I have today made a new custom PDF template for quotes in my InvoicePlane. I made a copy of the default one I use for “Estimates” (I modified my language file so all the wording says Estimate by default and I itemize products on Estimates) and I changed everything relevant from saying “Estimate” to say “Quote” etc. and modified the PHP to only display itemized info of product names etc but no pricing. This is how I want my Quotes to be displayed.
So I have created a new Invoice Group called “Quotes” to handle the number of quotes, and when I make a new Quote it asks me which Invoice Group to use for the quote, so I can choose my Quotes group. But I can’t find any settings anywhere to tell it which PDF template to use.
I can set a default PDF template for all Quotes in the settings but I want the default setting to be to create Estimates not Quotes. I only want to switch it to a quote on demand. Is there a way to do this?
So for a recap:
I modified the language file so invoiceplane will make me “Estimates” by default (the interface and everything where it normally says “Quote” says “Estimate” on mine this is how I want it)
Now I want to be able to make “Quotes” (because Quotes and Estimates are very similar, I just make custom templates to output the data onto a Quote instead of the default Estimate)
I can’t work out how to tell invoiceplane an Estimate should be a Quote (ie: can’t tell it to use a custom template)
I’m still running 1.4.4 because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Hello Cabji,
Unfortunately that seems like a very custom request. It’s like asking for a personal design/logo.
Unless you can prove at which extent such a feature can benefit to the whole InvoicePlane community (not just you), I doubt someone will help you.
I did not quite understand the Quotes versus Estimates part. You should explain why you’re trying to achieve such a thing, what’s the idea behind such modifications, etc, aka “use case”.
I am only trying to apply a custom PDF to a quote. I realize changing all the language of “Quotes” to “Estimate” through invoiceplane is very custom, I did this for myself.
What I have found is that you can only use 1 pdf template, even though you can make as many as you want and invoiceplane can see them. To change pdf template you literally have to set it to the “default template” for PDFs in settings.
If there is a default setting, shouldn’t there be the ability to use a non default?
My use case is that I am a tradesman, so I have varying types of “customers”. I have: contractors, householders and builders.
Other contractors (people that do the same tra2de as myself) will verbally agree on a pay rate with me, there is usually a local “going rate” for a days work, and i can invoice them without needing to do a quote or estimate.
Householders will use me as a principal contractor because they want me to do them a driveway, shed slab, house slab etc. For householders I will create a job price “Estimate” which shows the householder the costs they should expect to incur doing the proposed work that can be realistically predicted. If they like to operate using this system with me, they purchase materials directly and ssve taxes etc compared to if i supplied the materials. They also get to see what they are paying for the materials in the job.
Builders (and some householders) want me to give them a “Quote”. A quote is a fixed price agreement and usually they want me to supply the materials. Because of the added risk for me, it means i need to allow a higher margin of profit. I also do not want to show these customers how much i pay for the materials or what i charge for the labour. They just see a total cost figure, but optionally i want to be able to show a breakdown of what is supplied in the job (but not show the prices for them)
I can use custom templates to achieve all this, in fact i already made the custom template yesterday. There just isnt a way to apply custom templates from what i can see, besides changing what the default pdf template is.
I’m still trying to understand why you did rename your “quotes” to “estimates” in your application. Does your jurisdiction require you to clearly separate quotes and estimates?
Can you show a PDF example of how an Estimate would look like (with fake entries), and an example of how it would look like once it (somehow?) becomes a Quote? That would help a lot.
I’m just trying to figure if what you’re asking for is actually just a way to switch between templates (on-the-fly and individually), or if you require a very independent module so that there would be “Estimates / Quotes / Invoices” (instead of just “Quotes / Invoices” like it currently is).
Just a way to individually switch between templates is what I need.
There is no need for a new module, in fact “Invoice Groups” already allows to have something like this, it just doesn’t let you set a PDF template to a group.
I changed “Quotes” to “Estimates” because by default I mainly issue estimates, not quotes. Before now I would build quotes in invoiceplane but not send a PDF to the customer. I would just email them the price and details if they wanted. To be able to select a custom PDF template on a “per quote” basis would let me send them a nicely drawn up PDF.
I can find some examples of the PDFs and their differences tonight, about 5 or 6 hours time.
Here are images ofthe PDF templates I use. I can generate them both by switching the default PDF template in settings, but there is no other way to switch templates used. You can see the differences are just made by editing the PDF template file and outputting whatever you like.
I have found you can select your PDF template when you go to email the quote to your customer through invoiceplane. This is great.
So I guess now my only wish would be so that we can preview our PDF with whichever PDF template we want, that’s the functionality I think is really missing. We can “Download PDF” from the quote editor page, but it will only ever generate the PDF based off the default setting not any custom PDF.
