Would you like to automatically create PDF invoices in WordPress for your online business? Formidable Form’s custom PDF generator can do it! Here’s how.
Approximate read time: 5 minutes
If you run an online business, accept online donations for your charity, or sell tickets to events, you know how hard it can be to keep track of invoices. 😵💫
Making invoices one by one can be a pain — and time consuming — and unfortunately, it isn’t very easy to automatically generate invoices in WordPress, and it’s even harder to make them look good.
But we know a few tricks that’ll save you tons of time and make record-keeping easy. 😉 To give you an idea of what you can do with our PDF maker, here's a look at invoice we're going to make today.
Pretty neat, right? Let's show you how you can make one now!
Here’s our guide to creating PDF invoices in WordPress:
🧐 Why Create PDF Invoices in WordPress?
There are a lot of reasons you may want to generate an invoice in WordPress.
For starters, it’s a great way to reassure your customers and provide important information regarding their order. 😀
Offering a downloadable PDF invoice on the purchase confirmation page or instantly sending PDF invoices to customers via email as soon as their order is completed also gives your site credibility and confirms that you successfully received their orders.
Creating PDF invoices in WordPress can also save your team time ⏱️ and help you keep track of business records 🗄️ by automatically attaching PDF invoices to internal order email notifications.
❓Why Use a WordPress Invoice Plugin for PDF?
Unfortunately, there’s no great way to automatically create an invoice in WordPress without an invoice plugin, especially if you aren’t already using WooCommerce. 👎 You’ll need a developer to do a lot of coding and configuring.
Using WordPress invoice plugins for PDF is a much cheaper and easier option. 😌 Most of these plugins let you create and customize PDF invoices in WordPress without needing to write a single line of code.
But there are a lot of invoice plugins out there. How do you know which one to choose?
🔎 What to Look for in a WordPress PDF Invoice Plugin
So, what features should you look for in a WordPress invoice PDF plugin?
- A drag-and-drop invoice builder with a style editor to change colors, font size, etc.
- The possibility to make invoices for all your methods of payment
- The ability to use data from form fields to fill in your PDF invoice
- Custom fields to personalize your invoice with your logo, a header, and footer
Formidable Forms offers all these features and more! ✅
Our plugin lets you automatically generate PDF invoices from WordPress form entries and quickly build custom forms and PDFs in our drag-and-drop builders. 👍 Formidable also makes it easy to download, export, or display data from form submissions.
Get our WordPress Invoice Plugin Now!
🛠️ How to Make PDF Invoices in WordPress
If you’re using one of Formidable’s supported payment add-ons like Stripe, PayPal, or Authorize.net, it only takes a few steps to create PDF invoices in WordPress:
- Install and activate Formidable Forms
- Create your form
- Create a view and design your invoice
- Add your PDF invoice shortcode into pages, posts, emails, or confirmation messages
- Publish your form
Don’t want to read our step-by-step instructions below? Check out this video instead to see exactly how to create a custom PDF from form entries 👇
1. Install and activate Formidable Forms
First, install and activate the Formidable Forms plugin. Once the plugin's installed, go to Formidable → Add-Ons to install and activate the PDF and Visual Views Add-Ons.
Both of these add-ons are included in the Formidable Business Plan.
2. Create your form
Next, create the form you’ll use to fill in your invoice. Formidable’s visual form editor and pre-built templates make this super simple. 🪄
Start by opening Formidable. Then click the + Add New button in the upper right corner to create a new form.
In the pop-up window, search for and select our Invoice PDF template to get up and running right away or start from scratch by selecting "Blank Form".
Let's make things easy on ourselves and pick the template!
Select the Invoice PDF application and click to install it.
Hang on a minute... install an application? 🤔 Don't worry, that's just what we call our ready-made solutions that combine forms and views.
Open the application and you'll see both the form and grid view ready for you to personalize or embed!
To customize your PDF invoice form, hover over the form name and select "Edit". This opens up our drag-and-drop form builder where you can insert, edit, or remove form fields. 🏗️
Whenever you’re finished, click the blue Update button in the upper right corner to save your changes.
3. Create a View and design your invoice
From the form builder, select the Views tab up top to find your PDF invoice template. Just like with the form, you can hover over the template name and hit "Edit" to customize it.
Then, use the PDF editor and builder to change the design of your invoice. Hit Update to save your changes!
4. Add your PDF invoice shortcode into pages, posts, emails, or confirmation messages
You can find your PDF ID on the left side of your screen.
Next, copy the shortcode and paste it into the post, page, confirmation message, or email form action to display your invoice.
If you want, you can take it one step further and create a download PDF button or show a link to let your customers download the PDF invoice.
You can also automatically send the PDF as an email attachment by selecting the Email form actions.
Then, copy and paste this shortcode into your email message:
[frm-pdf view=”x” entry="[id]" public=”1”]Just put your view ID number in place of the “x”. You’ll find the view ID under the Views tab of your form.
If you need any help getting your PDF download to work, dig into our Knowledge Base docs!
5. Publish your form
All that’s left is to embed your form into any page or post you’d like! This bit’s really easy — from the Forms tab in Formidable, just click the embed button </> next to the form you’d like to use.
You can then choose to insert your form into a new page, an existing page, or copy and paste the shortcode to add the form wherever you want it.
❓What about PDF WooCommerce Invoices?
Out of the box, WooCommerce does not offer fully customizable PDF invoices. In fact, it can be pretty darn difficult to make WooCommerce receipts and invoices match your brand’s identity. 😔 There’s no true invoice builder and you’ll need to use CSS to change font sizes or colors.
For now, your best bet is to install one of the WooCommerce plugins. The free WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips plugin is one of our favorites and comes with a ready-to-use WooCommerce PDF invoice template that also makes it easy to send them in WooCommerce emails.
🤩 What Else Can You Do with Formidable?
Formidable is much more than just an invoice plugin! True, you can use it as a WordPress PDF invoice generator, but you can also use it to create registration forms, online calculators, shipping labels, product quizzes, questionnaires, PDF certificates, and more.
Discover everything Formidable can do for you!
And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and right here on our blog for more great WordPress tips and tricks!
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