are you looking to ramp things up inside
of smart Suite maybe you need to create
a document based on some information
that already exists inside of your
applications well in this video I'm
going to be doing this very thing
showing you how you can design an
invoice including line item support
using the document designer feature
inside of smart Suite so if that's of
Interest stick around and let's get into
it
no
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welcome back to the channel if you're
new here my name is Gareth I own Gap
Consulting and we make it our mission to
help you get organized and automated
with no code tools smart Suite is one of
our favorite tools heading into the new
year here and we are really excited
about this new feature that is coming
out the document designer now before we
get into it I have to warn you that I
have Alpha access to this it is not yet
even in beta testing so this is really
preliminary it's not yet made public for
anyone else inside of smart Suite so
please note that depending on when you
watch this video you might not be able
to access this feature just yet but I'm
excited to share it with you because it
is groundbreaking and it is on the
precipice of being released now that
being said there are also some Advanced
features that aren't quite yet ready
then I'm going to have to talk to that I
can't actually share because of the fact
that it's in Alpha so that's the first
takeaway now before we get into the
heart of the video I want to invite you
to check out some free training I have
an automation training that is going to
help you Leverage The Power of no code
once you understand the key fundamentals
of no code automation so check out that
training get it sent directly to you by
signing up at garethpronovos.com webinar
Dash registration I'm not exaggerating
when I say that you can start automating
10 to 20 hours worth of your time every
week just by understanding how these
tools really work so grab that training
at your convenience and also I invite
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Suite if you don't already have a smart
Suite account check out our affiliate
link below if you choose to upgrade to a
paid plan on Smart Suite you will then
get some sick smart Suite swag if you go
ahead and apply through our link now
that we've got the housekeeping out of
the way let's hop on Into the Heart of
the video and take a look at my
structure for creating an invoice so
before we ever get to anything more
advanced automations or using document
designers or any of these fancy add-ons
we always have to make sure that we have
the proper structure in place so what
we're dealing with here is the following
applications now I want to point out
that you could put these in separate
Solutions but for the sake of our
example today I'm keeping all four of
these apps in the same place so that we
can just flip between them so the first
one here is going to be our contacts
application this should come as no
surprise but every time we write an
invoice we're going to send that invoice
to somebody so we're going to save that
information the contact information in
its own unique application because if
you recall an application is really just
a set of data that has its own specific
similarities so in the case of contacts
for our example I'm including a full
name field I'm including a company name
if they want to tell us what company
they're purchasing on behalf of and I'm
also bringing in some additional
information so here I've just included
some sample data inside of a long text
field one two three main street
nowhereville Utah 90210 and oftentimes
especially if you're working in the UK
there are some additional requirements
when creating and producing invoices in
terms of including different tax
identification that we don't require in
the US so depending on where you're
doing business you might choose to
include some additional information as
well and for this I've just produced a
fake vat number but you get the idea you
can include extra data here so that you
can put together the invoice that your
clients need so that's the first part
contacts now let's switch over to
inventory our second table now this of
course presupposes that we are offering
some tangible goods so maybe you have
services that you would use in place of
inventory or maybe you do in fact sell
actual Goods in which case you might
have an inventory table so here I'm
imagining that we are a hockey Pro Shop
so we sell different things like pants
sticks tape pads Etc so here we're
tracking our cost per unit and this we
don't have to worry about in terms of
creating our invoice but we do care
about is the price per unit what are we
selling this thing for now from there
we're going to move on to the line items
so when somebody buys something ideally
they're purchasing more than one thing
at a time so on the invoice we're going
to break down line item support for them
and this needs to live in its own
application so here inside of line items
I have the following different line
items for my example so in this case we
had somebody who purchased hockey pants
elbow pads hockey shoulders hockey
sticks and hockey skates now here we
also note the quantity of things
purchased so in this case they bought
one of everything except for the hockey
stick because who doesn't need an extra
twig on the ice and we are then able to
roll up the subtotal so if we go into
this we can actually look at that dot
notation which takes things an extra
level I really love dot notation
formulas because in other software we
would have to first use a lookup field
to find the price per unit then multiply
it by the quantity but you can see here
in our formula we're able to do that all
in one step so I can look at the
inventory that I've linked to find the
price of that inventory item and
multiply it by the quantity all in one
step that's what we have here and so
we're now able to get a subtotal for
each line item now the next step of
course is to bring back this total of
the subtotals which we see as 9.75 and
put that at the invoice level so let's
get to work we have our final
application here which we've called
invoice and here we have the invoice
