Designing a purchase order template

Purchase order templates are created and edited in a WYSIWYG interface that gives you a real-time preview of what the purchase order will look like and allows you to navigate to the editor pages for each section.

NOTE  Best Practice: Unless you are an experienced HTML programmer, it is much easier to select the template that is closest to the purchase order you would like to create and then edit it, than to start from scratch.

The preview page is divided into sections. When you hover over a section, it becomes shaded.

• Click Edit in the shaded section to open the section editor.
• Click OK in the section editor to return to the template preview page and view your changes to that section.

IMPORTANT  Changes made in the section editor will not be saved to the actual template until you save the Design Purchase Order Template page. To save your work as you go along, click Save in the Save & Close menu.

The preview consists of several sections that become shaded when you hover.

• Clicking on the shaded section will open an editor for this particular section.
• Closing the section editor will return you to the purchase order template, but your changes will not be saved until you save the Design Purchase Order Template page.

To add, copy, or edit a purchase order template, complete the following steps:

1. To open the page, use the path(s) in the Security and navigation section above.
2. To create a new template from scratch, click New. To copy a template, hover over its context menu and select Copy. The copy is automatically added to the table with Copy (#) preceding the name of the copied template.
3. The New Purchase Order Template page will open. Complete this page and click Save to open the Design Purchase Order Template page. For more information on completing the New Purchase Order Template page, refer to Editing purchase order template properties.
4. To edit an existing template design, hover over the context menu of an existing purchase order template and select Design. The Design Purchase Order Template page will open.

Each purchase order template design consists of the following sections:

Section	Description
Header	The Header section appears at the top of every page except the Appendix. The maximum vertical height is 300 pixels. If you would like your logo and other information to appear on every page, place it into this section.
Top of Purchase Order	The Top of Purchase Order section appears once at the top of the first purchase order page. Use purchase order template variables in this section to display the purchase order number, ship to address, vendor information, payment terms and any other purchase order level information. The purchase order number is controlled by the Next Purchase Order Number on the Inventory System Settings page. Refer to Next Purchase Order Number. The variable data for your own organization Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Account, Business Unit, Client Company, Customer, Site. comes from your local organization The database record of your own organization in Autotask. It has the organization ID "0", and is used as the sender address on quotes, invoices, etc. Previous versions of the help referred to this database record as: 0 Account, Zero Company, Your Own Company. record in Autotask. Refer to Your local organization in Autotask. NOTE  To display your local organization's Tax ID, CAN, ABN, VAT or other tax-related identifier on the purchase order, use the variable Your Organization: Tax ID, CAN, ABN, VAT, etc. The value for this variable does not come from your local organization record. It comes from a contract system setting. Refer to Contracts and billing system settings.
Purchase Order Body	This is where you set up the contents and layout of the main part of the purchase order—the list of billing items. This section could span multiple pages depending on the number of billing items. For information on editing this page, refer to Configuring the purchase order body.
Bottom of Purchase Order	This content will display once, at the bottom of the last page of the purchase order. It can include Signature and Date lines.
Footer	The Footer section appears at the bottom of every page except the Appendix.
Appendix	The Appendix will appear at the end of the purchase order, starting on a new page. It will not contain the header or footer. On this page, you may want to display your Terms and Conditions. The Appendix does not appear as a section on the Design Purchase Order Template page. To access the appendix editor, click Edit Appendix at the top of the template page.

5. Hover over a section so it becomes shaded and click Edit. A section editor page will open.
6. Use the HTML Editor to place text, labels and variables onto the template. Refer to The HTML editor. For a complete list of available variables, refer to:

List of Autotask Variables

NOTE  When working with the HTML editor, you can apply a condition tag to most purchase order template variables so their label appears only when they contain data. Refer to Setting conditional content display for invoice, purchase order, and quote template variables.

7. When editing the Top of Purchase Order or Bottom of Purchase Order, click Restore Default Content to restore that section of the purchase order to the standard default content.

8. To return to the main purchase order template, click OK. The template will show a preview of what the invoices will look like, with the variables displayed in brackets and text formatting applied.
9. To modify the template properties, click Edit Template Properties on the menu bar.
10. To edit the Appendix, click Edit Appendix on the menu bar.
11. To see how the purchase order would render as a PDF document, click View PDF.
12. Click Save to save the template and remain on the Design page, Save & Close to save and close the page, or click Cancel.

IMPORTANT  Your changes are not saved until you click Save or Save & Close on the Design Purchase Order Template page.