How to Customize QuickBooks 2019 Forms – Part 1

Watch the QuickBooks 2019 video tutorial below. You will learn how to customize forms, how to customize your invoice with your own logo, change the color schemes and font, add your company name and address, change the header, and more.

Well, we’ve made it all the way down to module ten and we’re going to talk in this module about customizing forms.

If you remember, we talked a little bit way back about the fact that you have multiple types of forms in QuickBooks. An invoice is an example, a purchase order is an example. Each one of these has a list of different templates.

You can use when you’re creating one of those different transactions. You might not like the templates that are there! Or, you might want to customize some of those. That’s where this comes in to play.

Let’s go ahead and talk about customizing your forms. This will be part one. Make sure to watch part two as well. So that, you can see everything there! To know about customizing forms.

Let me take a moment and just show you exactly, what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the fact that we want to customize your templates.

I’m going to use the Create Invoices, as an example here. When we were going through the invoices, in an earlier module. One of the things we talked about was the fact that you had these templates on this dropdown list, here!

You can choose whichever template you like on each invoice. But, what if, there’s one you don’t really like that much or maybe, you need one tweaked.

You can do that by either editing one that’s here or creating a brand new template. That’s what we’re getting ready to talk about.

Now, before we actually do this. Let me show you where all the templates in QuickBooks basically live. If you go up to List on your menu; you’ll see Templates down near the bottom.

This is a list of all the templates that are in QuickBooks. You’ll see there are several different invoice templates. There are credit memo templates, statements, estimates.

You can see the list here. If you just right-click anywhere in this list here’s your New option. If you want to create a new one. However, you’re probably not going to be here when you’re ready to create one.

So, we’re going to go to it a different way. Here’s a way to edit the one you’ve clicked on. You can delete a template. And remember, if you’ve ever used it, you can’t delete it. But, you can make it inactive to hide it from the list.

Now, a couple of them I want to point out. The import and export option. I can take the one that I’m clicked on and export it if I’d like.

If I click Export, it will ask me to save my file. Then, I’ll be able to go into Word or Excel and actually import it. Then, make any changes I want that way.

Also, notice the option that says, “Download Templates“. Intuit has a whole lot of these actually on their website. Right here! That you can download for free.

You can see, they’re set up on the left by the type of template that they are. If I click Invoice, for example, you’ll see there are several here that I can choose.

All you have to do, if there’s one you think you like, go ahead and hit the Download option, and it will download it into that same list. We just saw over in that blank invoice.

That’s a really nice little feature there! This one here is really kind of neat. Unfortunately, you can’t really see them very well. Unless you actually download them. I’m going to go ahead and exit that. So that, we can continue.

Let’s go ahead and get out of this list and I’ll show you where to go when you’re ready to customize a template.

I’m on a blank invoice here and notice I’m under the Formatting tab. Here are the buttons. You’re going to use right here. This Download Template is where we just were a few seconds ago and I showed you how to download those different ones that are on the Intuit website.

Let’s start with Manage Templates.

These are the ones that you saw on the dropdown list a few moments ago. You have the ability to actually edit one of these. If there’s a brand new one; you can select one and make a copy. I’ll make a copy of the Rock Castle Invoice.

When you do that notice it says; “Copy of Rock Castle Invoice” here. Here’s the template name over here. You just rename this to whatever you’d like to call it.

I’m going to call mine My Invoice, and you’ll be able to see the changes that your makeover in the Preview area as you go through this.

Now, this is really the only thing you can do on this screen. The next thing you want to do is click OK at the bottom. And now, you’re in what we call the basic customization window.

The changes that you’ll make here are more global. Let’s start at the top.

If you go to Manage Templates, you’re going to see, you’re right back to this window. I’ll go ahead and click OK again. The next thing is you might have a logo that you want to use. All you have to do is click on Use Logo and as soon as I do, you’ll notice it takes me into My Computer. Now, I can look for that particular logo I’d like to use. I’ll go into my libraries. I’ll look at my pictures. Then, I’ll look at the sample pictures that come in Windows and choose one of these.

Let’s choose these penguins. It will always pop up with this warning message that says: “QuickBooks will now copy your image”, and it tells you the path where it’s going to copy that image. You just say OK there. Now, you’ll see your image appears in the Preview area. Now, we can move it. We just can’t do it on this screen.

The next thing you want to do is select a color scheme. Black is probably the best. But, just to show you some of these others. Let’s say, you choose maroon and you apply the color scheme. You can see that all your text is maroon colored. The lines around your boxes are maroon colored. I’m going to go back, put this on black, and apply the color scheme.

