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User guide

PDF templates, colour palettes and fonts

Choose one of twelve invoice designs, recolour it with a built-in or custom palette, switch the layout for mixed VAT rates and set the fonts your PDFs use.

Updated: 2026-09-09

Every invoice, estimate or delivery note you generate in Invoice Flow is drawn from the same data by one of twelve built-in page designs. The design decides where the logo, the title, the addresses and the totals sit; a colour palette decides what colour the header bar, table header and labels take; and a separate font setting decides the typeface and the weight of the title, table headers, body text and notes. All three are independent, so you can keep one design and change only its colours, or keep the colours and try a different design, without touching the invoice itself.

This guide follows Mara Vos of Vos & Linden Architecten, a two-person architecture studio on the Herengracht in Amsterdam. Her invoice VL-2026-031 bills Brouwer Vastgoed B.V. for the second phase of a canal-house renovation, in euros with 21% VAT. You will see that one invoice rendered four times, so the differences between designs and palettes are easy to compare.

What you see on the screen

Design choices live in two places. The choice for a single document is made in the invoice editor: scroll below the Payment Options card and you find a card titled Select Template whose subtitle shows the current design and palette, for example Elegant — sand. Tapping it opens the Select Template screen with three sections: Design, Color Palette and Layout, and a Save button in the top-right corner. Just above it sits the Invoice Language card, which changes the language of the printed labels for this one document.

Invoice Flow app invoice editor scrolled to the Invoice Language card showing App Language and the Select Template card showing Elegant — sand, above the Notes and Payment Terms fields
The design of a document is chosen from the Select Template card in its editor.

The second place is Settings. The PDF templates row (subtitle “Build and manage your own layouts”) opens a screen with three tabs: Mine for layouts you built yourself, Gallery for 25 starter layouts you can preview in any palette and open in the custom editor, and Palettes where you create your own colour sets. The Fonts row (subtitle “Interface and document typography”) opens a screen with an Interface tab for the app itself and a Documents tab for PDFs.

One distinction matters before you start. The twelve designs in the Select Template screen are fixed renderers; you pick one and recolour it. The 25 cards in the Gallery tab are seeds for the custom template editor, which is a different feature covered in its own guide. Choosing a palette in the gallery only recolours the previews there; it does not change the palette of any invoice.

How to pick a design and a palette for an invoice

  1. Open the invoice in the editor and scroll down to the Select Template card, then tap it.
  2. Under Design, tap one of the twelve cards. The selected card gets a thick border and a check mark, and the palette below jumps to that design's default colours.
  3. Under Color Palette, tap any of the ten chips to override the default. The chosen chip shows a white check inside its colour circle.
  4. Under Layout, leave Standard selected unless the invoice mixes VAT rates (see the next section).
  5. Tap Save in the top-right corner. Back in the editor the card subtitle updates, for example to Elegant — sand.
  6. Save the invoice with Save Changes (or Save Draft); the design is stored on the invoice and used every time you preview or share it.
Invoice Flow app Select Template screen with a three-column Design grid of twelve cards named Clean, Professional, Bold, Elegant, Compact, Modern, Classic, Creative, Minimal, Contractor, Striped and Installment; Elegant is selected and Installment is dimmed with a small split badge
The Design grid; Installment is dimmed because this invoice uses a single payment.
Invoice Flow app Select Template screen scrolled to the Color Palette section with ten chips, Sand selected with a check, and the Layout section with the Multi-Tax Breakdown chip chosen
Ten palettes and the two layout chips sit below the grid.

Each card in the grid is a miniature page with a header band in the design’s default colour. When a card is drawn at half opacity with a tiny split or single badge, the design is tuned for the other payment mode. Only Installment carries such a badge; every other design suits both single and split payments. A dimmed card is still selectable.

The four PDFs below are the same invoice VL-2026-031 with nothing changed except the design and palette.

