Custom fields for invoices and sales receipts

Hi there, @droybal. 

Thanks for checking us here in the Community. Normally, when you use a template on an invoice and create another invoice, the regular template will display again. 

This setting will remain until there are changes made with the Invoice Template drop-down.

We can re-sort the template list to fix this. Here’s how:

1. Go to the List menu bar and click Templates.

2. Choose View and select Re-sort List.

3. Click OK.

Then, save your customized template preference again. Here's how:

1. Go to the Customers menu bar and select Create Invoices.

2. Create a new test invoice with a standard template.

3. Select the Template drop-down menu, then select one of the Intuit templates listed.

5. Enter Customer and Item details on the Invoice, then click Save & Close.

The template option is now the default selection. you can go to Customers and select Create Invoices. 

You can also check out this article for additional information: Fix common issues when you use and customize templates.

For future reference, you'll want to learn about creating and use custom fields to personalize your sales forms in QuickBooks Desktop. 

Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help. Enjoy your day!

Thank you for your prompt response.  The template that is pulling up is correct.  The custom field is what auto populates with the last information for that particular customer.  I do not want it to do that.  I want to have to choose from the drop down custom field each time. I attempted to resort  the template list as recommended, but i didn't see a Re-sort list option.  I am using Enterprise Solutions 21 .  

We can turn off the auto-recall information preferences, droybal.

It's possible that your company preference is set to automatically recall information that's why it generates the template you previously used. We can turn that off so you'll have the option to select a template moving forward. Let me show you:

1. Go to the Edit menu and click Preferences.
2. From the General menu, click My Preferences. 
3. Under the Automatically Recall Information section, uncheck the Automatically remember account or transaction information box. 
4. Click OK to save changes.

Try creating an invoice or sales receipt and check if previously entered transaction information doesn't auto-populate. 

Feel free to use this link if you need more help in customizing your form templates.

Keep me posted if there's anything else that you need help with. I'll be here for you. Take care!

Thanks again for trying to address my issue.  I changed the preferences as described but is still auto populates that field based on the last time that customer was invoiced.  See highlighted custom field below:

. 

Thanks for keeping us posted, droybal.

It looks like all possible troubleshooting steps have already been shared with you in this thread. In this case, we need to take a closer look at this to determine why it's still pulling up the same information even if the recall information settings have been turned off.

To do that, please contact our chat and phone support teams. They'll be able to investigate this further and check what's causing the issue. Here's how:

1. Go to the Help menu and select QuickBooks Desktop Help.
2. Click Contact Us.
3. Enter a short description of the situation, then click Continue.
4. Click Get a callback.

You can also reach out to them via chat using this link: Contact Us.

As always, don't hesitate to reach out to us again if you need anything else. We're always here to help. 

Hello droybal,

I too have been struggling with the same limitation you are, and that is it seems QuickBooks Desktop does not support custom fields at the invoice level. The best I can tell is that the custom field you created applies to the customer, not the invoice, and even though you can choose to display that field on the invoice, you are actually seeing data about the *customer*. This is why when you create a new invoice, this field auto-populates with the information from the underlying customer. When you change that value on the new invoice, this value will be saved back to the customer, and will become the new default value for that field for future new invoices, until changed again.

There may be some workarounds by first creating an Estimate or a Job, with the correct custom data attached (I know QB Desktop does support custom Job Types) and then generate your invoice from that. I haven't investigated all of the possibilities with this approach though.

Update: After working with this a bit more, I discovered (in Quickbooks Desktop 2020 at least) that when you fill in a custom field on a form (invoice, for example) and then save that form, you will be prompted on whether or not you want to permanently apply that value to the underlying customer. For my purposes, I always choose not to do this. Even if you do accidentally save the new value as the default for that customer, you can edit the customer, go to "Custom Fields" and remove the value saved in the field.

What version of qb are you using and how did you do this?  I CANNOT figure it out--but also thinking maybe I just don't have the capabilities in the version I'm using. I would love to have a drop down list for Sales Collections for our online sales but i cannot seem to create a list that I can utilize in the Header line of a Sales Receipt.

Thanks for reaching out and joining this thread, @FIClean.

I'd love to help you with this. However, the ability to create a drop-down list for Sales Collections that you can utilize for your online sales in the header line of a sales receipt can't be done at this time.

In this case, I'd suggest submitting feedback to our Product Development. That said, they'll know that this is important to your sales forms and will greatly impact your business in terms of sales collections tracking.

Here's how:

1. Go to the Help menu.
2. Select Send Feedback Online and then choose Product Suggestion.
3. Enter your product suggestion and your details.
4. Hit Send Feedback Online.
   
   

As your future reference and more information, take a look at this article: Use and customize form templates. This covers how to import or export form templates and duplicate forms.

Come again if you need assistance with customizing your sales receipts and other forms by commenting below. Anytime I can help. Have a great day.

I basically made a workaround by co-opting the "ship via" list.  Our business does not require it, so I use that as a list of our repeating/seasonal online sales.  I then added it to the templates I need it for (sales receipts for the online purchases and a custom Invoice I created for offline purchases of the online sales) and changed the title of the field in the formatting.  

This has worked perfectly for the time being.