@JDMacD1287
OK. Now back to your original questions:
How does the Excel invoice tracker template work?
First of all, that template does nothing but give you a place to record the pertinent information on:
(a) invoices sent
(b) payments received
It does NOT, in short, serve in any way to create the invoices in the first place. It's a tracker.
How do I use it with my individual invoices?
You replace the information that's there for illustrative purposes with some of your own.
However, having offered those answers, I am compelled to add these comments: this template is very poorly designed. For several reasons. May I ask where you got it? If the source was Microsoft itself, I'll send some feedback to the department responsible for templates. I hope that's not the case, because it's so poorly designed it should never have been distributed.
Here are two of the reasons I say it's poorly designed:
- That bottom row, where your original showed totals of Amounts Due and Amounts Paid, makes it harder than it should be (because it's not clear how to proceed) to enter information on new invoices or payments received.
- Perhaps even more significant, however, is that it leaves no clean way to track second and third payments on any given invoice that is NOT paid in a single payment. For example, invoice #1002, which is shown with an outstanding balance of a little more than half of the original invoice.
There are ways both of those circumstances could be resolved, but it would be easier to start from scratch. Which, frankly, means it's not a template I'd recommend you continue even trying to use. It needs at the very least to be re-designed from top to bottom.
Let me ask you again, therefore, where you got this. As noted, if it's directly from a Microsoft source, I'll send feedback to the department responsible for templates. If it's some other source, you could send them my observations.
And moving ahead, let me ask you what you'd want an invoice tracking system to be able to do, and maybe we can find one, or create one from scratch. Again, realize that ALL this one purported to do was Track; not Create invoices in the first place.
If all you want is tracking, what do you need to track?
- Do you have clients who pay over time?
- Do you charge additional fees for that?
- Etc. In other words, spell out fully what you track or need to be able to track.
If you want to create AND track, then describe that fully as well. But also go to Microsoft's Template page and look there.
