Transvirtual uses a series of report templates that are used to generate the labels, consignment note PDFs, Invoice PDFs, etc. that you see when using Transvirtual. These report templates can be customized from the default version if required.
A common example of why you may need to customize a report template would be when setting up the invoicing. The default invoice templates will be present in the template list.
The default invoice templates seen in Transvirtual do not include your bank details. You'll need to add bank details to make it easy for customers to pay you via EFT.
To see the Report Designer Templates go to Reports > Configuration and Setup > PDF/Excel Report Template, the report template list page will display as shown below.
Report Template List
The report template list provides you a list of templates. There are 2 lists available when working with reports.
1. The default System Templates
2. Your Templates.
You can select these templates by clicking on it.
1. System Template:System Templates have been generated to give you a working starting point in Transvirtual. There is nothing that you can change here, but it's important to understand this for creation of your templates.
2. Your Template:Creating your own template, in time you may wish to change the look and feel of your documents, invoices and labels.
Edit Your Template
1. Once you go to the report template page, you will see the System Templates tab (by default).
In this list you will see all of the available system report templates.
2. The template type gives you an indication of what each report is used for.
For this article, we are going to modify an Invoice type report to include your bank details.
3. To modify the invoice type report, first select a report template from the system template list that we are going to update, the template detail will display on the right side of the screen as shown below.
If you are not able to see the applicable template, then scroll down the page.
4. If you wish to see the template preview, simply click on the Preview Template button as shown above, the preview template will display as shown below.
The preview will give you an idea of what an invoice would look like using this template.
5. In this example, we are going to use Invoice Service (Customer) Detailed as the report which we will modify. To modify this report, you will need to copy it from the System Templates by clicking on the Copy Template button, a pop-up Copy of a template will display as shown below.
6. You can add template title and then click on Copy button, the template will copy and reflect in the Your Templates section.
The template title is simply the new name of the template which we are going to update. Name it something that is reflective of what it does or who it applies to (it may only apply to a specific customer etc).
7. Now, click on the Your Templates tab at the top of the page and you will now see your template copy in the list, in orange - indicating that it is not yet active as shown below.
8. Click on the report which you copied, the detail of that report will display on the right side of the page, as shown below.
9. As you can see at the bottom of the page there is a Data Filter section, this section helps you to determine when this report template will be used.
In this example, we only want this report template to be used when the invoice is a customer type invoice, this filter should not apply to an agent type invoice as payment details would not apply to them because they are not paying you.
10. To correctly modify the Data Filter, first select the field, then logic and finally select value as shown below.
In this example, for step 1, select Invoice Type, for step 2, select Not in List and for step 3, select Supplier - Service Type and Supplier Product Type.
11. Once you completed all 3 steps, click on Add rule button, you will then see that there is now text in the Data Filter look like as below.
This logic now says to only use this report template when the Invoice is NOT one of the two listed Supplier type invoices (an agent invoice).
12. Once the Data Filter has been configured, the next step is to modify the report template, to do this, on template detail page, click on the Report Designer button, the report designer page will display as shown below.
13. In this example, we are going to add bank details so that when the invoice PDF is sent to a customer, they know where to send the money to pay you for the invoiced amount. To add in bank details, on designer template page, go to ReportSummaryBand1 section as shown below. and add the bank details as shown below.
14. Now, double-click the text box, a pop-up to update bank detail will display, here edit the text within the field and update/add as per the requirement and then click on OK button to update/add in this field as shown below.
15. Once you add/update the field, you will see that the text field appears as per what you have changed/add it as shown below.
If required, you can click and hold the text box to move it to the left or right to better position the text.
1. You can also make the text in a text box bigger or smaller, as well as making it bold or aligning to the left or right; this is very similar to Word. To do this, click the text box you wish to modify. At the top of the page, you will see few options which helps to update the text like font size, bold etc. Once you make the changes the page will look as shown below.
2. Once changes have been made, click on Save button to save the changes.
To update the Logo and Title
1. If needed, you can also update the Title of the report at the top of the page as well as move the Logo and make it bigger as shown below.
Here we are going to update to be the heading as Tax Invoice - Demo.
2. To do so, go to top of the page and double-click on the Title and update it (as needed) and similarly for Logo, expand it out to the top of the page, as much like you would do with an image in word document as shown below.
If needed then you can also move the box(es), to do this, simply click and hold, then drag the fields to where you want them.
