---
title: "Printing and Sharing Documents"
description: "Every document you send to a customer or a supplier can be produced as a PDF: an invoice, a credit note, a quotation, a purchase order or a delivery note."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.beelocity.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Printing and Sharing Documents

Every document you send to a customer or a supplier can be produced as a PDF: an invoice, a credit
note, a quotation, a purchase order or a delivery note. The PDF is what you email, print on
letterhead-free paper, stamp and file.

This page is for anyone who sends documents out — sales, purchasing, or the accounts department.

## Before you start: fill in your organization profile

A printed document carries your company's legal identity, and Beelocity will not guess it. Go to
the organization's own page — **Organizations**, its **code**, then the **Organization profile** tab ([every field explained](organization-profile.html)) — and fill in at
least:

- your **legal name** and address;
- your **NIF** (tax identification number) and **RC** (commercial register number), and your **AI**
  and **NIS** if you have them;
- a phone number or an email address.

Until that is filled in, the Print button answers with a message telling you so rather than producing
a document with a blank letterhead — an invoice with no NIF is one your customer's accounts
department will send straight back.

## Make the documents yours

The logo, an accent colour, the paper size and margins, extra columns, a header and a footer
line, standing payment terms and the wording of any label are set per document type under
**Settings → Document Settings**, with a live preview — see
[Branding Your Documents](document-settings.html). None of it rewrites a document already sent.

## Print a document

1. Open the document — for example **Invoicing → Invoices**, then click the invoice number.
2. Open **More actions** — the three dots at the bottom of the page — and choose **Print PDF**.
3. Choose the language: **English**, **French** or **Arabic**.

The PDF opens in a new tab, where you can read it, print it or save it. Only if your browser blocks
the new tab is the file downloaded instead — under the document's own name — and Beelocity tells you
so; a tab that opened normally never comes with a download or a warning beside it.

The file is named after the document — `INV-2026-000078.pdf` — so a folder of them stays readable.

## Download a document — the copy that is kept

In the same menu, next to **Print PDF**, there is **Download PDF**, and the difference matters:

- **Print PDF** draws the document for you to look at. Nothing is kept — close the tab and it is
  gone.
- **Download PDF** draws the document, **stores it**, and downloads that stored copy. From then on,
  that exact file exists in Beelocity's document store: download it again next week and you get the
  same file, byte for byte. Once the document has been sent, shipped or issued, nothing changes
  that copy — not a payment recorded since, not a new phone number on your letterhead. The language
  you choose decides the stored copy; an issued document has one copy, in one language.

Use Download for anything you are actually sending or filing. Because the stored copy never
changes, the version you emailed, the version you filed and the version a colleague downloads later
are one file — there is no "which copy did we send?" conversation.

The file arrives through a new browser tab that closes itself once the download starts, so you
stay on the page you were on. If the download link has expired — you left the page open for a
long while before clicking — that tab shows the storage service's refusal instead; close it and
click **Download PDF** again for a fresh link.

Two details worth knowing:

- **Downloading the same document twice does not create two copies.** Beelocity notices the
  document has not changed and hands you the copy it already keeps.
- **The download link itself expires after a few minutes.** It points straight at the stored file
  and works without a sign-in — long enough to click, too short to be worth forwarding. When it
  expires, download again: you get a fresh link to the same stored file.

## Sending an invoice keeps its PDF automatically

When you send an invoice — **Send** on the invoice page, taking it from draft to sent — Beelocity
renders and stores its PDF in the background, without anyone clicking Download. Within a few
seconds the stored copy exists, and every later download of that invoice serves it.

That stored copy is frozen. Fixing a typo in your organization profile, renaming a product,
recording a payment, changing anything at all — none of it rewrites a document you already sent, and
**Download PDF** keeps handing you the same copy. A correction is a new document: a credit note
against the invoice, a revised quotation or purchase order with its own number. While a document is
still a draft, nothing is frozen — each download shows it as it is now.

