33 Building an Invoice Report

In this chapter, you will learn about reports that display output on invoices. By following the steps in this chapter, you can generate the report output shown in Figure 33-1.

Figure 33-1 Invoice report output

Description of "Figure 33-1 Invoice report output"

Concepts

Invoice reports are master/detail reports with billing amounts that print conditionally. The customer name, address, and related information are derived from the master query (or group, if there is only one query). The line–items come from the detail query. The billing amounts are printed in the page footer.
This information must all print on specific line and column positions on the preprinted invoice form. To format your information correctly, you will use many of the same techniques as you used in Chapter 32, "Building a Report Using a Preprinted Form".
As an additional aid to formatting this report, you will link to a TIFF image of the invoice. This will enable you to position your fields more precisely.

Note:

Many of the concepts in this example are used in the following example reports:

This example, where you import an image of an invoice and use it as a guide to position fields in the Paper Layout view.
Chapter 31, "Building a Check Printing Report with Spelled-Out Cash Amounts", where you import an image of a check and use it as a guide to position fields in the Paper Layout view. In addition, you learn how to create a PL/SQL function that returns spelled-out numerical values.
Chapter 32, "Building a Report Using a Preprinted Form", where you learn formatting techniques for printing reports on preprinted forms when you do not have access to a computer readable version of the forms. Such reports must be designed so that the data prints in exact positions on the form.

Data Relationships

The data for this report is fetched using two queries, linked together in a master/detail relationship. You will also define a break and two summaries.

Layout

This layout is similar to the layout for the preprinted form report, but in this case you will also link to a TIFF image of your form to use as a guide while adjusting the positions of several fields.

Example Scenario

In this example, you will create a report that prints an invoice for each customer, listing the following information:

standard billing information such as name, address, date, purchase order number, and so on
a list of items purchased, including item number, description, and price
the total cost of all items purchased

You will also learn how to import an image of a preprinted form (in this case, a blank invoice image) and use the tools in the Paper Layout view to print your report on this form.

As you build this example report, you will:

Create a New Report Manually to create a new, empty report.
Create a Data Model With a Data Link to create two queries with a data link between them.
Create Summary and Formula Columns to include on the invoice.
Prepare the Layout for inserting the invoice information.
Insert Invoice Information by creating new fields for the invoice information, positioning them in the correct locations on the invoice form.

To see a sample invoice report, open the examples folder named invoice, then open the Oracle Reports example named invoice.rdf. For details on how to open it, see "Accessing the Example Reports" in the Preface.