Revision as of 09:10, 5 January 2016

There are 2 invoice templates. One is for the client area invoice (viewinvoice.tpl). The other is for the PDF version of an invoice (invoicepdf.tpl). The templates are found in the active WHMCS template folder.

Modifying the Logo

The logo displayed on the PDF invoices is in the /assets/img/ folder. To change this logo, upload the required logo to the /assets/img/ folder. The name of the file should be "logo.jpg" or "logo.png".

The width of the logo image can be changed in the invoicepdf.tpl template file. On line 4, adjust the last number "75" before the closing bracket );. This variable defines the image width. A developer can then experiment increasing and decreasing it until happy.

Editing Text & Content

A developer can customise the PDF invoices. This includes adding or removing text, altering the layout or adding further images & formatting. Do this by editing the template file invoicepdf.tpl in the active template folder. The file contains all the code relating to the layout and display of the invoice in its PDF format. A basic working knowledge of PHP coding to understand and modify the file.

Displaying Custom Fields

It is possible to display Custom fields on printable and PDF invoices. Do this by ticking the Setup > Custom Client Fields > Show on Invoice option.

Available Variables

The following variables are available for use in the invoicepdf.tpl file and further data can be obtained by running SQL queries directly from within the template which does allow custom PHP code to be executed.

• $datecreated - The date the invoice was created
• $duedate - The date the invoice is due
• $datepaid - Shows paid date/time if invoice is set to Paid
• $userid - Client ID Number
• $clientsdetails["firstname"] - Client Info First Name
• $clientsdetails["lastname"] - Client Info Last Name
• $clientsdetails["companyname"] - Client Info Company Name
• $clientsdetails["fieldname"] - etc...
• $clientsdetails["customfields1"] - Client Info Custom Field #1
• $subtotal
• $tax
• $taxrate
• $credit
• $total
• $status - Paid, Unpaid or Cancelled
• $paymentmethod
• $notes
• $companyname - Your Company Name
• $companyurl - Your Default Website URL
• $companyaddress - Your Company Address
• $invoiceitems - Array of invoice items

Changing/Translating Filename

As standard the filename for invoices is Invoice-xxx and for quotes Quote-xxx where xxx is the ID of the invoice or quote. It may be desirable to change the filenames your clients see or translate into other languages. This is achieved in the same way as any text within WHMCS, through the Language Files, specifically the strings:

$_LANG['invoicefilename'] = "Invoice-";
$_LANG['quotefilename'] = "Quote-";

Reducing the Filesize of PDFs

The bulk of the file size of the PDFs that are generated by WHMCS come from the embedding of the font files for the UTF-8 character set. Because the UTF-8 charset has a large range of characters it supports, this means it takes up much more space than say the iso-8859-1 charset which unlike UTF-8, only supports A-Z 0-9 and other standard characters.

Therefore if you don't need all those special characters UTF-8 supports (ie. you don't have clients using those characters in their names/addresses) then you can reduce the filesize of PDF's quite considerably by changing the font. To do that, simply go to Setup > General Settings > Invoices > TCPDF Font and change the selection from "Freesans" to "Helvetica"

Additional Fonts

If you use certain special characters, they may not be covered by the standard font and so here is an alternative font type that supports Czech, Russian, Arabic & persian among others. To install:

• Download the font files from the URL below,
• Upload into the /vendor/tecnick.com/tcpdf/fonts/ folder
• Specify the custom font name dejavusans in Setup > General Settings > Invoices > TCPDF Font

http://www.whmcs.com/download/106/dejavusans_tcpdf_font

Troubleshooting

Accented Characters

Due to a limitation in PHP you may find the translations of the "Paid" and "Unpaid" text on the PDF Invoices do not display upper-case accented characters correctly. To resolve this please refer to http://forum.whmcs.com/showthread.php?t=45594

Question Marks

Should question marks appear in the PDF invoices and quote files in place or characters (usually non-Latin or accented characters) the first thing to try is setting the font to "Freesans" in Setup > General Settings > Invoicing.

If the problem persists after that please download and install the "dejavusans" font as described above Additional Fonts. This font pack contains many more characters than the standard ones so stands the best chance of working with these characters.