The next thing you can do is change the font. These are the four things you can change the font for. You’ve got your title, which is this word Invoice up here, your company name and address, which is right here. Then, the labels. The labels are the word Bill To, the word Ship To (the labels for each of your fields).

For each of these, you can go into the Change Font and you’ll be able to change the actual font itself. You’ll be able to change the color, the size, anything you see in this window, you’ll be able to change.

The next thing you’ll see are several options that you can check or uncheck as far as would you like to see them on the screen or not. You do want the company name and address. But, notice some things that are not checked. For example, the phone number.

There’s no phone number over here. I’d probably like it to appear right below my city, state, and zip. Watch what happens if I check the phone number. It actually applied that field down here at the bottom where I do not want it.

Now, I could move it. But, I want to show you a quick way to actually put it right underneath your city, state and zip up here.

I’ll uncheck that and click on Update Information. This is the address block that it was pulling from. If I copy this phone number right here, then I have the ability to come back up here, and place it right below my city, state, and zip.

I could also put the word Telephone if I want in front of this (whatever I wanted it to say). And then, all I have to do is click OK and it will say; “you did not update your legal address” (that would be over here under this tab).

If you want to go back and do that. You can! If not, you can just say, “No“. And then, you’ll see that your phone number is right underneath your address block here.

Also, notice you can have the past due stamp appear. If you have an invoice that’s overdue, it’ll have a big Past Due on it. You may want that. Also, it will print the status stamp. Let’s say this is paid, then it will print Paid across it.

If you voided this out for some reason, it’ll say Void. Across it! So, you probably do want that as well.

The next thing you want to do is go down to the bottom where it says; “Additional Customization”. So, this screen was more of global changes. Additional customization lets you drill down a little bit deeper.

The first thing you’ll notice is you’re on the Header tab. And all of these things that you see here, you can choose whether to see them on the screen, whether or not to print them. Then, you can change the wording related to each one of these.

Let’s go down the list so you’ll know what you’re looking at.

The first thing is the default title. That’s this word Invoice right here. You’ll notice that I do see it on the screen. I’m probably going to want to print it. And just to do something a little different. I’ll put it all in caps. You’ll see that as soon as I tab through that field it shows me a preview of it right over here.

The next thing is the date. And that’s going to be the date right here. Let’s put Invoice Date and then what we’re going to see is when we tab through it now says Invoice Date. Now, you’ll notice some of this is cut off because the field is not quite large enough. We will fix that in a little while when we go into the Layout Designer.

The next thing is the invoice number, which appears right over here. Then, you have your Bill To and that’s going to be this right here. Notice, underneath it is a Ship To. That’s going to be this.

Let’s say you don’t ship anything. You might want to uncheck those. Underneath that, you have the purchase order number. If you use purchase orders, you’ll probably want to check the box.

And you will start seeing this message pop up that says, “Overlapping Fields“. What you want to do for now is hit Continue. Do you see how these fields overlap some others? Again, when we get to the Layout Designer, we’ll go ahead and fix all that.

The next thing you’ll see is SO number, which is a shipping order number. Then you have your terms and then you have your due date. Below, that it says, “Rep“. If you have sales reps in your organization, then, you may want to track which sales rep works with this customer.

You also have the account number. Do you notice, you cannot check account number to see it on the screen? However, you can check the account number if you’d like to print it. Remember, the account number was set up in the customer setup. So, you would have to go back there to turn it on if you want to use it.

You next have ship date, ship via, and freight on board. Those have to do with shipping. If you’re not shipping, anything you wouldn’t want those, turned on.

And then you have Project/Job. Notice, you can’t check to see it on the screen. However, you will always see it right back here from this dropdown. It’s just not on the actual invoice itself right here. You can choose to print it. Now, you may not call these projects. You may call it, job name.

The next thing you’ll notice is there is the Other field. This could be for anything at all that you wanted to be able to type in that field. You would just go ahead and turn that on if you wanted to show and/or print this.

The last three say contract number, birthday and spouse’s name. I don’t know if you remember where those came from. But when we were setting up the customer or the vendor, you could create your own fields. That’s where these come from. If you need more fields than what you see here, you can go over there and actually create those. Then come back and they will be on this list.

That’s a quick way to go through the Header options here. I want to next go over to the Column options. Let’s go ahead and stop the video here! I want you to go over to part two and we will continue this.

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.