Customizing your forms

Adapt SOS Inventory’s templates to suit the needs of your business.

What you’ll learn in Customizing Forms

• Understand the basic process for adapting form templates
• Customize the display of your company logo and header
• Modify fields and add custom fields to a template

Video Transcript

Welcome to our video, Customizing Form Templates. In this presentation, we will review the basic process for customizing form templates, learn to customize how a company logo and header are displayed, and show how to modify fields and add custom fields to the template.

Customizing a form template involves three basic steps: (1) downloading the template; (2) editing it; and (3) uploading the revised template into the system.

SOS Inventory has many different types of form templates that you can use “as is” or modify if desired. To access the templates, go to the Company Menu and select Form Templates. The system’s default templates, as well as any that you modify and upload, are stored in the Form Templates list. Additional system form templates are accessible by selecting the link to the Template Library. Whether the form is in the Templates list or in the Template Library, select Download on the Actions Menu dropdown to get the template you wish to change. For this demonstration, an invoice template will be downloaded and modified.

First, we’ll enable editing to make changes to the template file. Now let’s take a look at a few key field codes. At the top is a code called «TableStart:Main». This code must always be the first one on the template—it cannot be removed or moved down. And at the bottom of the template is «TableEnd:Main». It also cannot be removed, and no codes should be added after it. In the first column of the line item table, notice that the table’s first code is «TableStart:Lines»—and that the last code, «TableEnd:Lines», is placed as the last column in the line. All other codes placed in this line must be sandwiched between these two.

One of the most common reasons that SOS Inventory users want to customize forms is to get the company logo and header formatted exactly the way they want them to appear. This template already has merge codes to pull the logo and header from the system, but if you want yours to appear differently, delete the «Image:Logo» and «CompanyHeader» merge fields. Then insert a picture of the logo and resize it as needed.

Then enter the text for your company header and style as desired with your word processor tools. I have a pre-designed text box with that information on the clipboard, so I will paste it here.

A logo and company header placed inside this block will appear only on the first page. If you want the logo and company header to appear on all pages of a multipage document, place them in the header area of the template instead.

If you need to add a merge code for your form template, you can go to the Template Library and execute a Quick Search using the phrase “all available field codes.” This will pull up a template of every form type. Download the template that you want to reference.

If you want to add an SOS field or a custom field to the template, first type the field name on the template as you want it to appear to customers. Then copy and paste any field code on the template. Right click, then select Edit Field. Under Field Properties, type the appropriate merge field name from the SOS Inventory field codes–or enter your custom field name.

When finished making changes to the template, save the revised file with a new name.

To upload it to SOS Inventory, go back to the Company Menu and select Form Templates.

On the list page, select Add New. Choose a unique name for the template and enter a description for it if desired. Select the appropriate form type for the template. And then choose the modified form that you want to upload.

The modified template is now in the Form Templates list.

This concludes our video Customizing Form Templates. Thank you for watching this presentation.