Creating Templates with Job/Customer Info

Document templates are documents that are used as a pattern for other documents. This could be a document that you have designed to include information about a customer or job, it could be a stock Word or Excel file that you want to attach to jobs and then manually customize, or it could even be a stock .pdf file (like a price sheet or written guarantee) that you want to associate with jobs.

This is how you set up a document template:

1. In the Main System Setup, from the department tab, select the department to add a document template for.
2. On the Documents setup tab, go to Defined Documents, and click the add button and select a template.
   
   
3. Enter a title for the template: Make the name as clear as possible so people are clear on which template they are using. Make sure two document templates for a department don’t have similar names so the wrong template doesn’t accidentally get picked.
4. Choose the type of template to add and press OK.
   
   • Microsoft Word: Choose this if you have a particular Word file that you want to attach to many jobs.
   • Microsoft Excel: Choose this if you have a particular Excel file that you want to attach to many jobs.
   • PDF (Acrobat): This lets you attach a .pdf file. Since most people can’t edit a .pdf file, this is generally only relevant if you want to attach a non-editable item like a price sheet or something like that.
   • Chronicle Text: This is generally not used. There are some other older merge codes here not yet available in Word/Excel. You can print out a single invoice created from the departmental invoices added to Chronicle from QuickBooks.
5. Chronicle will open Word or Excel so that you can create the content of the template: You can either start with a blank document or pick a an already saved file to use as the template. (Find the appropriate file and click OK). In Word/Excel there will be a Chronicle tab where you can select merge codes to add to the document to auto-insert job information. You can also use the formatting in Word/Excel to make the document look the way you want it to look.
   If you are creating a Chronicle Text template: Enter the content of the document; we give more detail on this below.
6. Click the  in the upper right corner of the window to close the document. Do not use Word or Excel's save feature. This does not save the template in Chronicle.
7. Click Yes when asked if you want to save the document in Chronicle.

Additional Help for Creating Chronicle Text Templates

Chronicle Text is a simple word processor you can use to create documents. This is an older part of the program and many of the merge codes have been moved to Word/Excel. However, there are a few codes that have not been moved. For example, merge codes concerning invoices. In QuickBooks you create an invoice for each department on a job. You might want to send a single invoice to the customer for that job. Chronicle Text allows you to merge those invoices into one invoice.

To include specific information for a person or job: If the merge field bar isn’t showing click View> Toolbars> and check merge fields.

In the merge field bar, click Category and choose the type of information you want, click Insert Field to choose what to include, and then click Insert Field.

For example, to include the customer’s name, choose Person Concerning for the Category, choose Concerning Name for the value to insert, and then click Insert. This adds:

#[Concerning Name]

When you associate the document with a particular job or person, Chronicle replaces this code with the name of the customer. For a complete list of information that you can insert, see Job and Customer Info that can be Added to Documents.

For entries that will collect additional information when the document is associated with a person or job, Chronicle asks for a Field Name; this is the question that comes up so the user knows what information to enter.

Whenever you add a document for a person or job that’s based on the template, the appropriate job or customer information is automatically filled in.

Once you've set up the template, then whenever you add a document for a person or job that's based on the template, the appropriate job or customer information is automatically filled in.