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I have been trying to help my son (13) start up his lawn care business.  I'm familiar with, and use airtable regularly for some small tracking.  I love its accessibility, range, and adaptability.  Thought it would be a good fit.  Created an easy to use base with services available (with fees) table, service provided and dates table, and client table.  Then created an invoice table that he can simply add the services provided to certain customers from the "services provided" table.  Works flawlessly.  He has grown the business and uses written invoicing.  Tried to help him save a step by automating the invoice so he could send it as a text to the clients each month.  Page designer creates the invoice.  Is there a way to send the invoice created as a text or email to an email in the invoice?

 

To sum it up, use page designer to create a document.  Send the document via text or email.  Solution needs to be simple, and low cost/free.  Any ideas?

Hey @Brent_Cook ,

How cool for your son! Love that you're able to use Airtable to organize everything for him. I know that probably helps so much in staying on top of everything.

Unfortunately, there's no way to export Page Designer as a PDF right now. You'll need to use a third-party app.

For a free/low cost way to generate documents/PDFs, you can try Make. Or Documint has a free version for 10 documents.

The most common paid options are On2Air Docs or Documint.

Once you've set up the document portion and have it exported as a PDF to an Attachment field in your base, you can automate the Email process inside of Airtable.

Here's how to do that:

How to Send an Email Automatically from Your Base Using Airtable Automations

Alternatively, You can use typeflow.us for generating pdf based on Airtable data. We use Google Docs as template. We offer a lifetime plan currently at 150$. This plan lets you generate as many pdf as needed.

Unfortunately, Airtable's Page Designer is very limited, so you won’t be able to get what you’re looking for with Page Designer.

That’s because:

  • Page Designer can’t be automated in any way.
  • Page Designer can’t create PDF files on its own — you need to use your computer’s print or PDF functions for that.
  • Page Designer doesn’t yet work in interfaces (but maybe it will at some point in 2025 or 2026).
  • Page Designer can’t insert documents into attachment fields. You have to do this manually.
  • Page Designer can’t effectively create documents that are more than 1 page in length.

Instead, here are a few popular solutions for generating documents from Airtable that can do what you’re looking to do:

  1. DocuMint — the original document creation app for Airtable. Creates PDF files.
  1. DocsAutomator — creates Google Docs documents or PDF files. 
  1. Make’s integrations — which can be integrated with any document-creation app of your choosing, even something as simple as custom Microsoft Word documents.

    If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread. For example, here is one way that you can instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable.
     
  2. Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable — This won’t work if you need to create a document with a varying amount of line items on it, but Fillout lets you automatically generate custom PDF files from a form submission.

    I show off this feature on this Airtable podcast episode:

    Using Fillout to create an eSignature approval process with PDF file creation.

Hope this helps!

If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with this or anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

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