A custom PDF templates is a great way of creating your personalised sales documents. As with other templates in OpenCRM (for example Email or RTF) you can create as many different templates as your organisation will need. Different categories of clients, products or services for example, may require different information to be displayed on a Sales Order document.

This feature in OpenCRM is used by many of our clients and there is a fairly even split on customers that create their own PDFs and customers that request PDFs setting up by the team at OpenCRM. If you would like OpenCRM to create the PDFs for you, please contact your project manager for details.

The ability to create PDF templates is a powerful tool and as such, there is a degree in sophistication in setting these up. For this reason your vanilla OpenCRM system comes with a set of default templates. If you wish to create custom templates, an easy starting place is to duplicate an existing template. Once you have created the duplicate template you can edit and save this, with the original default tempate there as a safety net should you run into difficulties.

As a word of caution, be very careful when using the delete button!

If your custom PDF is not outputting or displaying as you would expect, here are some of the issues you may be experiencing, and how to overcome them.

I cannot select the PDF I have just created!

When you create the template, you need to select the destination folder. If you have created a sales order template, this must be located in the sales order folder otherwise it will not be available for selection where you would expect.

Some of the rows in the template get pushed over the next rows

This can happen when the data in your header section is too large.

One possibility is that the logo you have uploaded is too large and this is causing the rest of the header data to move down in the PDF. Click the link to read our FAQ on uploading your logo to your CRM system min the correct size: http://opencrm.co.uk/crm-knowledgebase/kb725014/How-do-I-add-my-logo-so-that-it-appears-in-the-left-column-of-my-system-and-also-appears-on-PDF-s-that-are-produced-in-OpenCRM.html

Another possibility is that you are trying to include too many fields in the address and contact details in the space provided. Again this causes the next rows to get pushed down the page. A possible solution for this is to increase the size of the header block. When doing this you may need to compensate by reducing the size of the footer. This requires a knowledge of how html works, if you are unsure of this, we recommend that  you contact your project manager at OpenCRM and schedule some professional service time to have your templates set up for you.

You can view the html code for the template by expanding the Editor (small arrow below the PDF Header title) and selecting Source to edit and get the design required.

The PDF is slightly longer than one page, some of my footer details are going onto a second page

Again this could be an issue with the sizing of the header and footer sections (see above). Edit tools for the Footer can be accessed in the same way as the Header tools.

Some of the fields I have added are not showing the correct data

You need to ensure you are using the correct merge variables to pull data from the OpenCRM system. There is a tool at the top of the PDF Edit screen to help fing the merge variable you require. Select the field name from the drop down to show the appropriate merge variable which you can then copy and paste into your template:

 Should you have any other issues with creating PDF templates please contact your Project Manager or Support.

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