Templates

Saasu provides you with the ability to email invoices, purchases and statements directly to customers and suppliers from within Saasu, without additional email software or plug-ins.

The email template handles the information that is included in the body of the email, whereas the PDF template handles the information contained with invoice, purchase or statement that is attached to the email.

In the email template you can use merge fields to include customer information such as name, company or other information contained within the contact data.

Using Email Templates

• Use ‘,’ to separate multiple addresses, e.g. accounts@acme.com,sales@acme.com.
• Make it a default template to have the email form pre-filled for you automatically with these values when you email your invoice, statement or payslip.

Test your email

Test you email looks good in common email applications such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail. This will let you experience it from your customer perspective.

Preventing email being sent to spam

A few simple things will help prevent your email being treated as spam in most cases. We obviously can’t control this happening. It will happen in some cases.

• Add an SPF record for Saasu to your Domain Name DNS entry
• Have customers add you to their friends list in their email applications and/or servers.
• Don’t include too many links in your email
• Make sure your subject and content avoids too many spam like words. Multiple uses of FREE, CHEAP etc
• Make sure links included are to reputable destinations
• Having the sender email address the same as the sender name can help. e.g. the email address service@saasu.com has the name Saasu Service on our emails.

BCC your emails to a mailbox you own

Setup a mailbox for your business that can act as a repository containing a copy of all the email you send out. e.g. transactions@sample.com

What not to use Email templates for

• Marketing by sending quotes/invoices soliciting business that has not already had a customer opt-in to buy a product or service from you.
• Any other use other than the intent to deliver an invoice to a contact for the purposes of finalising a pre-agreed transaction.

Does Saasu keep a copy for me?

You can always print/view a copy of an invoice or statement from within Saasu but we don’t provide email storage at this stage. We suggest you BCC everything you send out to your contacts.

Do merge fields work in Email templates?

Yes. You can use merge fields such as {BillingContact.FirstName} to personalise your emails.

Can I use a different template when emailing a contact

At present this is only available in Automated Transactions to allow different templates to be used for different groups of contacts you send to. In a later release we will allow you to choose an email template when you go to send a manually created transaction but at present this only uses the Default template.

Themes

Themes allow a high degree of customisation of the design and layout and form the base for the PDF template. As themes are created using HTML and CSS you will need to be comfortable with using this code in order to get the best result. Alternatively you can use your web designer to assist in creating themes that match your brand.

WHERE: View > Templates > Edit and Create your own theme (link below Theme picklist)

You can use Saasu themes to add some design elements to your Saasu templates. Your template has specific information for a document while the theme refers to the layout, colours, fonts, and other design elements that can be applied to more than one template.

Themes in Saasu allow you to add useful design features to one or more of your templates. Themes are designed to give Saasu customers with programming skills (HTML or CSS) the flexibility to help their business customers with specific PDF and email documentation needs in Saasu. Their requirements may include:

• Design elements such as colours, fonts, and images.
• Information blocks such as warranty or product information.
• Logistics information such as barcodes, delivery maps, and other devices.
• Translation to other languages.

Themes do not provide a way for customers with no programming experience to change the look and feel of their templates. If you haven’t used HTML and CSS programming code before, it’s probably best not to attempt this as we don’t provide HTML/CSS programming support. This is due to the intensity of having to teach people programming before we can even suggest how to work with using the Themesfeature in Saasu. Don’t worry, though, as we will provide a similar feature as a built-in option for our customers who don’t have these skills or access to them.

Themes let you to control far more design elements in a document, including where your logo displays, and the colour and type of font you use. You can even embed things like maps, images, links, and buttons.

Edit Themes

1. Select View > Templates > Choose a template you want to design or edit a theme for – The Template will load in edit mode.
2. Click Edit and create your own theme.
3. Saasu will display some default themes that we have set up. You can open one similar to what you need and duplicate it using the Duplicate button.
4. Edit the CSS and HTML code for the theme.
5. You can use the Preview button to check your progress. The preview will display as a PDF so you can be sure the design work you are doing matches what your customers will see.

NOTE: When you edit a Sale or Purchase theme, two formats will display when you preview your changes – An Item style view and a Service style view.

Theme versions

You may need different version of a theme for different situations. You may need to customise words, like the invoice title for example.

