Invoice Templates

You can use templates to help you to configure your invoices.

Invoicing Template Settings

You can customize invoice template settings in the Merchant Portal. The following table summarizes the configuration options for your invoices:

These settings are shown in the following screenshot:

Template Types

The service includes 4 types of invoice template that you can use as the basis for your own customisations:

• Invoice templates
• Credit note templates
• Invoice email templates
• Credit note email templates

These are shown in the following screen shot:

Each type will have one, or more, default templates. The management and configuration of the templates are the same for each type of template. The exceptions are the email templates as they have extra fields for defining the Email subject and Email from fields.

On each of the four tabs, you will initially see a list of templates. Each line in the list shows the criteria that must be met to trigger the use of that template.

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Information

The order of the templates is important because in the case that multiple templates meet the requirements for a particular transaction, the one closest to the top of the list will be used. Defaults are always at the bottom of the list. If you define more than one custom template you can re-order it by clicking the up/down arrows on that line in the 'Order' column.

For example:

Each of the four template types has at least one default template, but the Invoice type has additional predefined templates to meet the requirements of specific tax regions. Default templates can be viewed but not edited, deleted, or reordered.

For example, clicking Edit for the South Korean template on the list page displays the details of that template:

Creating and Editing Templates

Whether you click the Add template button or the Edit button on a saved template, the template configuration page will be displayed.

Mustache and Handlebars scripting

Vertex's template scripts use Handlebars (based on Mustache), which is a very simple scripting language for inserting variables into HTML. You can use either Handlebars or Mustache syntax if you choose to create custom templates. In addition to the standard templates provided by Taxamo, you have the ability to create company-specific versions of the template.

Handlebars provides built-in helpers for conditions such as if, each, with and unless.

A Handlebars expression is contained between double curly braces {{ expression }}. For the template to be parsed in Handlebars, it has to start with {{enable-handlebars}}. You can learn more about Handlebars via this link.

Here is an example snippet from an Invoice template:

<p>Invoice</p>

<p>Hello {{transaction.buyer_name}},</p>

<p>An invoice has been prepared for your purchase.<br/>
Please click on the following link to see your invoice:<p>
<p>{{links.html}}</p>
<p>or download a PDF version here:</p>
<p>{{links.pdf}}</p>

<p>Best regards,</p>
{{merchant.business_name}}<br/>
{{merchant.postal_address_line1}}<br/>

In the example above the variables enclosed within double curly braces {{ }} are elements of Mustache script. The variables that they contain are taken from the data model, which effectively contains all the available data that the service has stored related to the invoice.

To customize the invoice template simply create the layout that you would like, using HTML and CSS. You can then add Mustache variables wherever you want to reference the invoice data that is stored in the Taxamo system.
For example, to display your company's business name add {{merchant.business_name}} to the template.

Merchant Data Fields

The following fields are available to help capture merchant data for all template types:

• merchant.email
• merchant.status
• merchant.register_timestamp
• merchant.country
• merchant.partner_id
• merchant.billing_place_id
• merchant.business_name
• merchant.business_description
• merchant.liable_from
• merchant.contact_name
• merchant.industry
• merchant.postal_address_line1
• merchant.postal_address_line2
• merchant.postal_address_line3
• merchant.zipcode
• merchant.additional_emails
• merchant.website_address1
• merchant.website_address2
• merchant.website_address3
• merchant.website_address4
• merchant.website_address5
• merchant.national_tax_number
• merchant.telephone_number_prefix
• merchant.telephone_number
• merchant.fax_number_prefix
• merchant.fax_number
• merchant.not_registered_for_vat_before
• merchant.modified_timestamp
• merchant.registered_tax_id

Optional Fields

The following optional fields are also available:

• options.footer_note
• options.footer_note_b2b
• options.footer_note_b2c
• options.b2b
• options.invoice_number_format
• options.kind
• options.logo_url
• options.bucket_name
• options.email_template_html
• options.email_template_txt
• options.email_subject_template
• options.template

HTML and PDF Versions

The HTML and PDF versions of invoices and credit notes are stored in the following fields:

• links.html
• links.pdf

Invoice and Credit Note Template Fields

The following fields are available for invoice and credit note templates:

• refund_data.refund_note_number
• refund_data.refund_reason
• refund_data.refund_note_url
• refund_data.refund_date
• refund_line_data.starting_total_amount
• refund_line_data.starting_tax_amount
• refund_line_data.starting_amount
• refund_line_data.amount
• transaction.refund_amount
• transaction.refund_tax_amount
• transaction.refund_total_amount
• transaction.final_tax_amount
• transaction.final_amount
• transaction.final_total_amount

Mustache Helpers

You can learn more about Mustache scripting via this link.

Vertex's Handlebars implementation provides a number of helpers. Some of them evaluate data in the current context, and follow the {{helper_name}} convention, and some are block expressions that may change context, and follow the {{#helper_name}} subexpressions {{/helper_name}}} convention.

In each of the aforementioned helpers the {{^}} clause may be used instead of {{else}}.

Also, if errors occur with either the formatNumber, formatSymbol or formatDatetime helpers, note that they do not produce any output. To help with debugging we provide an additional show_errors property that when set to true will render any errors in-place.

The following table summarizes the available helpers: