1. Multi-National Invoices
What do I need to do to get these going, quickly and cheaply, preferably in just ONE form ...

2. This is to a German company and is part of the document heading…
The English literals (example Invoice Date) are fixed, the German translations are inserted at production time and require just a country name or code in the data file …

3. This shows the field and it’s source …
… which uses Country Code
to substitute from
Lookup Table …
and outputs
In German
… this entry

4. A change in the Country Code data in the file to IT …
French (FR) page
Lookup is the same as English, so doesn’t print …
… looks up this instead
and outputs as this
In German
… and outputs as this
in Italian instead
… while Czech (CZ) is different, so both print …

5. These are lookup entries for one country (DE = Germany)
Other countries are similar with a different leading value (e.g. fr- for France)
Your first job is to complete a literal set for the first country you want to trade with.
As we have many of them, please ask or visit Customer page on our web site.
Do a final QA check using a recent, good quality local invoice from that country.

6. … one line only for your base language, English in this case
German
Czech
Italian
English
… one line only for your base language, English in this case
Spanish
French

7. These dates use the country-specific ISO Medium date style
German
Czech
These dates use the country-specific ISO Medium date style
Italian
English
Spanish
French

8. … including rounding up
Quantities and Amounts vary in format, depending on what country they are destined for …
German
FormTrap does this for you, AUTOMATICALLY, from data file fields Price (fidh_price) and Extended Price (fext_price) …
Czech
French
… including rounding up
… including rounding

9. Trading in China, Japan, Korea or Thailand …
Different fonts usually required from European forms, no problem, just more work…
Option 1, just one Asian language:
Add a Chinese literal with rules on both
SimSun Font
Arial Font
… add Chinese font dates for the same reason.

10. Trading in China, Japan, Korea or Thailand …
Different fonts usually required from European forms, no problem, just more work…
Option 2, many Asian countries:
Use the FormTrap tool to convert all fonts, in seconds to (for example) SimSun, and use this form for Asian only …
No rules required …
Form Design
Output

11. To complete the Invoice …
From …
Translate
Units of Measure,
Payment Terms,
other data,
other codes …
Looked-up
Product Names
… even in English.
To …
In 40 years and without fail, I’ve seen product names abbreviated to the point
NO ONE understands them

12. To complete the Invoice …
FormTrap has an optional procedure that updates lookup entries from a web site, run externally from FormTrap, on a timer.
This is the Exchange Rate entry for Euro to Danish Krone updated for Euro trade with Denmark ...
… selectively printed on invoices, only when required.

13. Take-aways
REGARDLESS of how ancient your system is, and that it operates in just ONE language, just the country or country code in output is required …
Set up your first alternate country, then you KNOW it’s going to work for the next, and do the following country very simply via Lookups rather than form design
ONE FORM for all Western languages with ISO conventions for each country applied
One additional form for Asian (double-byte) languages, less than one minute to swap fonts from the above, ISO conventions still applied
Archive a “MY LANGUAGE COPY” in addition to the other language, automatically
Do EVERYTHING, rather than a half-assed effort which leaves residual elements (like Payment Terms) in your base language which are NOT UNDERSTOOD

14. Sales@FormTrap.com Support@FormTrap.com +61 2 8303 2400
Thank you for watching …
Questions welcomed …