Invoice Flow app PDF of invoice VL-2026-031 in the Clean design with the Ocean palette: logo and company block on the left, a large blue INVOICE title on the right, a light-blue Bill To box and a blue table header
Clean with Ocean, the default for a new invoice.
Invoice Flow app PDF of the same invoice in the Professional design with the Charcoal palette: full-width dark header bar with the logo and company name, FROM and Bill To columns side by side, and a grey strip with issue date, due date and status
Professional with Charcoal.
Invoice Flow app PDF of the same invoice in the Elegant design with the Sand palette: centred brown INVOICE title with the number beneath, thin grey rules, sender on the left and client on the right, and a brown table header
Elegant with Sand, the studio's own choice.
Invoice Flow app PDF of the same invoice in the Modern design with the Plum palette: large purple INVOICE title on the right, a purple bar beside the Bill To block and a pale purple rounded box around the totals
Modern with Plum.

The table below describes each design as it actually renders with its default palette.

DesignDefault paletteWhat it looks like on the page
CleanOceanLogo and company block top-left, large coloured INVOICE title with number and dates top-right, tinted Bill To box, coloured table header.
ProfessionalCharcoalFull-width dark header bar carrying the logo, company name and invoice number; FROM and Bill To side by side; grey strip with issue date, due date and status.
BoldPlumLarge filled, rounded header block with the company details printed in white inside it; Bill To under a coloured rule; thick coloured rule below the totals.
ElegantForestCentred INVOICE title with the number beneath and a rule under it; sender left, client right-aligned; a dates row between thin rules; notes and terms in two columns.
CompactCharcoalTwo-line header with only email and phone; small FROM and Bill To columns; smaller type throughout so long invoices fit on fewer pages.
ModernOceanBig coloured INVOICE title on the right, a coloured bar on the left edge of the Bill To block, and the totals inside a rounded tinted box.
ClassicOceanCentred title above a double rule, a dates row, FROM and Bill To in framed boxes, notes and terms in a grey box.
CreativeSunsetColoured vertical strip down the left margin, INVOICE printed as a badge, issue and due dates stacked on the right, framed totals box, coloured bar beside the notes.
MinimalCharcoalVery large company name, small grey contact lines, thin grey rules and no colour except the table header.
ContractorForestTitle reads CONTRACTOR INVOICE; a tinted strip holds Invoice #, Issue Date, Due Date and the payment terms; Bill To with a coloured left bar.
StripedOceanRounded coloured header block with a thin accent line under it; small tinted FROM and Bill To tags; accent line under the table; tinted notes box.
InstallmentForestSame shape as Clean with a compact header; built for split payments, where the payment schedule and its badges are printed before the notes.

How to use the multi-tax layout

Every design has two layout variants. Standard prints one tax line in the totals. Multi-Tax Breakdown prints one line per distinct rate plus a Total Tax line, which is what an accountant expects when an invoice mixes, say, 21% services and 9% goods.

  1. In the Select Template screen scroll to the Layout section.
  2. Tap Multi-Tax Breakdown; the chip fills and shows a check mark.
  3. Tap Save, then save the invoice.
  4. Open Preview PDF from the invoice to check the totals block.

You do not strictly need this switch: whenever the line items carry more than one distinct tax rate, the breakdown table is printed anyway, even with Standard selected. Choosing Multi-Tax Breakdown forces the breakdown for invoices with a single rate too, which some clients prefer for consistency.

How to build your own palette

The ten built-in palettes cover most brands, but a studio with its own colours can define a palette from six roles: Primary, Secondary, Accent, Header background, Header text and Subtle background. Creating a palette is a Pro feature; the plus button opens the paywall on a free account.

