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iWork 06/Pages Invoice Template/XML import
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: phx
Status:
Offline
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As a design enthusiast, I find it important to make good-looking invoices. As a business person, I find it important to have a functional invoicing system that hooks into accounting. That's been the dilemma. QuickBooks makes horrid invoices and mapping onto a custom invoice layout is a bear, and inDesign isn't easily hooked into an accounting/invoicing workflow. 
Recently, I've designed some invoice templates for iWork 06 (Pages) that I really like. I like the macros that you can apply to tables to calculate (a la spreadsheet). And overall the program is very intuitive and clean.
Has anyone explored pulling an XML file into a Pages template to create a dynamic document? I've heard such exercises between Studiometry and inDesign, but they sound very complex.
Be happy to collaborate with anyone who has started work on this. If it is impossible in Pages currently, I would like to explore the same with inDesign and a decent accounting package.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2006
Status:
Offline
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If you ever develope anything like this or if anyone does, please let me know. I have been in the same boat for years, as a small business owner of a design studio, and a photography studio. There seems to be no easy way to invoice with style 
I have absolutely no idea how to do the XML stuff myself so I would be of no help. But I wanted to encourage anyone that it is a need $$ 
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Santa Rosa, CA
Status:
Offline
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Originally Posted by rtbarry
Has anyone explored pulling an XML file into a Pages template to create a dynamic document? I've heard such exercises between Studiometry and inDesign, but they sound very complex.
Be happy to collaborate with anyone who has started work on this. If it is impossible in Pages currently, I would like to explore the same with inDesign and a decent accounting package.
I agree with you about wanting attractive invoices. Since I track my billable time in OmniOutliner, which export OPML, which is XML, and Flash reads and parses XML and has great printing capabilities, I wrote a Flash movie that parses and formats the XML within my own letterhead design... for printing to both invoices and envelopes.
Of course, you have to be something of a Flash geek to accomplish this... which may not help you... but someone with that skill set could use Pages to prototype the design, and then use that design for the layout of a customizable Flash document that can read and print your formatted XML info.
But, yeah, it'd be great if Pages could be coerced into presenting XML within it's designs.
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