Documents & sharing

How your documents look and how they reach your client: designs, numbering, printing, email, attachments and share links.

Designs and colors

Company Settings → Documents sets how quotes, orders and invoices look when printed and emailed:

• Pick one of 15 designs from the grid. Each thumbnail is drawn in your own colors, and the preview beside it shows the detail. The designs differ in the letterhead, the lines table and how tightly the page is set, as well as color. They're listed below.
• Set the design's two colors. The major accent is used for bands, sidebars, stripes, rules and the document title. The minor accent is used for tinted panels, table headings, striped rows and card bands. Pick each from 24 swatches or the color picker, or type a hex code. A new workspace starts with the major accent set to OrderDen's own blue, #0088ca. Each has its own Reset that puts the design's color back, and changing one never changes the other. Text on a colored fill is darkened or lightened so it stays readable.
• Choose a Letterhead layout for your logo. Beside (the default) puts your company name and address to the right of the logo, so the page gets to the client's details sooner. Stacked puts the logo above the name, which suits a wide logo. Logo only leaves out the typed name, for a logo that already has it; your address still prints. The live preview, the printed copy, the email and the PDF all follow it. Without a logo, all three print your name and address on their own. The Sidebar design always stacks, because its column is narrow.
• Set a footer and payment instructions. Payment instructions show on the client's shared invoice page while a balance is due; left blank, the page shows none and adds no wording of its own. They don't print on the invoice, the PDF or the email. Quotes, invoices and purchase orders can each have their own footer; a blank one uses the shared footer. Credit notes and receipts print the invoice footer.

Your choice applies to the print views, the PDF attached to emails, the email itself, the client portal and receipts. Changing the design never changes a document's content or numbers.

What you preview is what your client gets. Every design is built from what all three can draw, so the PDF in your client's inbox looks like the preview. So the fonts are sans serif, serif and monospace, and no design has rounded corners, because a PDF can't draw either.

One exception: in the body of an email, Sidebar's colored column holds the letterhead and dates at the top instead of running down the page. The attached PDF has the full column.

The designs

Numbering

Company Settings → Numbering sets the format for each kind of document: date parts plus one counter.

Q{YY}{MM}-{seqMonth:3} gives Q2608-001, Q2608-002 and so on, starting again at 001 each month. Under each box, Looks like shows what the next number would be today as you type, or what's wrong with the format. It's an example: the real counter carries on from what's already been issued. The defaults are Q-000001, SO-000001, INV-000001, PO-000001, PMT-000001 and PR-000001 (production runs). Items aren't numbered here: an item's Item # is your own part number, typed on the item.

You can type your own number for a quote, order, invoice or purchase on the screen that creates it, or leave it blank for the next one in sequence, and rename it later as long as the new number isn't in use. A payment takes a typed number only when you record it. A production run always takes the next number (it has a batch code of its own).

Typing the number when you create a document avoids a gap: rename it later and the automatic number it was given is never used.

The letterhead

Every printed, emailed and shared document starts with your letterhead, from Company Settings → Profile: your logo top left (scaled to fit 160 × 60), the company name, your address (street, city, state and postcode, no country), a phone · email · website line and your tax ID (for example "EIN 12-3456789"). Only the fields you've filled in print. The legal name you enter in the profile isn't printed.

A logo uploaded while Google Drive or Dropbox was connected is kept there. If you disconnect that store, documents go out without the logo, and the Logo card in Company Settings → Profile says so. Reconnect the store or upload the logo again.

Amounts print in the document's currency (set when it was created, from your base currency) in your workspace's locale, and dates in your timezone. Designs with a sidebar column, a top stripe or a frame repeat it on every page of a long document.

Printing and email

Every quote and invoice has a Print view in your design. An order prints from its Fulfillment sheet, Packing slip, Pick list and Slip PDF buttons. Send, in the page header, emails the document with a PDF attached, logo included.

Download PDF, on a quote, order or invoice and on its print view, saves the PDF straight away, named after the document number (Q-000008.pdf). It is the same file your client gets attached to the email, in your design, with no print dialog and no browser header or footer.

Print on a print view prints in your design's colors, so Save as PDF in the browser's print dialog gives you the same page as the preview, with no settings to change.

Every line starts with its Item number, then the description, on the page, the print view, the PDF, the body of the email and the share link. A line that isn't a catalog item (labor, a fee, a note) shows a dash. The design preview in Company Settings → Documents shows the column too, so it matches what your client gets.

The email starts with no recipient. The client's contacts, with their titles, and your workspace's members are one click each, and you can type any other address.

The History tab records every send: each address, the subject, whether you added a note, how it was sent and who sent it. Creating a share link, replacing it with New link and revoking it are recorded too.

Emails go out through OrderDen as "Your Company via OrderDen", with replies going to your contact email. If you connect a Google or Microsoft 365 mailbox, they go from there instead. See Settings.

Archiving

A quote, order, invoice, credit note or purchase that has gone past draft can't be deleted. Its number is in someone's inbox, and the ledger and your reports rely on it. Archive takes it off your lists instead. An archived document:

• leaves the lists. The Archived filter on each list offers Hide archived (the default), Archived only and Show everything.
• keeps its number.
• stays in every report and the ledger. Archiving changes what you see, not the accounts.
• can't be edited until you restore it, with one click on its banner.
• keeps its address, so an old link still opens it.

Delete is for drafts. Anything past draft offers Archive instead.

Attachments

Clients, quotes, orders and invoices can carry files, such as POs, drawings and signed copies, up to 10 MB each. Choosing a file starts the upload, each file shows its own progress bar, and you can pick several at once. Deleting one asks you to confirm. A quote and the order it became each list the other's files, labeled with where they are. Your logo is stored the same way, as an image up to 5 MB.

Each attachment has a Visible to client switch, which decides whether it shows in the client portal. Files are internal until you turn it on.

The pencil on an attachment renames it, or moves it to another record: pick Invoice, Order, Quote, Project or Purchase and type its number, or Client or Vendor and type its name. A moved file is internal again until you show it there, and both records' history says where it went. Item photos and expense receipts can be renamed but not moved.

Share links

Every quote, order and invoice can have one active share link: a URL your client opens without an account. Create and manage it in the Share with your client card on the document's Sharing tab.

• A quote can be read and accepted or declined on the page, and the answer shows in your activity. A quote that asks to be signed shows a signature box instead of Accept (see Signatures on quotes).
• A quote with options lets the client choose: a checkbox for each add-on, a choice for each set of alternatives, and a total that updates as they tick. Update my choices recalculates the total, the tax and the deposit, and records what they picked. Accepting or signing locks the choices.
• An order shows its lines and shipments. Tracking numbers link to the carrier's tracking page when the carrier has a tracking URL template (the Carriers section of Company Settings → Shipping). With a payment account connected, it has a Pay button too (see Taking payment on an order).
• An invoice shows the balance due and your payment instructions and, once you've connected a payment account, a Pay button for card or US bank account, or PayPal if that's what you connected. See Getting paid online.

A link can expire (never, or after 7, 30 or 90 days) and counts its views. New link replaces the URL, so anyone holding the old one loses access. Revoke turns it off.

A share link is one document for whoever has the URL. When a client should see everything of theirs, message you and send you files, give them a portal account: Client portal. A client in the portal opens each document through its share view, so printing, signing and paying work the same.