Simple Invoice System wanted

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Hi all, I am looking for a simple Excel invoice solution for a very small service business.

I am at the moment using an edited version of the basic Excel 2010 Service Invoice (Simple Lines Design) with a couple of new fields for client number, job number and two text fields with job issues and details.

While that is working for manual entry, it would be great if I could extend it to have auto generated invoice number, retain date of creation and have a link to a customer data sheet with customer info. I don't really need a products data sheet as it is not products being sold, it is service orientated. Having said that if the solution can accept products and also manual entry of items then that will be a bonus. Additionally if there is a way to link the client data to the customer invoices, i.e. if they have more than one, that would also be of great help.

I am happy to rebuild a solution and template from scratch again if someone could point me to a guide to do what I am asking, or maybe a basic example that I can expand on by adding my own fields and layouts.

Thanks for your assistance, and if Excel is not the right choice let me know so I can then go and take a look at MS Access or other solutions to try and do the same. My preference for Excel is simply because if I update MS Office in the future it may not include Access as I rarely use it, however Excel is something I would continue to use quite often.

GW

P.S. Please consider me as a novice :P

I am also still going through the many search results here and on Google to try and find a solution too, however if you can point me to the right one or help me directly that will be even better :D