and now we will learn how to customize forms and
QuickBooks and for attorneys this means creating a retainer receipt
transaction documents include things like estimates invoices sales receipts credit
memos and even other things like checks and bills and this type of thing and we've all dealt with
these types of documents before QuickBooks allows you to edit the way these look so you
can customize them for yourself even if you're not a law firm there are many things you can edit in
these documents you can edit the columns you can edit the positions of the fields like where does
the address show up where does the client's name show up where do you put the date you can add or
remove fields of information based on your company or your firm's specific needs you could even put a
company logo on any of these documents that I've been speaking about however if you are a law firm
a credit memo is really a retainer receipt and when a client pays you retainer which means it's
money in advance before you perform the service they have a credit balance with you that's why you
might call it a retainer receipt but QuickBooks knows it's a credit memo because when you give
it to the customer the customer paid you in advance you owe the customer a future service
and the customer has a credit balance you can explore other possible changes that you would
like to make for your law firm in any of the open windows that we will explore as we do this now
there are three steps to making a new template first you have to make a copy of the existing
temple so let's go to QuickBooks and let's do this customers and then we'll find create credit memo
refund click here now notice this says credit memo and this behaves as a typical QuickBooks
document would ok we can remove the ribbon we can open a panel on the right we'll look which I will
explain about later on something nice and handy okay but right here the most important thing is
where it says template now QuickBooks comes with several templates for each of the different types
of transaction documents that I mentioned earlier even though it's still a credit memo you could
choose this template and simply the words would change return receipt notice even some of the
columns and some of the columns heading changed look the credit memo template is here there's
a purchase order number return receipt it's now a rep so you could put whatever fields you want
on your credit memo but in the title bar it'll always still say credit memo refund now the way
to get into the windows that allow you to make your own and then edit this is in the ribbon
click formatting click manage templates and now you are in the manage templates window now you
saw there were only two existing templates that QuickBooks gave you in order to make your own you
have to click copy so pick one that's the closest to the one you want and click copy once you copy
you will see there are now three on the list and one of them says copy of the other one that one
is yours click on it so it's selected then come to the right and name it what you want it to be named
in this case we want to name it retainer wrist see because this is what we will give to the
client when they pay in advance and then click OK we show up here at the basic customization window
and you can explore an experiment changing the look of your credit memo you know changing the
look of your retainer receipt you can explore clicking here and inputting your company logo
and so forth but the place we need to change is right up here in the top right we need to change
the word credit memo to retain a receipt in order to do that we click additional customization and
again you can explore and experiment with all of the different options in this window we will only
click the header tab and change the default title from credit memo to retainer receipt then when
we click OK we click OK this is just telling you about another feature called the layout designer
which is down here which gives you the ability to even make further customization so we click
OK and click OK again and click OK a third time and now we have this template retainer receipt
so if we want it to say credit memo we choose this but if we want it to say retainer receipt
when clients pay us in advance for services we will give them we will choose this template