vtiger

mickie · Joined: 13 Jan 2005 Posts: 710 Location: Chennai, India

Dear Team,

Based on our community feedback we have a plan to do the following changes in PO/SO/Quotes/Invoice PDF files for the upcoming 5.0.3 release

1. Mail to Customer ie., option to send the mail to the contact with the PDF attachment.
2. Add Contact Name in the PDF
3. Add Issued Date in the PDF
4. Increase the PDF file size. Now the PDF is in A4 format. we have a plan to increase the width and if needed then height also.
5. As of now Product Name and Product Description are displayed.
Instead of these Name and Description what are the fields you want? Based on your feedback we are going to take this.
In this poll i have added only 4 options which are mostly needed i think so. if you have other options then please let us know.

Thanks to Slipperyman, Ed Lentz for your inputs regarding the PDF front in richie's blog.
Please let us know your feedback. so that we will start working on this.

Thanks & Regards
Mickie

Balduin · Joined: 18 May 2005 Posts: 1733 Location: Berlin

Mickie, I appreciate your plan to improve the much needed PDF output. May add one item to your list?

Most qualified developer can build their own output on the functions that are already available. But there is one important function missing. It is about the invoice numbering as it is required in many countries. This has been discussed many times, see for instance:
- http://forums.vtiger.com/viewtopic.php?t=7417&highlight=invoice
- http://forums.vtiger.com/viewtopic.php?t=13341&highlight=invoice

We have already a solution for it (but not a patch). I could forward you the instructions if you are interested as a PM.

pniranjan · Joined: 14 Mar 2007 Posts: 2

I second that. This is very important.

Balduin wrote: Mickie, I appreciate your plan to improve the much needed PDF output. May add one item to your list?

Most qualified developer can build their own output on the functions that are already available. But there is one important function missing. It is about the invoice numbering as it is required in many countries. This has been discussed many times, see for instance:
- http://forums.vtiger.com/viewtopic.php?t=7417&highlight=invoice
- http://forums.vtiger.com/viewtopic.php?t=13341&highlight=invoice

We have already a solution for it (but not a patch). I could forward you the instructions if you are interested as a PM.

slipperyman · Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Posts: 78

Mickie, thanks for the effort you are about to begin.
Just an idea (just because I just tweak some lines of php but I don´t write code) Is it very hard to have a section in settings where the user (admin) put check marks in the fields required? Only those 2-3 fields are configurable, the ones that doesn´t play math,because I think the rest is the same for everyone.
And of course no labels can be hardcoded.
Maybe the chance of uploading a template using tokens will allow anyone design a document according the company poicy about documents issued.
Thanks again for helping us to grow with you!

Optosolar · Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 23

There are three more items of interest for quotes/invoices etc.;

1) include a space for General conditions of sales at the end (!) of the quote or invoice. They are legally required, and can be 1 or 2 pages in size, so the end is a good place. Could include a word document, or OOO, or html document, or just plain ascii text, what we just realised with the multilang extension for quotes. On the other hand, they should not be a separate document in order to keep the legally important info in one document. Especially, if you provide the excellent idea of directly mailing the quote etc.

2) Some space for personal greeting before the list of products begins, and some space for individual comments behind the list and the total price would be appreciated.

3) multilanguage support. We do mainly export, so English is ok for nearly everybody, but it looks strange to our German customers if they get English quotes/invoice/sales conditions etc.

many thanks,

Klaus

slipperyman · Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Posts: 78

I agree with optosolar point 2.
a place where you can write some like this:
We´re pleased to quote the follwing items.

edlentz · Joined: 18 Nov 2005 Posts: 514 Location: Midland, Mi.

I am very pleased to see this movement on this issue! Thank you very much ! I like the idea of adding some type of salutation such as Slipperyman has suggested. I would also like to see:

1. A separate way of showing the tax on a product. Right now using the individual tax the underlying code adds the tax into the extended price of the product. If you could only give us the way to Not do this, but to be able to total the tax and then have it on a separate line in the PDF that would make my week!

2. I need to have that tax for the Invoice (at least) be inserted into the record for that Invoice so later I can run a query to total that tax so I can pay it. Typically each month. I will worry about the totals, if you can get it into the record I will take it from there.

These things will make me happy.

Thanks for all your hard work, I am anxiously awaiting the release of 5.03

slipperyman · Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Posts: 78

about product comments i gues ther should be a switch to select printable or not.
otherwise a workaround could be: if there´s a comment print it, because if you need internal stuff noted with the documents you can attach notes to it.

And I know you´re just talking about PDF but i guess that quotes module should keep a full snapshot of it everytime it´s edited or at least after a status change. As today´s you can´t see what happened with the items quoted in history. I mean you can see the total change but you can´t see why it changed.
Thanks.

edlentz · Joined: 18 Nov 2005 Posts: 514 Location: Midland, Mi.

Yeah I also think actually that all three should keep a full snapshot of what is entered for that application. having an invoice that changes historically if the price of a product changes would be bad. Think of invoiceing a customer for $100 for a widget. 3 months later the customer hasn't paid and needs another invoice, but the price of the widget has changed in his favor! Not good

trustf8 · Joined: 22 Jan 2007 Posts: 3

Hi all,
I think of a very important point. I think you should convert all pdf functionality to TCPDF.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=128076
Unfortunately i don't have enough knowledge of the code to revert it. This class solves all UTF issues.
I think the UTF issue is of HIGH importance for internationalizing .
Hope you do too.
BB