number automatically generated we're
using the Auto number here and we are
using a formula to add 1000 to the auto
number so as we create every new record
it's going to tick up to the next Auto
number in the sequence and we're just
going to add that number to a thousand
and automatically produce our invoice
number now moving on from here we also
have the contact so we've linked to the
contact application and of course we've
linked to the line items application as
well so you'll see here all the
different line items for this particular
invoice now the magic happens at the
invoice total and as you would expect
we've written a nice formula that's
going to look at all the links that we
have to line items and bring back the
subtotal so before we get to our
document designer let's first put
together another sample invoice we would
just create a new item here we see that
the invoice number fills out
automatically and we would go ahead and
add our contact so who is it and I only
have the one contact in our contact app
and now we need to worry about the line
items what did this person purchase we
can go over to line items and set this
all up so we would add a record I've
grouped by this record so I'll actually
delete this and now link it to the new
invoice that I've just created and so we
would just say well what did they buy
maybe they came in and got some new
skates and that was it they just
purchased one thing of skates and so we
give smart Suite a moment to catch up
and it says okay cool I know what the
subtotal is 350 bucks let's move back to
the invoice now and we see that we've
linked to that one item and we have the
total here so on our invoice now we want
to create that PDF or that invoice
output automatically through the
document designer so in order to do this
we need to Now set up that document
designer at the application Level so for
us we're building an invoice document
designer so we go to our invoice
application click on the application
arrow and if we scroll on down we
already see that we have a default
created here I put this together really
as a test and so what we want to do for
the sake of this example is to create a
new design we could choose to rename our
document if we wanted right here I'll go
ahead and skip that we know that we have
this particular document that we're
creating what I first want to draw your
attention to are the different elements
that we can access to enhance our
document so on the left hand side of our
screen we have the elements here that
include line rectangle Circle or text so
we can add these different variables if
you will to our design and enhance it
the way we would like we also can come
down to Fields here and on fields we
have access to all of the fields that
live in the application that we we built
this document inside in our case we did
that in the invoice application so these
are all the different fields that live
there you'll see things that look
familiar like the invoice number also
they'll link back to line items Etc now
from there we can also look down to
settings and settings allow us to
determine how we want to display this
information is this going to be on
letter eight and a half by 11 or do you
have a different dimension for this
particular design and also is it
portrait or landscape mode up and down
or side to side in our case I'll go
ahead and pick eight and a half by 11
and I'll make sure that we remain in
portrait mode so let's Now flip back to
the fields the number one thing we want
here is line item detail for our invoice
so you'll notice that we actually don't
have the accessibility to bring in our
invoice total and so this is a little
bit surprising but don't fear we can
still get the output we're looking for
let's start by bringing in the link to
line items we need that line and by line
breakdown Now by default if we click on
this element that we just added we're
going to see two pieces were included
here this is the title from each of
those linked records as well as the
description from each of those linked
records well I never even filled out the
description there's no information there
so I'm going to toss that entirely but I
do have the ability to access an
additional thing I can bring in extra
information so in our case I really care
about the subtotal we have to show with
the line item detail for that particular
item was so I can bring in subtotal and
there we go we have that now the title
of these elements these line items
includes the invoice number plus the
item and that's a little bit difficult
to understand so let me make a change
here instead I'll come in and say
actually I want to bring in the actual
inventory name so I don't want to know
the title here I can ditch title
altogether now you'll notice that I
don't have the ability yet of
reorganizing these things to have the
subtotal come before the inventory looks
a little funny so I'm going to ditch the
inventory ditch the subtotal and start
again let me put them in the order that
I want them in I'm going to bring in the
inventory and now I will add the
subtotal let's find it again
and now we should be in the right order
things are looking pretty good now one
other thing that I might want here is to
bring in the cost per unit if you recall
we didn't have cost per unit in our
table because we used the formula that
automatically takes the cost per unit
and multiplies it by the quantity sold
so this is extra information we probably
would want on a line item so let's go
ahead and pause here I'll save the
design and we're going to go back into
our line items and actually add this
information I'm going to go ahead and
add a new field and it's going to be a
lookup field I'm going to look up the
information that is the price per unit
so I'll look at the inventory that we've
linked to and find the price per unit in
the list here of elements and I'm going
to bring that in for this field I'll
rename this lookup to be price per unit
and this is going to help us now on our
itemization for our inventory so I'll
bring this price per unit in fact I'll
reorganize it so that it's on the left
hand side of the subtotal and now let's
get back into our designer now that I'm
back inside of my document designer I
