Free FileMaker Solution: Invoices

Invoices is one of the 31 free Starter Solutions (another term for database templates) included with FileMaker Pro. Unlike the other templates bundled in the app, this one is something you can actually use in your business if you haven't tried downloading the Business Productivity Kit yet (which we'll discuss in the future) or other free solutions.

Invoices is a combination of three different Starter Solutions: Contacts, Inventory, and Purchase Orders. The great thing about this is that this database template already connects all the different tables together for you. This means that when you create an invoice in the database, you can select a customer you've already typed in the "Contacts" portion of the database, and select the products that you've already typed in the "Products" portion of the database.

This starter solution only became available in FileMaker Pro 11, so prior to that you would have to learn about setting up "relationships" between the three different databases and setting up fields so that the information (like product prices, or customer details) were automatically entered. While it's still a good idea to learn about those, the Invoices database gives lets you get straight to using the solution with as little additional tweaking involved. For first time users, the database also is a good example to refer to once you're ready to start creating or modifying other solutions.

Aside from the ready-made entry forms in Invoices, you have basic reports for contacts (a list report and mailing labels), products (inventory report and product catalog), and invoices (address labels and packing slip). It also highlights charting, a new feature for FileMaker Pro 11, with a button you can click to display a "Sales Volume By Product" chart.

To access the Invoices database, just click "Use a Starter Solution..." in the lower left part of the FileMaker Quick Start window that appears when you open FileMaker Pro. If the window is not there anymore, you can select "New From Starter Solution..." in the File menu. You'll get a list of all available starter solutions; scroll down and select Invoices, click Choose, then save the file to your hard disk.

Once you get it up and running, add your contact and product data into the database. You'll also need to modify the invoice layout to have the name and/or logo of your company. This is very easy to do once you've learned the basics from the FileMaker Pro tutorial (a few posts below).