As most of our users already know we aim to constantly improve the usability of SalesKing in order to raise the ability to optimize the workflows for managing documents (invoices, estimates, payment-reminders, credit-notes, orders) and organising clients, products and payments. So did we few days ago, while rolling out the last update of SalesKing invoicing software.
Posts Tagged ‘Invoices’
Monday, June 21st, 2010
/ von Jens Neulen
Improvement of the SalesKing list-views
Friday, March 19th, 2010
/ von Jens Neulen
SalesKing has a new Partner: plan.io Projectmanagement
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
/ von Schorsch
Estimate Status, dropdown menu, invoice-numbers
As mentioned in the last post, we implemented reminders. Besides we made a few little changes.
Estimates
Now Estimates can be tagged with a status-option. While implementing this, we deleted a few not used status-settings. The now available Options are:
- draft, open, accepted, rejected
In the Background we switched the known status billed in accepted. This status was automatically set when an invoice was created for the estimate. This function is deleted. The arguments for this step will be communicated in the comment-area, if somebody want to know more about this.
We also gave estimates the option to give them a title. It is already used in the reminder section and is nice to place for example a project-title in your pdf-template. This field is also tied to the textsearch.
Invoices
The automatic setting of invoicenumbers for new invoices is cancelled. That is made because now Invoices saved as draft do not reserve a invoice-number. As known the invoice-number is now set when opening the invoice.
Main-Menu
After more and more document-types filled the section invoices it was time to get a drop-down-menu. In the Future we will insert a navigation-section called documents, where also the estimates will be organized.
BILD-> Screenshot Drop-Down-Rechnungen (gibts nicht mehr J)
Secrets
In the Screenshot above you can already see a new Function ….find the mistake….
It is not done yet. Also a secret is the web-template and product thing.
Interface
The formular for the search of your Login-Adress is pimped with a little usability-upgrade. When you fill one field ( domain or eMail) the other remaining field is deactivated.
The displayed total in the header section is taken away. Our Users did not want to make employees or friends being able to see that at a glance.
Last but not least we took care about out lists and search options. After we implemented the lists first there had been several discussions about the default settings of how it shows up after clicking it first. For Example the Invoice List was switching within the last few weeks from being sorted after date of invoice to status to price to client to invoice number (last setting). Same issue was in the lists for clients and products. To end this we decided to sort the lists after date of change. That makes the user having a consistent sorting of all lists and makes him able to see the most actual files first.
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
/ von Schorsch
Easily copy your pdf-templates
Your own pdf-templates can now easily copied including the settings with one click.
Show Icon (blue +) to easy copy templates
The possibility to also copy the default pdf-templates is not supported yet. New are the fields subtotal and carry-forward which can translated free now. Furthermore are the settings of blocks that are not used, automatically hidden.
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
/ von Schorsch
SalesKing imports working hours from mite!
The mite-Importer!
SalesKing-Users do now have the opportunity to import their working hours which they captured with the frequently used online-timetracking-tool mite, and to instantly proceed them into their invoice.
Time that you captured with mite are easily to import: after choosing an active project from mite you are able to import tracked-time optional sorted by work or period or both. You can also choose a customized work period to import.
Setting the assignment
To allow the collaboration with mite you have to activate the mite API. This option is based on mite in settings (click on your user-name on the right top). Just activate the assignment and copy the shown API-Key.
Additional to your mite-subdomain you have to past the API-Key within your SalesKing-settings-area – this is for secured authentification of the assignment.
Screencast
SalesKing feat. mite! Working-hours imported into SalesKing used to create invoices from SalesKing on Vimeo.
Thanks to the whole mite Team for the fantastic feedback, as to Jan and Lars of Railslove for the big support while implementing this mite-importer.
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
/ von Schorsch
You need multiple page pdf-invoices? The pdf-table-machine helps.
The KingPDF-TableMachine, that is how it exactly called, is responsible for the perfect allocation of tabular invoice-data across multiple pages. The TableMachine creates nearl y every kind of header or footer, administrates data-fields and manages the needed table-place over the different pages.
If it is an Invoice, an estimate or a Paymend-Reminder, the KingPDF-TableMachine needs to deal with many different unknown data but has to present a clean pdf-document.
That means if the SalesKing-User creates a pdf-document, we are not able to know:
- how many data he uses: items of an invoice or estimate
- how many columns are used: description, quantity, price…
- how many headers or footers are used: carry over, delivery costs, total, subtotal
- the used pdf-template: invoice-template, estimate-template, credit-note-template
- changing pages within the template (page two differs from layout of page-one)
The process of creating a pdf-invoices does come to the user or developer some kind of trivial or easy job… it is…. If ALL of the above mentioned things are known BEFORE. But if you deal like this you’ve got restrictions and restrictions are the enemy of the SalesKing! The SalesKing does aspire liberty in document-design and layout. Two of his biggest enemy’s on his way are word-invoices or excel-templates.
