Invoicing is awful now (modernized template is uncustomizable)

Your feelings are completely valid, Erin. No worries. I've got a workaround for you to make managing your invoices more efficient.

If you are referring to the spacing between line items, it is working as designed. Our engineers have concluded that this behavior is intentional and is caused by the Service Date feature, which groups activities with a service date together. If this feature is not required, you can turn off this option.

Here's how: 

1. Go to the Gear icon.
2.  Choose Account and Settings, then Sales. 
3. Click Sales form content, locate the Service date then turn it off.

Regarding the newly experienced layout of the invoices, I recommend that you send feedback. This way, our Product Development team will be aware of the changes you prefer and might consider them for future enhancements. Please follow the steps below to do so:

1. Go to the Gear icon. 
2. Select Feedback.
3. Enter your comments or suggestions. Then select Next to submit feedback.

You can also visit the QBO Feature Requests website to track feature requests.

Additionally, if you're looking to review your profit and income transactions from your projects, there are specific reports available that will provide the necessary data. This article will guide you on how to access and understand these reports: Understand reports.

The Community is always here to answer any questions you may have. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you need assistance with managing your invoices. Have a great day!

We have the service date turned off, so there's nothing to do there. We do not import labor into our invoices because we don't use QB Timesheets.  We manually input labor.  So if we have vendor invoices / costs that are imported into the customer invoice and try to add lines to incorporate labor, we can't organize them by our service items (in this case, we use cost codes as service items).  The only fix is to delete the linked cost and reinput it which then allows me to at least get the line items in the right order.  This is not an option for T&M Invoices with 50 different transactions.  

We are a service organization and need flexibility to customize the invoice for OUR clients' needs.  Very disappointed in the lack of customization here.  

We're in the same boat. Intuit, please fix this!

I have a workaround for that! I spent over 2 hours with a rep trying to figure out why quickbooks changed it so that an estimate marked Pending(sent) can no longer be re-sent to a customer without changing the status to approved, which they were completely unable to understand and help with - but the one good thing I got out of those two hours that I will never get back is this...

https://blanktext.net/

Copy a blank text into the line and it will stay blank! Until quickbooks actually puts this back, at least the work around will work!

I have been running into the same issue with QuickBooks Online modernized invoice templates, and after a lot of troubleshooting, I have finally found a workaround that works! It’s frustrating that we no longer have the option to easily add blank lines or adjust the layout as we did before, but this little trick has helped me deal with it:

By using a special invisible character (like a space or a non-printable character) in the blank lines section, it forces the template to keep the spacing as intended. Although QuickBooks has not fully addressed this yet, this simple workaround has saved me a lot of time!

QuickBooks definitely needs to make this feature more customizable again. But for now, if you are dealing with a similar issue, this might be the solution you need.

Hi,

I completely understand the frustration with the new modernized template in QuickBooks. It seems like the system does not offer the flexibility it used to with the old QBO, especially when it comes to customizing invoices. Here are a few things that might help:

1. Using Blank Lines: It is unfortunate that imported transactions aren ot respecting blank lines or proper formatting. This issue often comes up due to how QuickBooks handles imports and displays them in the invoice. A workaround could be adjusting the layout of the transaction items before importing, so that you do not have to deal with unnecessary formatting issues. If you need to chat with QuickBooks support, they may be able to provide further guidance on this.

2. Invoice Customization: I understand that the modernized template does not allow customization as easily as you would like. Unfortunately, as QuickBooks is pushing the newer templates, the customization options are more limited. You could try using a third-party invoicing tool or integrating with an external application that syncs with QuickBooks, offering you more flexibility. Some apps like QuickBooks Custom Invoice (available in their app store) might offer the features you are missing. Id suggest reaching out to the support team via chat for more personalized assistance.

3. Manual Fixes: While it is not ideal, sometimes deleting the imported transactions manually and re-adding them with the correct spacing can be a temporary fix, as you mentioned. It is definitely not a perfect solution, but it may save some time. If you have any more questions, feel free to send a message or chat with QuickBooks support.

4. Feedback: It is also worth submitting more feedback to QuickBooks support or using their community forum. If enough users raise the same issue, they may consider revisiting the design of the modernized templates to offer more customization options. You can usually find an easy way to chat with their team directly on the support page.