CashManager offers some standard Invoice, Quote, Statement and Remittance Advice layouts. However, these layouts can be altered and new layouts can be created, using the RAVE Designer that ships with CashManager. (Invoicing option is not available in the UK.)
Standard layouts reside in files called Invoice.rav, Quotes.rav, Statemt.rav and Cheques.rav in your company data folder. Additional RAV files can be added to the folders, and layouts in those additional files can be accessed by CashManager as long as the following file naming convention is followed (where the asterisk is substituted for any letters/numbers):-
|
Type of layout |
File naming convention |
|
Invoice layouts |
Inv*.rav |
|
Statement layouts |
Sta*.rav |
|
Quote layouts |
Quo*.rav |
|
Cheque/remittance layouts |
Che*.rav |
Note also that RAV file names must adhere to the standard 8.3 convention, whereby the prefix must be no longer than 8 characters and must only consist of letters, numbers and/or underscores.
The RAVE Designer is a separate tool that ships with CashManager. It has not been developed by Accomplish, and it is recommended that only users who are familiar with these sorts of programs attempt to use it. The Accomplish Support Team can create layouts for you for a nominal fee.
The RAVE Designer is accessed through Stationery Layouts located on the Setup menu. It is composed of 3 parts:
Project Tree: Top right is the project tree, which shows a list of all the layouts (“reports”) and provides drill down to each element of each report.
Property Panel: The top left panel is the property panel that shows all the attributes (“properties”) of each element of the report. If you highlight an element on the project tree a green tick will appear and the attributes will appear below. These can be changed to alter the appearance or position etc of the element on the report. Properties include text, database field, font characteristics etc.
Page Designer: The main window is in the middle of the screen, and shows the layout of the page as it will appear.
You will notice that the page is made up of different “bands” like header, footer etc, and each band contains “objects” like text boxes, data fields from the CashManager files, a graphic like a bitmap or line etc. When you highlight an object, its various properties appear on the left of the designer in the Property Panel. When you click on each property, you will see a description about it underneath the properties panel.
Various toolbars show at the top of the screen to assist in designing layouts. These allow you to add new objects to your layout, align objects, etc.
To edit a layout (e.g. to reposition some data, or add a picture), launch the RAVE Designer as described above. In the Project Tree, select the report from the Report Library list. If there is a plus sign next to the Report Library, double-click it – this will expand the branch and display the reports. Edits to the report layout are done in the Main Page area.
For more details on the RAVE designer, you can obtain additional notes from the Accomplish Help Desk or the web site.
If you wish to create your own layout or modify one of the standard stationery layouts, it is strongly recommended that you copy an existing layout to a new report and modify the new one. You can then delete the original one when you are happy that the new one functions properly.
To do this, do the following:
Load the RAVE designer as described above.
Click on the Project menu item then select New Report. (A new layout (ie report) will appear in the project tree called Report1) Go to the Property Panel and edit the name to a name of your choosing.
In the Project tree, double click on the layout (report) that you wish to use as a starting point.
Click on the + sign to show the main page of the layout, then click on the page to show the main page region. Click Edit…Copy to copy the page layout to the clipboard.
Double click on your new report layout and open the blank page. Click Edit…Paste which will copy the page layout to your new layout file.
Save the invoice layout file and you have successfully created your own layout.
From here you can edit or experiment with your layout to come up with a new invoice.