Don't forget to save any changes that have been made!
3. If you want to see the preview of the updated file, simply click on the Preview tab, the preview of the file will generate automatically. This will show you what an invoice using this template would look like:
4. In addition to making size changes to text or applying bold functions, you can also add functions such as Word Wrap or font shrinking. If you have limited space on a template and text keeps getting cut off, applying a Word Wrap function to the text box may resolve the issue. To add this, click the text box required, then click on Properties tab located at the bottom-left of the page, then click on Text Additional button as shown below.
5. Now, on text additional text, click on the expand icon, you will see more option related to the text. Here, click on the Word Wrap checkbox to enable it. Once you do this, save the template and check the preview of the template (if needed).
Word Wrap simply means the text won't cut off if it spans too far across the line. Word wrapping will move any cutoff text to the next line within the text box.
There are other options you can add to a text box if required. Again, to do this, click the relevant text box, then click the Properties tab at the bottom, then enable the relevant setting you wish to apply to the text box.
Additional Functions
1. As per the attached video, you will notice that most of the fields in this report template have 'code' in them; strings of text that tell the system what data to automatically populate. You can change the code in a text field if you wish, using the available fields, however, if you do this, you MUST be very careful in what is selected. 2. To add in 'code' use the available fields from the Dictionary:
If adding in any of these coding fields, you need to ensure that the Data Source you are selecting the field from, matches the Data Source assigned to the blue Data Band:
3. In the above you will notice that all of the text boxes in the Data Band for Invoice Detail all start with InvoiceDetail. The fields being used are drawing information from the assigned data source which is a table in the data. If the Data source assigned to the data band and the field being used are not from the same data source, this will cause issues with the report and could cause information to display incorrectly or stop functioning.
If you need assistance with modifying this part of a report template, please contact Transvirtual to ensure the setup will work as expected!
4. Adding in text boxes or data bands (amongst other things) can be done by using the buttons on the left, click what you want to add, then click where you want to add it in.
4. Once the template has been configured/modified (as needed), you will need to enable it. First save the report template and then exit out of it by closing the window. Now, go back to the Your Templates list as shown below.
5. Click on the template which were newly added, the detail of selected template will be display on the right side of the screen as shown below.
6. On detail screen, to activate the template, tick the Active checkbox and then click on the Update button as shown above.
Once you tick the active checkbox, the template coloured changed from Orange to White in the list which means that it is now active.
7. In addition to enabling the template, you can also modify the priority number of the template (If needed), to modify the priority number, click in the box and manually update the number and then click on the Update button.
The priority number is only useful when you have multiple report templates that could apply to the same invoice/label/connote,etc. In this scenario, the system would use the template with the highest priority number to generate the report. The higher numbers are looked at first by the system, so if you have a report template you want to be the 'default', you will set the priority of that template to be the highest number.
7. In this example, we are going to leave as 100 because we only have one template that will apply.
Sort/Filter
Transvirtual have the ability to sort the data in ascending or descending order. To arrange a data band in either ascending or descending order follow the below steps.
1. First select the report you wish to modify.
In this example we'll select "Invoice Service (Customer) Detailed 'New Invoice'."
2. Now, click on the Report Designer button, report designer page will come in a new window. Now, double click on the Data Band 2, then click on the Sort button as shown below.
Ensure that the highlighted variable matches the title of your data source.
3. Choose either ascending or descending sorting based on your business requirements and then click on "OK" button.
If there is no sorting previously then click on the Add Sort button and choose either Ascending or Descending with the help of drop and down button.
Advanced Helper Functions
This will show you the available helper functions to display data in meaningful ways on you report.
You would use this for example if your agent requires routing information on the label.
Code: {RouteZoneDetail(Consignment ID, Agent ID, Field Required)} Example: {RouteZoneDetail(ConsignmentItems.IdConsignment, null, "long") } Field Required: "long" or "short" zone Name Returns:Value
Format Type This is used in conjunction with other rules to get required output.
Code: {FormatType(Type Name, Value)} Example: {FormatType("InvoiceDueDateType", 1) } Returns:The display name of the type
GS1 Barcode To create a GS1 barcode the sender must have a GS1 assigned company number. Visit here for details https://www.gs1au.org. The GS1 Consignment Prefix can be entered in the customer card as a "Consignment Prefix"
This is used as part of the GS1 barcode generator.
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