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hellojoea
February 18, 2020
Question

Invoice as PDF - File name

  • February 18, 2020
  • 7 replies
  • 0 views

Hi

Ive just joined quickbooks, moving over from Wave.

I dont like sending my invoices through quickbooks, i prefer to save them as pdfs and send them to my clients myself via email, i feel it has a bit more of a personal feel to it.

However, when i save an invoice as a pdf the file name is a really long jumbled up mixture of letters and numbers, however i did a test sending an invoice through quickbooks and the pdf that is attached to the email quickbooks send has a nice file name that has the invoice number in it etc.

Is there a way of creating an invoice, not sending it, but downloading/saving it with a file name that makes sense?

I know i could re-name the file but when youre doing alot of invoicing that isnt really something i want to be doing!

Many thanks in advance

    7 replies

    katherinejoyceO
    katherinejoyceO
    February 18, 2020

    Welcome to the Community, @hellojoea. Thanks for sharing your experience about how the invoice file name appears when you opt to download and save it on your computer. 

     

    I understand that it isn't convenient for you to rename it every time. However, that's the best option to do at the moment. I will take note of your suggestion and will share this with our engineers. I'm sure they will take a look at our suggested plan carefully and may consider this in the next future updates. 

     

    In the meantime, I'm encouraging you to visit our QuickBooks blog site for more information about the current event and new product enhancements. 

     

    Just in case you want to get paid quicker with your invoice, I'm adding this help article as your reference: Let your customers pay invoices online.

     

    Let me know if you have additional questions, @hellojoea. I'm always around here to help. 

     

    B
    boogietony
    August 6, 2020

    I agree with the original poster... I also export all my invoices as PDFs because of the unique way I need to package an invoice with other files before sending to client, and it's a hassle having to rename the files every time. It would be much easier and make more sense if the default file name when you Download/Save is the Invoice Number.

      john-pero
      john-pero
      February 18, 2020

      I save files as PDF often from QB and the solution is relatively simple, at least in my experience.

       

      When you save as pdf you should be prompted for a location and, of course, the suggested name is i the location box.  Can't you overwrite the name when you save it? You certainly can determine the location to be different than what QB suggests as a default.

       

      If that fails, the other option is to Print to PDF, which allows you to choose your own name as well as location.  All you need is an installed PDF Printer. If you do not have one already might I suggest BullZip  - I use it all the time with never an issue. You can choose to open the pdf when it is created and from (usually Adobe) pdf viewer you can direct print a hard copy

       

       

      D
      David - Inventory Mgr
      April 17, 2020

      We also save our documents as PDFs and this default behavior is inconvenient. QB desktop saves documents as "Invoice XX" or "Purchase Order XX". So I don't know why QBO wouldn't do it the same way. It would be great if we could customize it by pulling data from the document, such as "Invoice XX - Customer - Customer PO.pdf" or "Purchase Order XX - Vendor - Date.pdf", etc. But at the very least it should behave the way desktop does. 

        Candice C
        Candice C
        April 17, 2020

        Hey, @David - Inventory Mgr. 

         

        I see that this could be beneficial for your business and an inconvenience since this option isn't available. However, I'll send feedback to our Product Developers so they can consider this in one of the upcoming releases for QuickBooks Online. Our Product Development Team regularly reviews customer-submitted feedback. We're committed to developing an easy to use financial tools that can help you today and grow with you tomorrow. 

         

        You can also visit our Blog to see what's coming in the new updates. 

         

        If you have any other concerns, please let us know. I want to make sure all of your concerns are addressed. Wishing you continued success!

        K
        KharaK
        December 22, 2020

        Well, it's now December and this is still not fixed/addressed/clearly documented/improved.  I just spent 10 UNHELPFUL minutes on a support chat with an agent who told me that I needed to  "set the PDF reader properly".  Clearly this is not a solution to anything and a useless statement.  At minimum this has been a known problem since February and the chat agents should be able to identify it and not just pass the buck to MY IT guy.  Terribly disappointed.  

          E
          Elliott408
          May 18, 2021

          I'm also interested in a fix for this. It would be incredibly useful to have a default invoice prefix/suffix option to add a company name before or after "Invoice_xxxx". Renaming each invoice manually is waste of time in a software that's supposed to streamline workflows like this.

            O
            Olivier T
            December 2, 2022

            Indeed !

            Downloading an invoice as a PDF...is a core and basic feature for an invoicing Sass.

            Changing a no-user-friendly PDF invoice naming convention like 2837.pdf for at least an hard coded convention like Invoice_invoice-number.pdf is really really easy.

            Considering a basic effort-impact analysis, this request should have been fixed for a long time.

            Thx

              M
              Mark_R
              June 1, 2023

              Hi there, @FiveG and @Olivier T.

               

              I acknowledge your feedback and suggestions about managing invoices as a PDF. Please know that our product engineers are working continuously to improve the product's features. 

               

              While this feature isn't available, I suggest submitting feedback directly to our product engineers. They may look into this suggestion further and consider adding the option in QuickBooks Online (QBO). To submit feedback, you can go to the Gear icon and select Feedback. Then, enter your suggestion and click Submit Feedback.

               

              You can also visit our Customer Feedback page. This will help you track the status of your product request and get the latest updates from our developers. Updates such as how the recent enhancement made to QBO helps our business owners, like you.

               

              Please touch base with me here for all of your QuickBooks needs. I'm always happy to help.

              B
              BriMac
              September 6, 2023

              There really should be more customization for naming conventions. This should be happening in the invoice setup on a per client basis.  If you could set it up i.e.  - (customer code)_(your business code)_(invoice ######)_(invoice dates day, week, month, etc.), it would be a huge time saver.

                P
                pragmaticprice
                September 20, 2023

                Totally agree with all commenters here - definitely need this feature enhancement sooner than later.

                  U
                  urban dweller
                  October 13, 2023

                  I too would like to be able to save or print my invoices to PDF with the invoice number as the file name. I would like to do this from within the invoices window. And I'm reading through these comments from 2021 to present and see that there are no fixes yet. And I have tried to load this feedback on the "feedback" option via the gear icon and the program stalls. I'm sorry to say this, but this type of response to customer requests (no help / nothing gets fixed / excuses) unfortunately sums my whole experience since I was forced to move over to QB Online from desktop. 

                   

                  I have found one way to do achieve the goal above but it is a very weird and roundabout way to get the result I need. There are about four other ways to print an invoice and none of them can be used to achieve the needed result. Is Intuit trying to drive users crazy?

                    T
                    t-bes
                    July 18, 2024

                    I'm leaving a message here because I want to add my voice to the people who would like a way to customize PDF names. For invoices and estimates I have added a custom field on my template to include the project name and I can easily add that in the subject line for the email that Quickbooks Online sends out but the issue is when the PDF file name is generated. The file name only includes the invoice/estimate number which is not easily recognizable for customers that we work with frequently. It would be much easier for myself and our customers if we could include the project name (or any other customization) I wanted so everyone can easily keep track of the correct sale. I'm going to leave a paraphrased version of this message in the feedback center as well since all the mods here keep telling everyone to do. Hopefully we can make some progress on having this feature implemented 4 years after it was initially brought up here.

                    A
                    AccountPro21-
                    January 17, 2025

                    I think the only way they will listen is if people start leaving QBO.  No more revenue, no more people to work for Intuit.  There are so many requests on the internet for this feature, its insane they ignore it!

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