The default Invoice style, as shown in 項12.6.5, is fairly barren. The default invoice style leaves the top part of the form blank, so you can print on company letterhead paper. There are some things you can do to change invoice appearance.

Use File -> Properties to enter your company name and address, which is printed on the right side of invoices.

To add a customized background, heading banner or logo to invoices, modify the invoice style sheets. To do this, go to Edit -> Style Sheets and make a New style sheet. You will see a window like this:

The New Style Sheet window.

You must select the Fancy style sheet template, and choose a name for your new style sheet. When you click the OK button, the HTML Style Sheet editor window is displayed. This window contains four tabs, Colors, General, Images, and Tables. The Colors tab allows you to change the colors of various sections of the invoice. The General tab allows you to set the Preparer and Prepared for information, and to enable links. The Images tab allows you to import graphics into the style sheet. The Tables tab allows you to adjust the spacing around the tables which make up the invoice.

To include a company logo, banner heading and background image, use your favorite graphics application such as The Gimp or OpenOffice Draw to save the images in either GIF or PNG format. Then import them into the style sheet using the Images tab.

Below is an example that imports all three types of images.

The HTML Style Sheets window with an example Background Tile, Heading Banner, and Logo.

The images are placed in the invoice as follows. The Background Tile is tiled to become the background image, the Heading Banner goes to above the invoice text, and the Logo is placed in the upper left corner of the invoice to the left of the Heading Banner. You will probably have to try a few different sized images until you get the invoices to print nicely. Some sizing suggestions are that the Logo should be 1 square cm (~0.5 inch), and the Heading Banner should be 15 cm (~6 inches) wide and 1 cm (~0.5 inch) tall.

With the style sheet configured, when you print the invoice, you select the style sheet to use from the Options menu. Below is the resultant invoice after applying the style sheet demonstrated above.

The hideous invoice which results from the graphics selected in the style sheet.