## Download many at once

On the invoices list, tick the invoices you want and click **Download PDFs**. A dialog queues them
and shows progress as each one is rendered — for typical batches this takes seconds — then gives
every finished invoice its own **Download** button. Closing the dialog early loses nothing: the
rendering continues, and each invoice's stored copy is there next time you download it.

If an invoice in the batch fails — most commonly because the organization profile is not filled
in — the dialog says so per document, and the rest of the batch is unaffected.

## Choosing the language

The language you pick applies to that document only, and it changes more than the headings:

- the **labels** — "Invoice" becomes "Facture" becomes "فاتورة";
- the **dates** — `25 March 2026` becomes `25 mars 2026`;
- the **numbers** — `595,000.00` becomes `595 000,00`;
- the **amount in words** under the totals;
- the **country** in the address blocks — `Algeria` becomes `Algérie` becomes `الجزائر`.

Just as important is what the language does **not** change: your own words. Line descriptions,
product and partner names, payment-term names and everything else you typed print exactly as you
wrote them, in whatever language you wrote them. Picking Arabic for an Arabic-reading customer
translates the frame around your text, never the text itself — a line that says *Ciment gris 42,5*
says *Ciment gris 42,5* on the Arabic invoice too. If a customer should read your descriptions in
their own language, write them in that language on the document.

One caveat when you type Arabic descriptions: Arabic runs right to left, so a bare numeric range
inside Arabic text — `0-16` in a product called a *0-16 bar gauge* — can print with its ends
swapped. Write the range in words, *من 0 إلى 16* (from 0 to 16), and it reads correctly
everywhere.

On a document in dinars the amount is spelled out in full — *"cinq cent quatre-vingt-quinze mille
dinars algériens"*. In another currency Beelocity does not invent words for money it does not know:
it spells the whole units and names the currency by its code, and writes the small change as a
fraction, the way a cheque does — **"One hundred USD and 50/100"**.

Documents are drawn with four bundled typefaces that cover Latin, French and Arabic text. They do not
cover emoji, Chinese or Japanese characters or unusual symbols: a description, a partner name or a
custom block containing one stops the print with a message quoting the characters to replace. Your
screen shows them because your browser has fonts the printer deliberately does not.

Nothing on your screen changes. The language belongs to the document you are sending, not to the
person sending it.

### Two things that look wrong and are not

**A French document shows `1 234,56 DA` even on a computer set to English.** This is deliberate. The
figures on a document are formatted for the language the *document* is written in, not for the laptop
it was produced on — otherwise the same invoice would print differently in your office and in your
accountant's, and the two copies would not match.

**An Arabic document is not typewriter-spaced the way the English and French ones are.** Arabic script
is cursive: the letters join up, and forcing them onto a fixed grid breaks the joins and makes the
text hard to read. So Arabic text is set in a face chosen for legibility, while the numbers,
references and product codes stay in the same typewriter face as the other two languages. The layout —
the boxes, the rules, the columns, the totals — is identical; it is simply mirrored, because Arabic
reads right to left.

### Which language an invoice is sent in

**Print PDF** and **Download PDF** ask you each time. Two things do not: **Send** on an invoice,
which stores the PDF the moment the status moves, and **Download PDFs** on a list. Those take, in
order, the partner's own **Document language** (on the partner page, under Document Preferences),
then the language preference of the person sending, then your organization's **Default Document
Locale** on the Organization Profile, then English. So a customer in Marseille with *French* on
their partner record receives a French invoice from an Arabic-speaking clerk without anyone
choosing — and if that is not what you want, set the partner's language before sending.

## What appears on each document

Each document prints what it is evidence of, and deliberately leaves out what it is not.

| Document | Carries | Deliberately omits |
|---|---|---|
| **Invoice** | Line items (each with its code — the variant's SKU when the product has variants), tax broken down by rate, the total in words, your bank details, payment terms | — |
| **Credit note** | The invoice it credits, the reason, what has been applied against it and what remains | Bank details and a due date — a credit note is not something to pay |
| **Quotation** | Validity date, revision number, a place for the customer to sign | Anything suggesting money is owed |
| **Purchase order** | Where to deliver, who to contact, the expected date, any carriage charge; each line carries the supplier's own code when you recorded one | — |
| **Delivery note** | What shipped and how much of it, where from and where to, two places to sign | **All prices.** The note travels with the goods and is signed by a driver and a storeman |

A delivery note carrying prices would hand your commercial terms to whoever receives the pallet, so it
never does.