  1. Open Settings, tap PDF templates, then the Palettes tab.
  2. Tap the + button. The Edit palette sheet opens with the Ocean colours and the name My palette filled in.
  3. Replace the name in Palette name.
  4. Tap the square swatch next to a role, for example Primary, and pick a colour in the Pick color dialog. The hex value under the label updates.
  5. Repeat for the other roles you want to change, then tap Save.
  6. To change it later, tap the palette row; to remove it, tap the bin icon on the row.
Invoice Flow app Palettes tab with a saved palette named Studio graphite and the Edit palette sheet open, listing Primary #FF455A64, Secondary #FF616161, Accent #FFE64A19, Header background, Header text and Subtle background with colour swatches and Cancel and Save buttons
Six colour roles make up a custom palette.
Invoice Flow app Pick color dialog showing a six-by-four grid of twenty-four colour swatches from red and pink through blues and greens to browns, greys, black and white, with a Cancel button
The colour picker offers 24 fixed swatches.

Mara’s “Studio graphite” palette uses a blue-grey primary, a mid-grey secondary and a burnt-orange accent that matches the studio logo. Once saved, it appears at the end of the palette strip in the Gallery tab, after a thin divider that separates it from the ten built-ins. Tap it there and every starter layout is redrawn in your colours, which is the quickest way to judge how a brand colour behaves on a page before you commit to a custom layout.

Invoice Flow app PDF templates screen on the Gallery tab with the Elegant category selected; the palette strip shows Mono, Sand, a divider and the custom Studio graphite chip highlighted, and four thumbnails named Centered, Boutique, Symmetric and Airy are drawn in blue-grey
The Gallery recoloured with the custom palette; each card opens the custom template editor.
Custom palettes are offered only in the Gallery strip. The Color Palette section of the Select Template screen lists the ten built-in palettes and nothing else, so a custom palette reaches a PDF only through a custom layout built from the gallery.

How to change the fonts in your PDFs

Fonts are a global setting, not a per-invoice one: whatever you choose under Documents applies to every PDF you generate from then on, with any design and palette.

  1. Open Settings, tap Fonts, then the Documents tab.
  2. Under Font Family tap one of the eight rows: System Default, Noto Sans, Noto Serif, Roboto, Open Sans, Lato, PT Sans or Merriweather. Each row is printed in its own typeface and the selected one shows a check mark.
  3. Scroll to the Invoice Title card and drag the Scale slider; the percentage on the right and the INVOICE preview change as you drag.
  4. Tap the B, I, U or S toggles to add bold, italic, underline or strikethrough to that text role.
  5. Do the same in the Table Headers, Body Text and Notes & Terms cards. Changes are saved as you make them; there is no Save button.
Invoice Flow app Fonts screen on the Documents tab listing System Default, Noto Sans, Noto Serif (selected with a check), Roboto, Open Sans, Lato, PT Sans and Merriweather, each drawn in its own typeface, with the Invoice Title card starting below at 120% scale
Each family row previews itself; Noto Serif is selected here.
Invoice Flow app Fonts screen Documents tab scrolled to the Invoice Title card at 120% with B active and a serif INVOICE preview, the Table Headers card at 100% bold and the Body Text card at 100% with a serif sample line
Scale, four style toggles and a live preview per text role.

The four roles have sensible defaults: the title and table headers are bold at 100%, body text is regular at 100%, and notes and terms are italic at 90%. The scale sliders run from 70% to 150% in the document cards. The Interface tab is separate; its family list is the same, but its Scale and Icon Size sliders only affect the app screens and never the PDF.

Rules and details

Tips

Decide the design once and let it carry forward: a duplicated invoice and an estimate converted to an invoice both reuse the source document's design and palette, so you rarely need the Select Template screen after the first document for a client.
Print a test page before settling on Charcoal or Mono. Dark palettes look sharp on screen but fill a lot of toner in a full-width header such as Professional or Bold; Clean, Elegant and Minimal use colour only on thin elements.
If a client's accountant asks for VAT per rate, switch that one invoice to Multi-Tax Breakdown instead of changing how you enter items. The setting is per document and the other invoices stay as they are.
Keep the document font at 100% and use the title scale instead when you want a bolder page. Enlarging body text pushes long descriptions onto extra lines and can turn a one-page invoice into two.