Putting It All Together – Our First VBA Application [Part 4 of 5 – Excel VBA Crash Course]

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This article is part of our VBA Crash Course. Please read the rest of the articles in this series by clicking below links.

What are Variables, Conditions & Loops are and how to use them in Excel VBA

  1. What is VBA & Writing your First VBA Macro in Excel
  2. Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA
  3. Using Cells, Ranges & Other Objects in your Macros
  4. Putting it all together – Your First VBA Application using Excel
  5. My Top 10 Tips for Mastering VBA & Excel Macros

In part 4 of our VBA Crash Course, we are going to create our very first VBA application using what we learned so far.

Our first Application – What is it supposed to do anyway?

Remember the “We Are Nuts” example. We are back to it. This time, we will create a daily sales tracker application that makes your job a breeze. But saying words like breeze when defining your next VBA application is a dangerous thing. So lets list down all the things our little Excel VBA workbook should do.
Sample Excel VBA Application - Demo - Excel VBA Crash Course

  1. The current method of using Inputboxes to capture 24 sale values and any reasons for deviation is tedious. So our application should instead process the values from already entered values and ask for reasons (thru inputbox) only when the sales are too low or too high.
  2. At the end of processing the sales, we want to see a short summary of how we did for the day. Something like this,
    Summary Statistics shown in our application - Excel VBA Crash Course
  3. Once we finish viewing the statistics a snapshot of the daily sales & along with summary statistics should be saved to current folder as PDF for later reference.

Designing our first VBA Application – Key Ingredients:

In this section, let us understand how our application should be designed and what goes in to it.

First, let us look at various things our application need to do, in a schematic. This types of diagrams are called as flow charts.

Flow Chart for Our VBA Application - VBA Crash Course

Key Ingredients of our Daily Sales Tracker Application:

Lets look at each area of our application and understand what VBA technique or statement helps us to do it.

  • Process one store sale at a time: This is achieved with the FOR EACH statement [Related: What are VBA loops?]
  • Capture reasons for deviation: Lets do InputBox() for this
  • Calculate Summaries as we go: Some variables to calculate the summaries as we go. And a few IIF() formulas to help us update the values where needed. (PS: IIF is Inline IF Formula)
  • Display Summary Statistics: We will use MessageBox() for this.
  • Save a snapshot of the report: This is done by Range.ExportAsFixedFormat() method. [Related: understanding cells, ranges & other VBA objects]

Demo of our Daily Sales Tracker VBA Application

Here is a quick demo of our Daily Sales Tracker Application


Download our Daily Sales Tracker VBA Workbook:

Click here to download the Daily Sales Tracker VBA Workbook. Enable macros, enter some values and play with it.

If you just want to examine code, see this page.

What Next – My top 10 tips for using VBA

In final part of our VBA crash course, Learn my top 10 tips for mastering VBA.

If you have not read, please read the first 3 parts of this series,

  1. Introduction to Excel VBA – What is it & How to write your first VBA Macro.
  2. Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA
  3. What are Excel VBA Objects and how to use them?

How do you like this VBA Application? How would you enhance it?

This application is one simple example of what you can do with VBA. Learning how to use Excel & VBA can enable you do several more awesome things at your work & life.

Do you like this application? How would you have designed it? Please share your ideas & tips using comments.

Join Our VBA Classes

We run an online VBA (Macros) Class to make you awesome. This class offers 20+ hours of video content on all aspects of VBA – right from basics to advanced stuff. You can watch the lessons anytime and learn at your own pace. Each lesson offers a download workbook with sample code. If you are interested to learn VBA and become a master in it, please consider joining this course.

Click here to learn more and Join our VBA program.

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19 Responses to “Free Invoice Template using Excel – Download”

  1. Doug H says:

    Nice post! Invoicing for the small biz or solo entrepreneur is something I see a lot of interest in. Also there are great templates from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates

  2. Abhay says:

    This is awesome.

    I would need a little more. e.g. say I generate a Inv. # 1 with all the details. Once done I can click a button all the relevant details gets stored in some table. Further, when i generate a new invoice those details gets stored in same table but just below the previous invoice.

    Is their a way to do this?

  3. Hui... says:

    Daily dose of Excel held a competition in 2005 for this same topic
    It obtained 9 solutions which are shown:
    http://dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2005/10/27/invoice-app-the-results/

  4. parimal says:

    How can i removed Dollar Sign, As want to use this in india.
    Please reply.

  5. parimal says:

    Also if possible then can i use Indian Rupee Sign and how?

  6. Gaurang Mhatre says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Thanks for sharing this invoice template, Let me tell you this template will definitely help me since I got a process to handle where this invoice piece comes. Just a small doubt, can we store all the invoice details in PRODUCT & SERVICES sheet. So that whenever I select an invoice number from invoice sheet I can take print out and I can share it as well. Can we do that?? Since I will be dealing with this on monthly basis.
    It would be great if you can help me with this.

    Thanks in advance for your help!

    Regards,
    Gaurang Mhatre

  7. shrikant says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    I was thinking learning excel is quite tuff task but your blog proved me wrong. You made it very interesting. Thank you. Also the template you have provided for Invoice is very helpful to us.

  8. AKIN KARAMAN says:

    Thanks thanks thanks.. Very helpful. 🙂

  9. Trevor Gordon says:

    Hi i love the speadsheet but would like to ask how do i get it to add the description into the invoice as well

  10. Anuj says:

    Hi Randy, I tried to download one of your link "https://www.dropbox.com/s/2yvo0o2tgq9quhe/Medical_Massage_and_Salon_Application-Free.xlsm" However, i found the link unavailable. Can you please help me get the new link or can you please send this VBA file on my Email-ID.

  11. Kapil says:

    Hi, is there any chance that this can work with the "Products & Service" sheet outside of the Invoice sheet. I create multiple invoice files for the numerous clients. Updating the product sheet for each of them maybe a task. Hence, I want to create a MASTER FILE from which data can be picked up without having to insert new data in each of the invoice files.
    Possible? Or am I asking for the moon 😉

  12. Kadr Leyn says:

    Thank you so much for tutorial.
    This example can be reviewed for the example of the advanced invoice that made with excel userform :https://youtu.be/Qr-4of-38DI

  13. Trevor Gordon says:

    Good Day
    i love this template may i ask if it could be modified to have the following
    when you lookup a item code in the next column to the right it brings up the description then the quantity, unit cost, discount and then total otherwise i love the template

    Item Code Description Quantity Unit Cost Discount Total

  14. Denise Konopka says:

    When creating an Invoice template in Excel are you able to utilize the auto row height and wrap feature when the cell is a merged cell? I need to have a number of cells merged together to allow for enough space to type in the description of work performed (lets say cells A-D are merged in each row) however it seems that I am unable to utilize the auto format feature. To work around this I have to manually increase the row height after each entry. Is there a better solution for this? Thank you!

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