"Where to" on a delivery note is the address chosen on the note itself; with none chosen, it is the
customer's shipping address. The customer block above it always shows the customer's billing address
— the same one the invoice will carry — so a customer whose only address is the billing one gets a
note with no separate *Deliver to* block: the goods go to the address already on the page.

## Print a customer statement

A statement is the one document that is not printed from a record of its own — it covers a period.
Open the customer under **Business partners → Partners**, and in the page header click **Print
statement**. The dialog asks for the period (it proposes the current month to date) and the
language, and **Print** opens the PDF in a new tab exactly as **Print PDF** does elsewhere. The
action appears on customers only, for anyone who may print documents.

## What a customer statement adds up

A statement lists, for one customer and one period, every invoice as it was raised and every
reduction against it as its own dated line: the credit notes, the payments — and, since the receipt
that settles an invoice is not always for the full amount, the **settlement discount** granted on
it, any **balance written off** by the cashier, and any **refund** paid out against a credit note
(with whatever remainder of that note was written off on the refund). The closing balance is
therefore what the customer actually owes — the same figure as the open invoices' amounts due, less
any credit note not yet refunded — rather than the cash alone.

The ageing table at the bottom is **as at the end of the period**, not as at the day you print: a
March statement reprinted in June still ages the invoices as they stood on 31 March. Cash you have
received but not yet allocated to an invoice, and credit notes not yet applied, appear in the
*Current* column as a credit, so the five columns always add up to the closing balance.

A statement is always in **one currency** — your organization's default unless you ask for another.
If a customer holds invoices in both dinars and euros, Beelocity will not add the two into one
balance, and it will not quietly leave the euro invoices out either: it refuses and tells you to
choose a currency, and you print one statement per currency.

## The date on the document

A document printed today is dated today *in your organization's time zone* — the **Timezone** on the
Organization Profile. An invoice issued at half past midnight in Algiers says today, not the
yesterday a server clock set to UTC would print. Pick a region zone such as *Africa/Algiers*; the
profile refuses anything that is not a real zone name.

## Who can print

Printing needs two things: the right to open the record on screen, and the **document** permission,
which is separate. The printed form carries your legal identifiers and the bank account your
customers pay into, so someone who may look at an invoice is not automatically someone who may send
its letterhead outside the company — and, the other way round, the document permission never opens a
record you could not otherwise see. Purchasing staff print purchase orders under the same permission
as sales staff print invoices.

**Download PDF** needs the stronger *produce documents* permission, because it stores the document
of record; it is the same permission that queues a batch. Someone who may print but not download
sees **Print PDF** alone. If you cannot find the action on a document you can otherwise open, ask an
administrator to grant the permission.

## If something goes wrong

| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| A message about the organization profile | Fill in the **Organization profile** tab on the organization's page — see the top of this page |
| "The document renderer is not available right now" | A temporary server problem, not something you did. Try again shortly |
| "The document took too long to draw" | Usually a very large document under load. Try again in a moment |
| "The document contains characters the printer's fonts cannot draw: …" | An emoji, a Chinese or Japanese character or an unusual symbol in a description, a name or a custom block. The message quotes it; replace it and print again |
| No **Print PDF** under **More actions** | You do not have the document permission. Ask an administrator |
| **Print PDF** but no **Download PDF** | You may print but not store documents — the *produce documents* permission is the manager's. Ask an administrator if you need it |
| "Document storage is not available right now" | A temporary server problem — the store, not the renderer. Try again shortly |
| A download link that no longer works | Links expire after a few minutes by design. Download again for a fresh link to the same stored file |

Source: https://docs.beelocity.com/en/getting-started/printing-documents/index.mdx