EXport Airtable Records in a Custom PDF Report

[BenInDallas]

We are experimenting with Airtable as a project management tool for our Graphic Design Firm. Working well so far, until we get to expense tracking. It’s easy enough to create a table to track individual expenses and link them to any open job in our “jobs” table, but when it comes to billing, we need a single document that captures ALL the expenses related to a job and presents them together in a report much like the attached “Cost Sheet”, which we currently produce manually for each job in Excel.

Here’s what we need. I’d like to automate the Cost Sheet data entry process so that, at a push of a button, any member of my team can generate a pdf with this same info, and with data pulled from Airtable records. All the user would have to do is select a “job” and all expense records linked to that job would be gathered up and processed. Each expense record would be listed as a row in the table (like the highlighted rows shown in the example). In addition, header info (like that shown in rows 1-3) would need to be pulled from the records, and simple calculations (like those shown at the bottom of the sheet) would need to be performed.

Is this possible? Is there another tool that already does this?

[BenInDallas]

Bonus Level: I’d love it if the app/script/service performing this feat could ALSO read any attachments contained in these expense records (scanned receipts, etc; probably jpeg and pdf format), and append them as additional pages in the final PDF, so that all expense-related data is now contained in a single document, that we can print (or email) to our accounting dept.

[Katherine_Duh]

Hey there! What you’re describing sounds like it’d be a good use case for our beta print layout designer. You can sign up here.

[BenInDallas]

Awesome, I didn’t realize that the new print designer had such robust capabilities. Let’s talk offline.

[Ben_Simms]

Has anyone heard any further updates on the Print Designer tool? @Katherine_Duh - I would certainly have many use cases I’d love this tool for.

Thanks!

[Richard_Brown]

Hi guys, what is the latest on this?

Regards

[BenInDallas]

Richard,

The print designer tool (which is in the “blocks” menu) actually makes it very easy to produce the specific form I was asking about above. Basically, the tool is great for formatting anything that you can compile from a single record (one record per page).

I think where the tool falls short is on printing multiple records. For instance, in my project mgmt base, each project and task is a unique record. I’d like to be able to print a status report of every record in a given “view” as a table (10-20 records per page). While it’s technically POSSIBLE to output multiple records on a page, there are no controls for headers, footers, page numbers, row numbers, etc, so the end result is not terribly user-friendly.

[Richard_Brown]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the info. I don’t have the menu option - possibly because I’m not on the beta program (yet!). Is it easy enough to make reports that would, for example, given a project display the project details, and then list all the associated tasks and details in a repeating template?

Thanks

[Alexandre_Co]

Any updates regarding to this? It´s THE killer feature that we´re missing so much in my office. We really need to be able to sumarize data in Page Designer. Would be hugely apreciated!

[Oli_Steadman]

Hi @Alexandre_Co I am on a Pro account and could action some printouts for you to demonstrate what the results look like. Would this help?