If you now think: “But my word-invoice is payed in the past” we can just answer that word is not made to optimize your invoicing-workflow, even for 5, 100 or 10000 invoices… but that is another topic.
The dark side
… in most cases just seen by the developer and in this special case I have had seen very much darkness before seeing the light. Now, everything is lighten up a bit, we are able to allocate very much items of payment-reminders, invoices, estimates with very less boundarys on very much pages.
As so often there is also a dark side at users-view, he has to learn how to work with his new opportunities. As we try to support this learning-process with some way-marking templates, everybody has a special-case to deal with at some time. And the management of these special-cases does the KingPDF-TableMachine.
Liberty in layout, design and multi-page
The new weapon of SalesKing, the KingPDF-TableMachine, tests every page 2-3 tmes with the real Invoice-items before it will be able to be printed. It is responsible for:
- the allocation of invoice-items per page
- carry-overs of each following page
- sub-totals on the end of every page
- no “alone”-standing totals on the last page
- fitting of the items within the place-holder-box, not affected by the quantity of columns and rows within the item-list
- overwriting of the footer-text (=normally unused place)
- variable positioning of the invoice-items on every template page
If you are already SalesKing-User, you now will find some settings of the KingPDF-TableMachine on every template-setting-area:
Pdf-Templates-List
Settings for table in pdf-template
You want to set the template more individual? Therefore you have to work on the Placeholder-Block “line_items”. If this says nothing to you yet, please read the other articles of the “KingPDF-Templates”-serie.
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
/ von Schorsch
Recurring invoices
You need to create recurring invoices? No problem. SalesKing now has got the ability to create recurring invoices.
If you create invoices for example every week which go to the same recipient, you can now use the automatic invoice-replication. You can set the start and end-date of the repetition as you can set the recurring-intervall.
Detailed intervall settings for recurring invoices
If you do not set an end-date, the invoice will be repeated endless. At this time we do offer the following recurring-intervalls:
- Daily
- Weekly
- Two-weekly
- Monthly
- Quarterly
- Half-year
- Year
To repeat an invoice, first click on invoices then recurring invoices. At this step you can create a new recurring invoice.
recurring invoices list-view
You can also copy existing recurring invoices to create a new one. Until yet it is not possible to change the recipient or to add multiple recipients.
You can also create an recurring invoice out of an existing “normal” invoice. Therefore you can find on detail-sight of every invoice the menu-point recurring.
More options for the recurring-invoices are planned. If you have got special needs, you are welcome to leave a comment as description of these.
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
/ von Schorsch
Flexible creation of professional invoices via pdf-layout
Today a long desiered dream becomes truth. I have made our more flexible pdf-table-machine come to live.
To explain what this dream is about and what this has to do with flexible layout, I will explain much more and mybe you will be teased to check it out with your very own templates.
The template.topic is on my side for years, that is why I decided to write this KingPDF-Template series. That is my way to bring light into specials of this topic and google is happy too.
In this very first article I will write about the graphic-fundamentals. There will follow as the workflow defines the work with placeholders, the organization and backround job in SalesKing, and some table specific things.
The Invoice Layout
From the beginning of writing invoices, in every software-workaround it is necessary to set the invoice-template. If it was the layout or the settings of the included data, there ever was something that limited the liberty of customization of the template. In not one software it was possible to implement a professional design-agency-workflow from the layout design to the ready to print document with any lost of quality.
All my tryouts if in word, excel, lexware or diverse other online-invoing-tools ended with the sad knowledge that they all are:
“too unflexible”
Why was that? Is the question and the easy answer is:
“no one uses pdf-templates”
o.k. somebody will now say with word you are also able to generate pdf’s. Yes, of course, but, word is on one hand not able ot use graphic-input and on the other hand word is not able to use placeholders to generate some data automatically. I will optimize my made sentence a little into: “no one uses pdf-templates with implemented data-fields”. I will write about the placeholder thing within one of the next articles, that is why I now focus on the graphic-software thing.
Our opinion is:
“A professional Document comes from graphic-software”
The professional, creative development process of company-documents starts in a graphic-software. Here the designer has while following the corporate-design full liberty. He does not has to follow conventions for fonts, colours, alignment or some fancy decorating stuff and he can guarantee that the graphic-file is as an pdf print-proof.
Normally you would now try to build the delivered design into a word, excel or html-document with the goal to build a template for your new documents. But this is the step which is bad. Why implementing a pdf into some other format (with much work and lost of quality) to get after creating the invoice a pdf-file again? The SalesKing does fight against these fromat-jumps, because:
“We’ve got pdf-templates”
The SalesKing PDF-Templates do give the power over the data-placeholders to the designer. The Designer can customize and place them variable in Adobe Professional. This solution does safe money, delivers the wished design.
In SalesKing the set placeholders then will be automatically filled with the data for example names, addresses, numbers or pics and the result is, what else, an pdf-file…..
We can not say all that positive things about the SalesKing without mentioning that we do also have some limits. First of all the work with the placeholders does need some time to deal with. But more about that in the next article in the KingPDF-Templates-series.
