path: root/2021/captions/emacsconf-2021-invoice--find-your-invoice-emacs-for-invoicing--bala-ramadurai--main.vtt

WEBVTT

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What is an invoice?

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Invoice is a document

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that you give it to your customer

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so that they can pay you 

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for your service or your goods.

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But you are a professor and consultant. 

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Why do you need to generate invoices?

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Well...

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I do a service for my clients

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if I'm a consultant,

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and when I'm a professor,

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I'm teaching students,

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so I have to generate an invoice.

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Why not use Excel or something simple

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to generate your invoices?

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I've tried that.

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It's no good, when it... particularly, 

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when there are many clients,

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managing Excels and templates 

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becomes very very tricky.

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Why don't you hire someone, you know, professional 

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to do these for you?

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I've tried it. 

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I have to give them lots of information. 

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Not that there's anything wrong with them,

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just that I found it to be a bit too tricky.

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Professional software?

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Good point. I've tried that too. 

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But, what's the fun in that, right?

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So what did you do?

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Haa.. this is the interesting part!

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I took a software called Emacs Org mode

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and with that, I added Python code to it.

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I added so many other things to it,

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and then it became a really nice 

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customizable way to generate invoices.

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Whoa whoa whoa... Just slow it down, bro.

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Give me the story.

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Hey. Okay... Okay... I will.

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Story.

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Uh.. Story is simple.

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The client wanted an invoice.

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So, I generated an invoice.

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It wasn't good enough.

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So, I hacked some little bit of it.

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I changed every time a new client came.

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I had to do it all over again. 

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I did that. I did it.

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Then I got really tired of it.

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And that's what led me to all these customizations.

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I want features. 

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So, rapid fire questions. Ready? Yep.

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Project management? Yep.

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Format customization? Yes.

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PDF export? Yes.

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Multi-client support? Yes.

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Washing my clothes?

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Yes... No.

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Haa. I was just testing you, 

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if you're paying attention or not.

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Logo and signature customization? Yes.

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Multi-currency support? Yes.

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Okay, enough talky or it's just...

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Can you show me a demo that you did?

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Or is it just talky.

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Yes, of course. Demo.

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Okay, demo time.

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Some ingredients for invoicing.

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Org mode, of course.

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Python environment and libraries for Python:

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pandas, tabulate, numbers.

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yasnippet package, very useful.

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And I use for LaTeX, MikTeX packages.

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So, I have a project already set up.

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This is what we have.

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The project is Teaching 2021 

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and you can set all this up.

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So let's start with the first and foremost.

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Okay, so we're going to use

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the yasnippet package.

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uh.. um.. sorry, the invoice, okay.

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This one introduced, it gives you this whole...

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generates this whole bunch of code 

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based on a template.

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All you're going to do 

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is to type out the client's name.

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Okay and that's it. 

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That's all there is to it.

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Okay there's a whole bunch of instructions

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that you can follow.

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If it's for the first time,

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use bankinfo.org.

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Let's check out what bankinfo.org involves.

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Okay so you can copy this template 

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from my GitHub repository.

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It's basically setup of the LaTeX tags,

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and particularly this text file, 

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which is a template.

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There's some personal info 

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for all the details that you want.

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Bank information. 

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You can look at it in detail

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from my repo. The tax invoice...

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There are some basic constructs.

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You can totally change any of these

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to your liking.

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Okay, so that's bank info.

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Go back. That's the first part.

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The second part is creating a client name.

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So let's look at this setup,

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and I have one created already.

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So, in order to create this, 

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all you need to do

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is to use the inv-setup

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invoice setup for your client,

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and it will give you all the information.

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All you need to do is type in here

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and then type in the client's name,

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exactly the same that you see 

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as the file name.

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Okay, client one. And that's it.

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You're all set for you.

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Okay, so that's what it looks like. 

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All the address and stuff

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filled out here.

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Okay. And then the next one 

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is to use the... One time,

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you're going to do the invoice item,

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which is the rate table.

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So let's do the invoice.

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Invoice item...

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This is item master.

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So here again, another place

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where you have to enter the client name,

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and your rate table is ready for use.

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Okay. So that was... 

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Now we go to step two, 

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which is clock table for reference.

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Okay. Let's go to the clock table.

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I already set up this for ACMEClient1,

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and I give it a tag: billable.

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Okay. We will see that...

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Where have I done that?

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Okay, so that's the client, you know,

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ACMEClient1 table teaching 2021.

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I've clocked it for the previous month.

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That's what you will see.

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Let's see it again.

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Okay. That's... Let's put the instructions.

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And then you go to clock table

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to generate the clock table for the client.

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Okay. So clock table...

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This is only for your reference, 

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not going to be exported.

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Here we get a clock table. All right. 

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So with this, you get the clock table.

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Okay. Now go into the items part.

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You will see two Python blocks,

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which is what the next instruction says.

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Go into the python block 

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and do Control-c c (C-c c).

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Go to the control python source block,

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second one, and do Ctrl-c c... 

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Ctrl-c Ctrl-c (C-c C-c) rather.

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and then finally come back 

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to Raise Invoice and do dispatcher 

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which is exported into PDF.

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Okay, let's do that. 

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First one is... I just run this code, 

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and it generated this table for me.

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Okay. So it has all the details.

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Now we go in 

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the second source code block,

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and does all this...

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And it has generated this stuff.

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Plus, you should note that for beancount, 

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it has also generated the block for that.

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It's all in the code. 

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You can customize it if you're on Ledger.

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You can customize it 

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to the way you want, 

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any accounts that you want to change. 

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It's all customizable. 

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Here, even the currency symbols

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can be changed from INR and Rupees

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to whatever currency you have

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can be changed accordingly.

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I have org-babel-tangle-append code 

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that I will share in the...

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I've borrowed it 

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from somebody on the Internet,

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so I'll share that as well 

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in my GitHub repo.

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Lastly, I just want to share that

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you can fill your GST website

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with these info, 

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so you can... You can even put in 

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as many entries as you want 

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in your yasnippet.

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Customize it the way you want.

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I also added a month later 

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due date reminder,

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saying if the invoice is paid or not.

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Okay.

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So, a few tips to end this demo. 

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You can customize currency symbol 

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and currency words

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according to your own currency.

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I use the European/Indian date format

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which is %d-%m-%Y. You can also...

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The language is Indian English, 

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so it will change according--

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the numerals change according to the

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Indian format. Numbering format

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for invoice number is today's date

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followed by client name.

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That's my default.

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You can customize that as well.

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Let's try and export this 

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to the subtree. Ctrl-s. 

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So that's step number seven.

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And there it is,

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the tax invoice 

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for Dr. Wile E. Coyote,

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and with a lovely signature as well.

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[Interviewer:] Well, that's great!

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If I were to try this out, what do I do?

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Go to github.com, into my repository.

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I'll leave my GitHub URL. 

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You can download it use it,

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and let me know 

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how it pans out for you.

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[Interviewer:] I have spent

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so much time on this.

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May I invoice you?