As part of the major works we have released on our Template Designer (previously the "Invoice Designer") you can now use one template designer tool to create several different formats of PDF templates in ChannelGrabber!  

You can create invoices, which prints one whole page per order, you can create Packing Slips where there are multiple sections per page that contain different customer/product/order data, and you can also create customised labels for shipping your items too.

This guide will talk you through Designing an Invoice.
You may also want to check out our other guides on Designing Packing Slips and Designing Custom Shipping Labels

1.  Click on the Settings button to access your ChannelGrabber settings:

2. Under the Template Management section, click on Template Designer, which will take you straight into the designer tool:

3. You now have the option to Create New Template, where you can either start with a totally blank page, or select one of our pre-designed templates (suitable for different types of integrated label paper - you can click the shopping cart logo under any of the pre-set designs to be taken to our recommended label supplier's website):

Important Note:  If you plan to print courier labels on an integrated invoice, we recommend the  Forms Plus FPS-15 style paper.

If you have previously used the Template Designer tool, you can Edit Existing Template further down the page by selecting one of your previous designs to edit.

The Duplicate option can be used once you have set up/customised a template so that you can replicate the work you have already done and make any small changes for an additional invoice design (eg. logo changes etc.):

Click on the template or previous design that you want and it will load up the full invoice editor (I have chosen the Forms Plus FPS-15 style for this example).  

You will see that the most commonly required fields have been pre-populated for you, such as the courier label (this is just a placeholder so will change based on the courier and shipping method that you process the order with), shipping name and address, your trading address, the invoice order table etc. 

You can use this template as it is, or if you want to use this as a starting point and make amendments to create your own invoice (follow steps below under "Creating a New Invoice"), you can give the template a new Template Name on the left, then the alert bar will pop up at the top of the page to let you know changes have been made, so you can now Save your changes, or Discard them if they are not needed:

Once you have a template saved, you can then apply this to different trading companies and marketplaces in Settings > Template Management > Template Settings.  You may want to read this guide on Invoice & Email Settings for more help with this.

First please navigate to Settings > Template Management > Template Designer:
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Click on the Blank template under the Create New Template header and this will open up a new blank page in the template designer tool:

First, on the left hand column, enter the Template Name you want to assign to your invoice design (this is what it will be referred to as in other parts of ChannelGrabber such as in Settings and on the main Orders page) and select the Template Type as Invoice from the drop-down options:
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Select the Paper Type and/or set the specific dimensions of the paper you are going to print the invoices on if it doesn't match any of the preset options:

If you want to set margins on the page to ensure that any elements you add to the template will not get cut off by your printer, you can enter them in mm under the Page Print Margins section and then the area will be greyed out on the template to stop you from accidentally overlapping the margins:

On the left hand column you will find a list of different pre-set elements that can be added to your invoice design.  These quick-load buttons will add various elements to the invoice which will use pre-scripted code to call in the relevant information from each order, such as the shipping address etc:

Seller Address: Your address and trading details (automatically populated from your Company Settings/Trading Details as appropriate)

Delivery Address: Your customer’s shipping address as provided on the order by the channel the order came from

Image: Allows you to upload your logo or any image, which can then be re-sized and re-positioned anywhere on the page (we recommend JPG or PNG file formats - if you find that your JPG image is blurry, try converting it to PNG and re-uploading)

Text: Create a text box for you to type in any text or messages for your customer, or input data field tags to add further order details to your invoice (eg. Order ID, buyer messages etc.)

Table: Creates an table with key information for each product that is ordered (and the content and order of the table columns can be edited from the right hand editing pane once the table is selected)

Box: Adds a bordered box which you can re-size and re-position anywhere on the page. Text or other elements can be positioned over this box to give important elements of your invoice more emphasis

PPI:  If you are printing Royal Mail PPI logo as part of your packing slip, then you can add a placeholder to position the PPI logo where you want it on the page (see guide on Shipping Aliases for more on how to map PPI logos to different shipping methods automatically)

Courier Label:  Similar to PPI, this inserts a placeholder courier label (6"x4") so that you can position where you need it on the page.  This will then be populated on the slip automatically when you have generated your courier label in ChannelGrabber (see our collection of guides on Couriers & Shipping for more details on this topic)

