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At the time we wrote this, importing form styles was a feature “under construction” in QBO and therefore not available unless you enable it using QuickBooks Labs. For details on using QuickBooks Labs, see “Taking Advantage of QuickBooks Labs,” later in this chapter. For purposes of this discussion, we have enabled the feature.

If the form templates supplied with QBO don’t meet your needs, you can use Microsoft Word 2010 or later to create a form style and then upload it into QBO. As part of the import process, you map fields you’ve identified on your Word document form style to QBO fields.

The tricky part of this process is getting the form correctly designed in Word. But, luckily, Intuit anticipated the challenge and provides sample forms and instructions to simplify the process. To download the samples and instructions, you need to pretend you’ve already created your form style in Word. If this feels like we’re putting the cart in front of the horse, well … we are, sort of.

To get the sample information and instructions, enable the Import Form Styles feature through QuickBooks Labs. Then, choose Gear ⇒ Custom Form Styles. On the Custom Form Styles page, click New Style, and choose Import Style. QBO displays the page shown in Figure 3-18 after you choose Invoice or Estimate.

FIGURE 3-18: Use the Import Form Style page to download sample forms and instructions to create your own form style.

To download the sample information, click the Download Import Guide link. A Zip file downloads, containing three sample forms for both Windows users and Mac users that you can use as starting points.

The Zip file also contains detailed instructions that describe what to do and what not to do when creating a form style. For example, the instructions list the fonts QBO will recognize and also describe the best way to use Word tables. Suffice it to say, read these instructions and save yourself some pain.

Open either of the sample files to see how a customized form style should look in Word (see Figure 3-19). Note, for example, that you simply type information that won’t change, but you place less than and greater than brackets (< and >) around fields you want to replace with QBO data, such as your customer’s billing and shipping addresses and item information. This is akin to creating a mail merge document in Word.

FIGURE 3-19: In Word, place information that QBO should replace in brackets.

When you’re ready to upload your form style, follow these steps:

1 Choose Gear ⇒ Custom Form Styles to display the Custom Form Style page.

2 Click the arrow beside the New Style button and choose Import Style to redisplay the page shown in Figure 3-18 after you choose Invoice or Estimate.

3 Click in the Save and Upload Your File box and navigate to the Word document you created for your form style.

4 Click Next in the lower-right corner of the page (appears in gray and unavailable in Figure 3-18 because we haven’t selected a form to upload).QBO uploads the document and scans it for fields you placed in brackets. If you successfully upload the Word document, you’ll see a message telling you that you succeeded in uploading. If this process is not successful you will see errors; review the instruction document included with the sample file for details on errors and how to correct them.Assuming your document uploads successfully, a page appears where you can map the fields on your form style to fields in QBO.

5 Match the fields on your form style to QBO fields; when you finish, click Next.A preview of the new form style appears on the Confirm Style page.

6 If you’re happy with what you see, click Save and supply a name for your form style.It’s now ready to use. If you’re not happy, click Back and correct any problems.