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Editing your business letters

  • Updated

Goal

Xentral can generate many document types, such as order confirmations, invoices, and delivery notes. This guide will show you how to set up the layout of these business letters and change the standard email texts for sending them to your customers.

Prerequisites

Before you start editing your business letters, please ensure that you:

Workflow

  1. Creating a PDF background for your letter
  2. Defining your text templates
  3. Working with variables
  4. Working with IF statements
  5. Creating email templates

Creating a PDF background for your letter

Xentral offers a user-friendly way of customizing the layout of your documents. You can generate a PDF background for your letters, containing everything you want to print, such as your logo or a specific footer.

  1. Create a PDF file containing all elements you want to include in documents. You can do this in any text editor. Open a new text file, place your logo or any standard text on this document and export it as a PDF file.

    Note: Your file must be smaller than 100kB.

  2. Upload the PDF to Xentral. Log into Xentral and go to Administration > System > Basic Settings > Letterhead.
  3. Select PDF as a background in the Background section. 
  4. Click Choose file and use the corresponding PDF.
  5. Click Save. You have successfully uploaded your PDF.
  6. Go to Sales > Sales order and open any test order you’ve already created or create a new one.
  7. Go to the Preview tab of your order. Xentral displays the business letter with the new PDF background.

Hint: You can also upload your logo as a .png file. This is an alternative to the PDF upload but is usually not flexible enough to generate more sophisticated layouts. We recommend using the PDF background.


Important: In rare cases, the upload of your PDF file might fail. The result is an error message when opening the preview. Solve this issue by exporting your PDF file with a different PDF editor and uploading it again.

Defining your text templates

You can find your text templates for all documents in basic settings (Administration > System > Basic Settings > Tab: Text templates).

 

The template structure is as follows:

  • Xentral already contains many text templates for all documents, but you can change them for your own needs. 
  • The center of each document is the product table, listing every article you are sending to your customer or receiving from your supplier. Every text template for all documents in Xentral is defined by two separate text fields, one above the product table and one beneath.
  • You can translate every field using the Globe icon.

Working with {VARIABLES}

Xentral makes certain information accessible via variables in your documents. For example, if you want to print the customer's name on your documents, use the {NAME} variable. The system offers many variables, which you can find here.

Working with IF statements

For advanced templates, you can use IF statements. IF statements allow you to add particular content to your documents. This is an example of adding VAT ID for Switzerland to your document. The ISO code identifies the country. In this example, CH stands for Switzerland:

{IF} {LAND}=”CH” {THEN} CH12345678 {ELSE} {ENDIF}

The IF structure is always the same:

  • {IF} - Xentral checks the content behind the {IF} if it is true or false.
  • {THEN} - indicates the content written if the {IF} is true.
  • {ELSE} - contains the content for a false IF.
  • {ENDIF} -  closes the IF statement.

Each IF statement should always contain all four components. If you don’t need the ELSE content, the part after it can remain empty.

Note: Use the default font type when writing the {} expressions of your IF statements. For the printed variables, you can use any different font.

Creating email templates

Your correspondence will probably contain standard emails, like order confirmations, invoices, or tracking emails. You can change the corresponding standard text in the Administration > System > Business letter templates module. You can either use the existing templates (in the German language), edit them, or create new ones.

To create a new template:

  1. Log into Xentral and go to Administration > System > Business letter templates.
  2. Click +New.
  3. Select a type for your template. The type values are expected in the German language. These are the most frequently used types:
    • Angebot → Offer
    • Auftrag → Sales order
    • Bestellung → Purchase order
    • Lieferschein → Delivery note
    • Rechnung → Invoice
    • Gutschrift → Credit note
    • Versand → Tracking mail
    • ZahlungMiss → Customer missing payment
    • Stornierung → Cancellation
  4. Add the Project for this template. The Project allows you to use different templates for different parts of your business. If the project remains empty, Xentral uses this template as a default.
  5. Enter the email’s subject line.
  6. The text field accepts different variables for different types. Refer to the list beneath the field to check which variable is accessible.
  7. The Files button allows you to add attachments you want to send with every email, like contract data or other notes.
  8. Click Save.

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