Xact Link for ACT! and QuickBooks User Manual

Customizing Templates

The Xact Link for QuickBooks supports converting invoices to PDF format for printing, attaching to ACT! History, or saving against the ACT! documents tab.

The Xact Link for ACT! and QuickBooks supports the use of HTML document templates and provides various settings including the ability to create templates for each transaction type, a simple WYSIWYG and HTML editor and Quick Customisation options.

You may require some knowledge of HTML to customise your templates.

The link provides a number of default templates. These files are usually located in “[Program Files]\ACT\ACT for Windows\Plugins\Xact_QB_Data”

You can use the sample templates or build your own. Alternatively you can contact your ACT consultant to assist you in creating new templates.

To edit the templates from within the QuickBooks link open the settings window and navigate to the “Template” tab. Next, click on the radio button of the sales document you want to modify, double-check that the correct file is referenced (or browse for the correct template) and click on the “View/Edit” button.

From here you can edit the main template using an HTML editor and modify how the transaction columns are displayed using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor.

Back to top ^

WYSIWYG Editor

To customise how the template columns appear simply click on the “Customise Columns” button. This will bring up a WYSIWYG editor.

The panel on the left displays all of the available columns, the panel in the middle defines how that column is displayed in the template, and the panel on the right shows a preview of the transaction columns.

To add or remove a column simply highlight it in the left panel and click on the “add” or “remove” button. To change the order of the columns simply click on the arrows at the bottom of the left panel.

To edit a column, click the column name on the list and modify it’s properties on grid:

• Type: This indicates the field contained in this column (e.g. item, quantity, rate, etc)
• Heading: Specify the column heading
• LineValue: Depending on the Type specified above, line value shows the merge field for that type. Additional prefix or suffix can be added before or after the merge field, for example to show dollar sign to a line amount: “$[LineAmount]” (See Manual Transaction Line Template section below for a list of merge fields).
• Alignment: Specify text alignment (left/right/center)
• VerticalAlignment: Specify where the text displayed on the grid-cell (top/middle/center) especially when a transaction line contains multiple description lines.
• Width: Width of the column
• WidthUnit: Specify the unit for the Width value above. Common values are: %, in, cm, pt, px
• Height: Specify the minimum line height
• HeightUnit: Specify the unit for the Height value above. Common values are %, in, cm, pt, px

Note: For more information on units refer to www.w3schools.com

Back to top ^

HTML Editor

To make any additional modifications to your template you will need to use an HTML editor. The link provides a basic editor which you can access by clicking on the “Edit” button from the main “View/Edit” screen.

When modifying these templates HTML data can be inserted from QuickBooks Sales Documents and from ACT! into the document using merge tags.

To insert a merge field from the ACT! contact entity simply enclose the field name in double curly brackets, for example you can add the company name field to a template like this:

For the QuickBooks sales documents you can insert any of the merge fields on the next page, the format of these fields is simply the field name encased in double square brackets. These fields are case sensitive.

Note: Some merge fields are only applicable to certain types of transactions.

Back to top ^

Merge Fields

To ensure that the transaction columns appear you can either use the [TransationLines] merge-field and modify using the WYSIWYG editor, or manually create the Transaction Line columns using the following merge fields:

Note: Merge fields for transaction line items in the HTML file must be enclosed with

<!—-InvoiceLineBegin--> and <!—-InvoiceLineEnd--> tags.

Back to top ^

Quick Customisations

The Quick Customisations section enables you to modify parts of your template without having to access the in-built editor.

Note: Apart from Terms and conditions, Quick Customizations applies to all types of transactions. This means that you can set different Terms & Conditions for each document type.

To ensure that the Quick Customisations appear in your template you will need to reference them using the following merge tags.

Back to top ^