Customizing Templates – Borders

In my previous article, Customizing Templates – Adding and Removing Fields, we looked at how to add and remove columns and fields from a template. This article is going to discuss how to change borders to help your template stand out from the mass of QuickBooks users. Having a visually distinct style to your invoices can keep your company in mind with your clients, and make them more likely to utilize your services in the future.

Every field on a template can have a border around it, and there are some neat visual options you can select for those borders. You can even choose to hide them if you want. Be careful with hiding borders if you have a lot of information on your document. Borders can help organize each section to make it clear to the customer what they are seeing. To customize the borders, you will need select the Layout Designer button at the bottom of the customize template window. This will give you a sample view of what the invoice will look like. From here, simple double click on the field that you want to change borders on. You can also right click on the field and choose properties.

On the field property window, click the border tab. This is where you select which sides of the field has a border, along with the size, corner style and pattern. You can choose to only have a border at the bottom, left, right and top, or any combination of the four. Keep in mind this only applies to the field you are working with, so you may need to change an adjacent field’s borders as well to achieve the look. The rounded corners will make ovals instead of squares. If you choose Medium or Large corners, your field has to be big enough to support them, or they will revert back to square corners.

The pattern option will give let you have dashes or dots instead of a solid line, while the thickness will make the border larger or smaller. These options effect all the borders that you have checked for this field. Using these options you can not, for example, have a top thin dashed and a solid thick bottom. There is a way to get around this, though. You will need to set the settings for your top border and uncheck the bottom border option. Then, click the OK button to leave the properties of the field. Click the Add button at the top and choose to add a new Text Box. This text box is not going to have any text in it. We are simply going to use the border feature to make a bottom thick border. You then position it so it overlaps the actual field that you want the thick bottom border on. This trick is very useful when you are trying to match an existing template to QuickBooks.