Consultant Template Sample - New Company Name Field

This free sample template for the consulting service business demonstrates how to add a new field "Company Name" to an existing template.

Every business is different, their requirements of service invoice creation are different too. Depending on the requirements, you may like to show a company name when billing a client/customer. The default template, and most samples here on InvoicingTemplates.com, include a field "Name" in the "Bill To" section. You can fill in either a contact / personal name or a business / company name into this field. However, what if you want to show both the company name and the contact name on your consultant invoice / receipt form? Of course, the newly added field should be able to work with the back-end database too.

The solution is to add a new field "Company Name". In Invoice Manager for Excel, we call this field "Custom Field" since it is not already defined in the template and database. On the other hand, those fields that are already included in the default template and database (as included in the setup program of Invoice Manager for Excel) are called standard fields.

A number of templates available here on InvoicingTemplate.com use custom fields. For example, Attorney Invoice Template (South Africa Currency) in the Consulting Invoice Template category added the "Case #" and "Case Reference" custom fields.

In this tutorial, we'll go through the detailed steps required to add a custom field Company Name. This new template will be based on c4034 Simple Consulting Invoice Template.

First, make sure you've downloaded the free Simple Consulting Invoice Template. Extract the template and database from the downloadable exe package. Open "simpleconsulting-uis.xlsx" as usual.

Next, switch to design mode by clicking the "Design Mode" button on the "Invoice" ribbon tab. This command provided by Invoice Manager for Excel combines several commands provided by Microsoft Excel -- it unprotects the sheet, show gridlines and row/column headings, and then push down the design mode button on Excel's "Developer" tab.

Now click the heading cell of row 11, then choose "Insert". A new row is inserted between the rows that have the text labels "Name" and "Address".

Enter the text "Company Name" into cell $I$11. Click the next to the label "Name" and then click the "Format Painter" on Excel ribbon Home tab. Click the cell $J$11. This paste the format into the target cell.

Enter the cell name "oknClientCompanyName" for $J$11. To do this, first make sure $J$11 cell is selected, click the name box on the formula bar, and then enter the cell name "oknClientCompanyName" (without quotes).

Go to print preview mode of the current worksheet. To do this, for example in Excel 2013 and Excel 2016, you click "File" menu and then choose "Print". This shows how it will look like when the sheet is printed. Make sure it is printable on the paper size you choose.

Now our customization work for the template part has been done. We need additional steps to make sure it work with the backend database. That is, when you choose an existing customer, the company name information should be loaded along with other data such as the address, city state and zip. When you save an invoice, the company name information should be saved too.

To accomplish this, you use the Custom Field Manager. Click the "Customers" command on the "Invoice" ribbon tab, and then choose "Custom Fields". Click "Add Field". On the New Custom Field dialog box, enter "ClientCompanyName" into the "Name" field, Make sure "Type" is "Text", and then enter the "100" into the "size" box. Click "OK" to create this custom field. Now it is returned to the "Custom Field Manager" dialog box. From the "Database Table" drop-down list, choose "Invoice Header", click "Add Field". On the New Custom Field dialog box, enter the same values as the previous entry - enter "ClientCompanyName" into the "Name" field, Make sure "Type" is "Text", and then enter the "100" into the "size" box.

Note that in this step, we've created the custom field ClientCompanyName in both the "Customer" and "Invoice Header" database tables. The entry for both database tables should be exactly the same - in this sample, the field name is "ClientCompanyName", and the size is 100. Also the field name should match the cell name on the "Invoice worksheet". This this sample, the cell name is "oknClientCompanyName", the field name is "ClientCompanyName" - as you can see, the field name is the cell name without the "okn" prefix.