As postal rates go up, the task of invoicing your customers can get expensive quick. One way to save money is to print your invoices on postcards. You not only save money on postage (when using a 5.5″ x 4.25″ postcard), but you also save time and money by not having to fold and stuff your invoices into envelopes. For QuickBooks users, it is a relatively simple matter to create an invoice template that can be printed on.

** Note the screen shots and instructions that follow were created with QuickBooks Enterprise Manufacturing and Wholesale 2008 version, but there shouldn’t be many differences. You WILL need a printer that is capable of printing many sheets per page (e.g. Each sheet of paper will have four pages on it) Step 1 Open a new invoice, and click on the customize button in the upper right hand corner (see below). An alternate way to get to where we need to be is to go to the lists menu and click on templates. When the list of templates comes up, click on the one that you wish to work with (it will be highlighted black after you click it), then click on the templates button at the bottom left hand corner, and choose “edit template” (see below).

Quickbooks sends invoices via Outlook, and of course Outlook allows you to use HTML templates, complete with logos and pretty pictures. But the Quickbooks generated emails seem to be in a standard text format, with no option to use your own template.

STEP 3 You will now be working with the copy you just made. Rename your template using the field in the upper right hand corner, and click OK.

STEP 4 Click on the “additional customization” button. This will bring up the screen where you can add columns, etc. Once here, click on the “print” tab. You will make two changes here: choose the “Use specified printer settings below for this invoice”, then change the orientation to “landscape”. Keep the paper size 8.5″ x 11″.

Once you’re done, click “layout designer”. STEP 5 Here is where you’ll layout your postcard to your liking. Important: Make sure you layout your design to cover the entire 11″ x 8 1/2″ sheet. There are only 5 things that we can suggest here (see image below for corresponding letter): A. Leave room in the upper right corner for the stamp. Have a copy of the due date and total amount owed on the right hand side (in case your postcard has a tear off stub that your customer can mail back to you like ) C. Shrink your main portion of the invoice to the left hand side of the postcard.

Place a copy of the bill to address in the lower right hand corner of the postcard. This is so the postal scanners will be able to properly scan your customer’s address and get it delivered there. Leave a 5/8″ margin at the bottom of each postcard. Sometimes the Post Office places a sticker with a bar code at the bottom.

If you leave that margin available, then you won’t lose any information. Once you’ve designed your template, you should have something that went from this: To this. Dr Groober: Good question. Nexus driver for mac. Some of our customers are fine with receiving emails from us. However, some, if not most of our customers still prefer the getting the invoice the old fashioned way.

If we were to use our experience as an example, small businesses should offer both methods of receiving to their customers. For those customers that need to have their invoices mailed to them in paper form, this method is simply there to help save on postage, supplies and the time (re: payroll expense) in preparing an 8 1/2″ X 11″ invoice stuffed in an envelope. Thanks for your comments.

Many businesses use QuickBooks to manage their company finances. The program is fairly easy to use, in spite of the powerful features it includes. Intuit, the publisher of QuickBooks, spent a lot of time setting up the program with defaults that help you get going quickly. However, I’m amazed at how many companies send invoices to their customers using the plain, default format that comes with the program. The format is certainly functional, but it includes none of the company 'branding' that your marketing efforts have worked so hard to develop. Fortunately, QuickBooks includes features that give you almost complete control over how your invoices look. With just a few simple changes, you can take your invoice from blah to ah-ha!