually business users of
Gnucash or they would have taken necessary pains to make invoices and
reports editable.  

I do a lot of invoicing and the only option that works for me is to just
select the invoices I need and click "Print" and have them output as a PDF
to send via email to customers or to print or fax depending on the customer.

All the nice features are for naught if one can't easily send an invoice to
customers.  This is a MAJOR handicap for Gnucash.


Benedick Miller wrote:
> 
> I am afraid I can't help but just wanted to say I have
> had similar problems. I like Gnucash very much but
> printing is a disaster. I can't and don't use Gnucash
> to print my invoices. I end up doing them by hand,
> which is a waste of time. I would have a hard time
> recommending Gnucash to another business user solely
> because of the printing issues. Pity, because
> otherwise it is so good.
> 
> --- Brian Keen <brian.keen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>  Hi folks,
>>  Need some advice on customising the fancy invoice
>> report:-
>> I want to get the printed invoice to fit on a single
>> A4 sheet.
> ...
>>  It would also help if I could reduce the font-size.
>> I can't figure out how - other than to edit the
>> resulting HTML file. I don't
>> want to do that every time I create another invoice.
>>  I also wanted to change the word 'Sales' to 'VAT'
>> at the end of the table
> ...
>> Although GnuCash seems to work well, customising
>> reports needs to be made
>> more user friendly for the average user.
>> It shouldn't really be necessary for someone trying
>> to run a business to
>> have to start hacking lisp.
> ...
> 
> Please Note my NEW EMAIL ADDRESS:
> benedick_miller at yahoo.co.uk
> 
> ...shall we their fond pageant see?
> Lord what fools these mortals be!
> 
> 
>     
>     
>         
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