Please Note: The features described in this document requires a Power User Subscription
Introduction
A “Trading Style” is a particular business name and branding theme that should be applied to a company’s invoices, estimates and general stationery. Sometimes a company may have a trading style that deviates from their official registered name, for example Acme “Group Limited” trading as “Acme Printing Supplies”.
When to use custom trading styles?
Occasionally you may have multiple trading styles under one umbrella. For example a single Limited company may have two arms to its business which trade under distinct names with completely unique branding and logos. This guide explains how you can allocate a specific trading style to a single client or a group of client records.
Create your custom trading style step-by-step
OK let’s start with a simple example, we are going to add a trading style for a fictitious business called “A1 Design Services”. We have the logo and we know roughly what the branding should look like.
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First we need to create a unique invoice template for our trading style. Go to the Sales menu and select Invoice Customisation.
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In the header region you will see the standard template will be loaded by default. Click the blue button to clone this invoice template.
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Now the new template has been created let’s go ahead and upload our logo, this will then appear on any invoices, estimates and statements for clients tartgeting this trading style.
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That’s all we’re going to do in this example but you can apply custom payment terms, notes, labels and any other preferences available within this invoice customisation section.
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Now we want to ensure that the client area control panel is also using a colour theme, business name and logo that will bring it inline with our new invoice template. Click the Account Settings menu option followed by Design Customisation. Then click the Client Area Customisation link.
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Now as we did for the invoice template we can do the same on the client area customisation screen and create a clone template.
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Give your new template a name and click Create template.
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Now on this screen we can also change the client area logo, colour theme, menu tabs and footer text. You can see the full range of options available here.
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Again for simplicity we will just change the logo in this example and save.
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Now go back to Account Settings menu and to Design Customisation then click the option to access the Additional Trading Styles. If this option is greyed out you will either need a power user subscription or you will need to contact us to manually enable (while in beta).
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The trading style manager allows us to bind together the two templates we’ve just created and supply some other details to create a trading style template we can then assign to clients. You can configure up to 10 trading styles here.
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Click the green button to Save. In the dialogue box you can set a name for this template, a Business Name that will appear on your invoices, estimates, statements and general correspondence along with two menu options where you can select the templates we’ve just created.
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Now save your new trading style template and you will see it on your list in the trading style manager.
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All we need to do now is link this trading style template to a client record. Locate a client on your account that you would like to link this template to and click to modify their details.
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Adjacent to the Apply Trading Style label select the template you have just created and save.
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Now you can navigate to any invoice, estimate or statement for this client and see the new trading style. You can also impersonate the client from the client detail screen to see what their control panel will look like.
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Changing the invoice template in the gallery or applying custom invoice CSS will only affect the targeted trading style.
Summary
Using custom trading styles allows you to be much more flexible about how you project yourself to your different customers. You can use trading styles to create a complete new look or simply to tailor your notes or payment terms for a given client.
We are interested to hear feedback on these tools and are committed to extending the functionality over time. If you have an idea or suggestion, get in touch.