How branding is applied and preserved
Sales Scribe makes a clear promise: changing your design never changes an invoice you have already issued. This article explains how that works, so you can rebrand with confidence.
The short version
- Draft invoices always use your current saved design. Change the design and your drafts update to match.
- When an invoice is issued, the design in force at that moment is captured and the finished PDF is archived.
- From then on, downloading, re-sending, or viewing that invoice always serves the archived version — so later design changes leave it exactly as it was.
flowchart LR
A[Draft invoice] -->|uses your current design| B{Issue}
B -->|design captured + PDF archived| C[Issued invoice]
C -->|download / resend / view| D[Always the archived version]
E[You change your branding later] -->|affects new documents only| A
E -. never changes .-> C
Drafts use your current design
While an invoice is a draft, it has no fixed appearance of its own — it simply reflects whatever design you have saved. This is why the Invoice Design preview can use one of your drafts as sample data, and why editing your design updates how your drafts look.
Issuing locks the design in
Issuing an invoice is the point at which it becomes a permanent record. As part of that step, Sales Scribe:
- Captures the design the invoice was issued with — its template, font, colours, logo, and options.
- Archives the finished PDF so the exact document you sent is kept.
Because the PDF is archived, "re-download this invoice" always returns the same file, regardless of any design changes you make afterwards.
Credit notes
A credit note is its own document. It uses your active design at the moment it is issued, and it gets its own captured design and archived PDF — just like an invoice. It is linked to the original invoice by reference, not by having to look identical to it.
The online view matches the issued design
When a customer opens the online link for an issued invoice, the branded page reflects the design that invoice was issued with — not your latest design. A rebrand you make today will not change what the customer sees on an invoice you sent last month. See What your customer sees.
Branding never touches your accounts
Templates, fonts, colours, and logos are presentation only. They never alter invoice numbers, dates, customer details, currency, tax, line values, totals, or any accounting entry. Resetting or changing your design has no effect on your books.
Important notes
- Rebranding is safe. Change your template, colours, or logo whenever you like — only documents you issue after the change use the new look.
- Resetting to default is equally safe for issued documents; it changes only what future documents will use.
- Old logos are kept. Replacing or removing a logo never deletes the version already captured on issued documents.