can go back to this element again let's
mess around with that ordering I'll pull
out the subtotal and I will come in and
bring in the price per unit which I've
now added right here I'll bring in the
quantity so that we can provide a better
analysis of what was purchased and how
many of each and then we'll include that
subtotal after that so now I have a nice
line by line here this is what you
bought this is how much each one was how
many you got of that and here's your
subtotal so this is pretty good also
note that your position can be set to
relative now this is groundbreaking
because relative positioning means that
depending on how long the list is it
will extend automatically here so as the
list gets longer it will know that you
want it to be set to a relative size and
it will resize that based on the number
of line item elements that you've added
in this particular link so this is a
really powerful feature that is going to
take your document designs to the next
level so be sure to include the relative
toggle here in any case where you're not
exactly sure how many things might exist
in any particular scenario in our
example for line items we don't know how
many line items we're going to have so
we better bring it in right here now we
can go ahead and resize this if we want
to grow it make it any larger and drop
it in wherever we need to now what
you'll notice is that I have my line
item information included but I don't
yet have the other information I require
for this particular element so I would
definitely need to bring in some extra
stuff like my invoice number itself
let's bring that in right here and of
course we can resize it by coming into
the font size let's say this is 25 size
font we want to make it much larger and
we can play with the alignment of this
element so if we want it left Center or
right justification again use that
relative position if you think that this
might get longer and we can also change
the color of the text we have all of
these possibilities from just the drop
down selection or we can come in with
some custom Colors by dropping in a hex
code here and picking the precise color
that we want for this particular element
I'll keep it with black for now but I
want you to understand the large number
of options for you when designing your
different documents so from here we
might be happy with the invoice number
we can bring in additional information
like the contact information as well so
here I have the contact information I
can remove the title I can remove the
description maybe all I care about in
this case is the name of the person so I
can bring in the full name I can also
include those additional elements like
the vat number the address and the
company as needed if I so choose now
other elements that we would want to
bring in would be things like the date
of the invoice creation the due date I
didn't add those elements to our example
but you can definitely include them in
yours as well so that your invoice has
all the information you require now from
there the last piece we would need is
the total of this invoice the ability to
bring in this number here the sum of all
these subtotals and you'll notice that
on our example we can't actually bring
in that formula that we have that's
properly calculating that number right
now unfortunately this is just the
reality when looking at things that are
in Alpha Testing everything doesn't work
all the time but I want to bring your
attention to this other document that
was already created in this sandbox and
you'll notice that there are elements
here in this case this is our sales tax
formula so we have used a formula inside
of these examples in the past and so
while smart Suite is continuing to work
on perfecting this element there's going
to be some time where we can't access
all the things but by the time time it's
released to the public I'm sure that the
vast majority of these glitches will be
taken care of so do know that when the
time comes you'll be able to bring in
those formulas and add them to your
different templates so that you can
automatically create the document that
you're looking for now as a closing
thought for this document what are you
going to do with it once you've created
your template well the nice thing is we
can now cycle through all of our
different records and we can see those
invoices and obviously the data on our
screen is updated based on the invoice
that we're looking at at that time at
present what we can do is either export
this data and it automatically creates a
PDF that we can open up and we then see
that version right here alternatively we
can print this so we can go to our
printer select whatever we want to print
and go ahead and put that up on our
eight and a half by 11 or whatever size
paper you were using for your example
now while we don't have this
functionality yet at least in the Alpha
Testing mode we we will soon get from
Smart Suite the capability of creating
these documents automatically so the
ability to utilize this document
designer template that we've put
together and leverage that with the
power of smart Suite automations so that
when certain conditions are met then our
document is automatically created and
stored back inside of our database that
will be the Holy Grail of smart Suite
PDF generation so imagine in the future
that we have the capability of just
adding an attachment field here where we
collect our files and it images and we
can just call this invoice and we can
establish that when we push a button
inside of our application then that will
automatically create an invoice and
upload it right here as well as share
that invoice via email with our clients
lots of potential here and I am really
excited to see where this is headed over
the next few months as smart Suite
continues to work very vigorously at
perfecting this new feature let me know
in the the comments below which of these
features you are most looking forward to
and if you haven't already subscribed to
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forward to seeing you in the next video
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foreign
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