PDF Invoice Customisation

From WHMCS Documentation

Revision as of 19:25, 10 January 2022 by SarahK (talk | contribs)

You can customize both invoice and quote PDF files using a template file system. You can find these files in the templates directory of the active WHMCS system theme.

Template Files

There are two invoice templates:

  • templates/viewinvoice.tpl controls the system theme invoice template.
  • templates/invoicepdf.tpl controls the PDF version of the invoice.

The templates/quotepdf.tpl file controls quote PDFs.

Header and Footer

This section describes a feature available in version 7.0 and above.

It is possible to cause a header or footer to automatically repeat on every page of a multi-page PDF invoice or quote by updating the header and footer templates.

Invoice Header and Footer

If they are present in your theme, the system will include the following system theme template files for every rendered PDF page:

  • invoicepdfheader.tpl
  • invoicepdffooter.tpl

The system only requires the respective header or footer files. For example, for a customized footer on each page, create a invoicepdffooter.tpl file. You must store these files in the same directory as the invoicepdf.tpl system theme template file.

During template processing, Smarty will provide each of these system theme template files with the same variables as invoicepdf.tpl.

Quote Header and Footer

If they are present in your theme, the system will include the following template files for every rendered PDF page:

  • quotepdfheader.tpl
  • quotepdffooter.tpl

The system only requires the respective header or footer files. For example, for a customized footer on each page, create a quotepdffooter.tpl file. You must store these files in the same directory as the quotepdf.tpl template file. During template processing, Smarty will provide each of these template files the same variables as quotepdf.tpl.

The logo on PDF invoices and quotes 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.

You can change the width of the logo image in the invoicepdf.tpl template file. On line 10, adjust the last number (75) before the closing bracket ();). This variable defines the image width. A developer can then increase or decrease this.

Editing Text and Content

A developer can customise the contents of PDF invoices and quotes. This includes adding or removing text, altering the layout, or adding further images and formatting. Do this by editing the invoicepdf.tpl or quotepdf.tpl system theme template files in the active template folder. The file contains all of the code relating to the layout and display in the PDF file.

You will need a basic working knowledge of PHP coding to understand and modify the file.

The system generates PDFs using TCPDF. For more information, see the TCPDF website.

Adding Custom Fields

To display custom fields on printable and PDF invoices, go to Configuration () > System Settings > Custom Fields and select Show on Invoice.

The following variables are available for use in the invoicepdf.tpl file:

  • $invoiceid — The ID of the invoice.
  • $invoicenum — The custom number of the invoice. Only set this when you have enabled proforma or sequential invoicing.
  • $datecreated — The creation date of the invoice.
  • $duedate — The due date of the invoice.
  • $datepaid — The paid date and time, if invoice status is Paid.
  • $userid — The client ID number.
  • $clientsdetails["firstname"] — The client information First Name.
  • $clientsdetails["lastname"] — The client information Last Name.
  • $clientsdetails["companyname"] — The client information Company Name.
  • $clientsdetails["fieldname"] — Other client information values, where fieldname is that item's name.
  • $customfields — An array of Client Custom Fields (for example, $customfields['Custom Field Name']). See Easy Translation for help with dynamically translating Custom Field Names.
  • $subtotal
  • $tax
  • $taxrate
  • $credit
  • $total
  • $status — Paid, unpaid, or cancelled.
  • $paymentmethod
  • $notes
  • $companyname — The Company Name.
  • $companyurl — The Default Website URL.
  • $companyaddress — The Company Address.
  • $invoiceitems — An array of invoice items.

You can retrieve more data by running SQL queries from within the PHP template.

Changing or Translating Filenames

Invoices and quotes have default generated filename formats:

  • The default filename for invoices is Invoice-xxx.
  • The default filename for quotes is Quote-xxx.

In both of these filenames, xxx is the ID of the invoice or quote.

To change or translate these, use the WHMCS language files. When you do this, look for these lines:

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

Reducing the File Size of PDFs

The bulk of the file size for PDFs that WHMCS generates come from the embedded font files for UTF-8. Because the UTF-8 charset has a large range of supported characters, this means it takes up more space than, for example, the ISO-8859-1 character set. Unlike UTF-8, ISO-8859-1 only supports A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and other standard characters.

If no clients are using special characters in their names or addresses, the system does not require UTF-8. It is then possible to reduce the size of PDF files by changing the font. To do that, go to Configuration () > System Settings > General Settings or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > General Settings in the Invoices tab. Then, change PDF Font Family to Helvetica.

Additional Fonts

The use of certain special characters may not be available in the standard font. So, WHMCS supplies an alternative font type that supports Czech, Russian, Arabic, and Persian, among others.

Version 7.7 and later

In version 7.7 and later, the system doesn't require any additional files.

To make this change:

  1. Navigate to Configuration () > System Settings > General Settings or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > General Settings and select the Invoices tab.
  2. Select Dejavusans for the PDF Font Family setting.
  3. Click Save Changes.

Version 7.6 and earlier

To make this change:

  1. Download the font files from the URL below.
  2. Upload them to /vendor/tecnickcom/tcpdf/fonts/.
  3. Go to Configuration () > System Settings > General Settings or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > General Settings in the Invoices tab.
  4. Change PDF Font Family to dejavusans.
For more information, see the Download page.

Troubleshooting

Accented Characters

Due to a PHP limitation, the translations of the "Paid" and "Unpaid" text on the PDF Invoices may not display uppercase accented characters.

To resolve this, see this forum thread.

Question Marks

Sometimes, question marks appear in the PDF files in place of non-Latin or accented characters. This can suggest that the font doesn't support the character.

Go to Configuration () > System Settings > General Settings or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > General Settings in the Invoices tab. Then, change PDF Font Family to Freesans.

If the problem persists, download and install "dejavusans" using the steps in Additional Fonts. This font pack contains more characters than standard ones, so it is likely to work with these characters.

TCPDF error: Missing or incorrect image file

This means the logo.png or logo.jpg file in /assets/img/ is missing or is not a valid image file. This is the image that the system uses when creating the PDF invoice. Save the image file again and reupload it to /assets/img directory.

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