Barcode:  Creates a barcode placeholder for you to position where you need it on the page.  There are three different types of barcode that can be used when processing orders to trigger different actions within the system.  See our guide on Using Barcodes on Invoices for more details on how these can benefit you.
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Click on the button for the element you want to add, and a field with the relevant data tags or element will be added to the invoice design (default position is always the top left corner). You can then click and drag to re-position this element to where you would like it to be printed on the page and re-size it as needed:

To change the content or formatting of the element, click the item and look on the right hand editing pane:

In this example we have a Text element so on the right are all the text options.  

Display On All Pages means that the selected element will repeat on every page of the PDF template (eg. if one order takes up more then one page the element will repeat on every subsequent page as well as the first) so tick this to apply this setting to the element:

Using the Text editing box, you can add or remove content, align the text to left, centre or right of the text box, change the font, size and colour of the text and make it Bold or Italic. 

You can use the Select Data Field drop-down menu to insert other useful data tags, such as which channel the order came from, any buyer message, customer contact details etc. (see A Guide to Dynamic Tags for the full list and definitions).

You can tick the Remove Blank Lines option for elements like the Seller Address and Delivery Address, so that is a specific order doesn't have an "Address Line 3" for example, there won't just be a blank line left on the address section of the packing slip:

You can even add a border to some elements to give them greater emphasis on the page and you can change the exact position and size of the element in mm, which can help to align different elements on the page neatly:
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Use the Delete button in the top right hand corner to remove the entire element from the template if needed:

The changes you make will update immediately on the design so that you can check they are correct as you go along.  Make sure to click the Save button at the top in the red bar to save each change you make:

You can add the Table element to show product details from the order.  When you add the Table element, a preset table will be added to the template design:

When you click onto the Table element as a whole, on the right hand editing pane, you can amend the Border thickness and colour, the Location & Size of the table within the page and set how Linked Products display on the table (eg. do you only want to see the SKU/item that has been purchased, or the component/mapped products without the bundle SKU, or both?  This may depend on how you use Linked Products, so check out these guides to find out more:  Bundles / SKU Mapping):

You can also add and remove columns in the table in the Table Columns section as well as re-naming the column headers and changing what product data appears in each field.  You can re-order the columns by clicking and dragging the spacer icons to the left of each column header - moving it up moves it to the left of the table and moving it down moves it to the right of the table:

The same logic can also be applied to the Table Totals section, so if you don't want the Shipping, VAT, Totals etc on the Packing Slips, simply edit them or remove these options using the X button next to each row on the right:

Lastly, you can define the order that the ordered items are placed into the table using the Sort By setting.  You can choose to have them listed in the table alphabetically by criteria like SKU, Title, Picking Location etc or numerically by Quantity Ordered, Unit Price, Total Line Price etc.  If you want to have more than one rule, ie. list first alphabetically by SKU, then numerically by Quantity Ordered for example, you can add multiple rules here and order them by preference, ie. the top is the first criteria to sort by, then the second is next priority etc:

 
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Click onto the specific table cell for the column you want to edit and it will highlight with a blue border:

The right hand editing pane will change to Table Cells and provide text formatting options for font, formatting (bold, italics, underline), alignment and font colour, as well as the background colour if you want to fill the whole cell in one block of colour to highlight it.  Lastly, by default ChannelGrabber will adjust the width of each column to best optimise the table contents for you, but if you want to set a specific Column Width in mm, you can do this here too:

Once you have an invoice design saved, you can then apply this to different trading companies and marketplaces in Settings > Template Management > Template Settings.  You may want to read this guide on Invoice & Email Settings for more help with this.

 
When you have completed your design and mapped it to the relevant marketplaces/trading companies, you can proceed to the Orders page and print an Invoice for any order to check how it looks (see guide on Batch Update Processes for more details on processing orders in bulk).
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We hope these updates to the template feature are really useful but if you get stuck and need further guidance, just open a new chat (using the blue chat button at the bottom right corner of any ChannelGrabber page) and our Support Team will be on hand to assist.
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