Generally this involves duplicating the theme you want to change, making the changes, and setting up the template to use the theme that you change. Some HTML knowledge is required to do this. Otherwise, it could be frustrating to get it working. Here are the steps:

1. Open the template you want to edit.
2. Click Edit and create your own theme below the Theme picklist.
3. Pick the theme you want to edit.
4. Duplicate the theme.
5. Make your changes. For example, if you just want to change the title, find the text {InvoiceType.PrintDescription} and replace it with the word that you want to use.
6. Click Preview to see your changes.
7. Click Save once you’re happy with these.
8. Go back to the template list screen and open the template you want to change.
9. Change the theme to the new one you just created and click Save.

Merge Fields

Merge fields allow you to include transaction-specific information in the parts of the invoice template that can be edited. As with many standard mail merge systems, you simply include the field with parentheses around it, ensuring the text has the correct case.

Sales and Purchases

The following merge fields should only be used in the line item section of the theme. They MUST be enclosed within the following comment tags:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

<!-- Begin Service Invoice Line Items -->
<!-- Begin Service Invoice Line Item -->
--- Line item merge fields could only be used here ---
<!-- End Service Invoice Line Item -->
<!-- End Service Invoice Line Items -->
 
<!-- Begin Item Invoice Line Items -->
<!-- Begin Item Invoice Line Item -->
--- Line item merge fields could only be used here ---
<!-- End Item Invoice Line Item -->
<!-- End Item Invoice Line Items -->

Also note that ALL the comment tags above MUST exist in the sale and purchase theme. Otherwise, your theme will only work with either a service invoice or an item invoice, but not both. See the existing theme for sample implementation.

Item Invoice Line Items

Service Invoice Line Items

Date Merge Fields

You can now display dates using merge fields that can calculate. They do their calculations based on Transaction Date.

Some examples are:

1. {Date+0D}
2. {Date+7D}
3. {Date+2W}
4. {Date+1M}

Use Calculating Date Merge Fields in:

1. Description and Summary fields in Sales or Purchases.
2. Also use them in your Templates and Themes.

This is very useful if you bill for fixed time periods. e.g. If we have an Automated Sale invoice on the 10th of each month that will be recurring we can set up an Automated Sale with the Summary field set to “For {Date+0D} to {Date+1M}” then it will display as “For 10Jan12 to 10Feb12″.

Remittances and Receipts

NOTE: For remittance and receipt templates, add ‘BillingContact’ to the beginning of contact related merge fields. For example, to display the full name of the billing contact, use {BillingContact.FullName}.

Remittance and Receipt Line Items

Contacts

NOTE: For invoice templates, add ‘BillingContact’ or ‘ShippingContact’ to the beginning of the merge field. For example, to display the full name of the billing contact, use {BillingContact.FullName}.

Statements

The following merge fields should only be used in the line item section of the theme.

Please see the existing payslip theme for sample implementation.

Payslips

The following merge fields should only be used in the line item section of the theme.

They MUST be enclosed within the following comment tags:

1
2
3
4
5

<!-- Begin Wages And Salaries Pay Item -->...<!-- End Wages And Salaries Pay Item -->
<!-- Begin Deductions Pay Item -->...<!-- End Deductions Pay Item -->
<!-- Begin PAYG Witholding Pay Item -->...<!-- End PAYG Witholding Pay Item -->
<!-- Begin Employer Contributions Pay Item -->...<!-- End Employer Contributions Pay Item -->
<!-- Begin Entitlements Pay Item -->...<!-- End  Entitlements Pay Item -->

Please see the existing payslip theme for sample implementation.

Common Merge Fields

The following are merge fields that could be used across all Templates and Themes.

Using Sales and Purchase Merge Fields

For example, if you were to include the text,

Remittance advice for invoice number {InvoiceNumber} dated {Date}. The amount outstanding is {BalanceDue} {Ccy.Code}.

Then this would appear on the PDF,

Remittance advice for invoice number 001 dated 01-Jul-02. The amount outstanding is 100 AUD.

Referencing Image Files

You can upload and reference image files in Saasu to add images to your documents. Follow these steps:

1. Select View > Templates > Open the template you wish to add images to.
2. Use the Uploadlink beside your logo file to load one or more images into your Saasu file.
3. When you have finished uploading these files, change this back to your standard logo image before saving.
4. In your HTML code template (or in your theme code), use the following merge field: {Image.Url} followed by your image name. For example:

   1	<img src="{Image.Url}MySecondImage.jpg" alt="" />

5. Click Preview to check that your image file is displaying.

Merge Fields Rules

• Case sensitive – {Date} is not the same as {date}.
• Merge fields don’t always match the field caption in the screens. Only use the merge fields listed in the tables above.