How to View and Download Documents

Find, view and download an order's documents, choose which drawings go on each PDF, and control what your customer can see.

Written By Dennis Rodin

Last updated 7 days ago

To access documents on an order, open the order and click Notes & Files on the left side menu.

Files

This is the file storage for that specific order. Any files generated by the system (invoices, receipts) and any files you upload are stored here.

Each file's row leads with the file's own title. To rename a file, click its title: the name becomes editable in place. Type the new name, press Enter to save it, or Escape to cancel. Renaming works the same way on files you upload inside the quote wizard.

Click the three dots on the right side of the file to download or delete it.

Uploading files

You can upload any file to an order. When you upload, you'll be asked to categorize it:

  • Drawing: design proofs for the customer to review.

  • Financial Document: receipts, invoices, and contracts.

  • Permit: cemetery permits and admin paperwork.

  • Instructions: internal production guidance and shop tickets.

  • Reference: internal reference photos and files.

Note: Categorize your files correctly. If you've set up a role that cannot see finances, team members with that role will also not see any documents in the Financial Document category. This keeps sensitive pricing documents hidden from shop and field staff.

MonuDesk accepts most common file types: images (PNG, JPG, etc), PDFs, Word and Excel files, and email message files (.eml) so you can attach customer email threads. Each upload slot also accepts multiple files at once, shown as chips you can remove individually.

Internal vs. External visibility

Each document has an Internal and External toggle. Documents set to External are visible to your customer on the Customer Portal. Documents set to Internal are only visible to your team.

New uploads always default to Internal, in every category. This is intentional, so a file you upload never becomes customer-visible by accident. When you're ready to share a file (such as a drawing for the family to approve), flip it to External yourself. Documents MonuDesk generates for you work the other way around: they are saved customer-visible, so flip one to Internal if you want to keep it off the portal (see below).

Instructions documents are the exception: they have no toggle. Instead they show a non-interactive Internal status, with the tooltip "Instructions are always internal only and never shown in the Customer Portal." This is enforced on the backend, so the shop ticket and anything else categorized as Instructions can never be exposed to the customer.

Learn more: How the Customer Portal Works

Drawing approval status

Drawings get a visible approval status in the Files section so your team can see at a glance which ones the family has signed off on, without opening the portal.

Approved drawings show a green checkmark next to the file. Hover over the checkmark to see who approved it and when, for example "Approved by customer on May 8, 2026" for a portal approval, or "Approved by [team member name] on [date]" for a manual one.

Approving manually from the three-dots menu: if the family approves the design in person, you don't need to send them through the portal. Click the three dots on any file in the Drawing category and select Approve Drawing. The drawing immediately gets the green checkmark, logged with your name and the timestamp.

A drawing can only be approved once — the option disappears afterwards, and an approved drawing can no longer be deleted, because the approval is the record of what the family signed off on. If the family asks for changes, upload or draw a new version and approve that one.

Reviewing a drawing on a partner order: on an order a partner company shared with you, each drawing's three dots menu offers the same Approve Drawing action, plus Request Changes. The decision is made per drawing, so you can approve one proof and ask for changes on another.

  • Approve Drawing opens a confirmation asking you to check the spelling and dates first, because approving tells your partner to start production and cannot be undone. Click Yes, Approve to confirm — your partner is notified right away.

  • Request Changes opens a box where you type what needs to change (the message is optional). Click Send request — your partner is notified and will send a revised drawing for you to approve.

Once you've answered, that drawing's menu shows Already approved or Changes already requested.

Learn more: How the Customer Portal Works

Choosing which images go on a document

Every generated document can carry images from the order, picked in a Select images section that shows a thumbnail for each image attached to the quote or order. Category no longer decides what is offered: a reference photo, a picture of the existing stone, or the Cemetery Location Map saved when you pin the plot are all listed alongside your drawings and sketches. Only image files (JPG, PNG and the like) can be printed on a page; PDFs and other attachments are never listed.

What differs between documents is what starts ticked:

  • Quote, Invoice, Receipt, Contract and Shop Ticket: the picker opens only when the order has two or more images. The monument artwork — drawings and sketches — starts ticked and everything else starts unticked, so untick or add what you want and click Generate. There is no cap.

  • Foundation Order and Purchase Order: nothing starts ticked and you can pick at most two images. If you want the drawing on them, tick it every time.

Two cases worth knowing. With only one image on the order (or none), the quote, invoice, receipt, contract and shop ticket skip the picker entirely and generate straight away, including whatever image is there — whatever category it is filed under. And if the order has images but none of them is a drawing or a sketch, they all start ticked instead, so check the picker on an order whose only image is a reference photo.

The selector reads only from files that already exist on the order; you cannot upload from inside a generation popup. If nothing is listed it reads "Upload a drawing or reference image in Notes & Files to include it here." Upload under Notes & Files first, then generate.

The generate popup also has a Notify the customer checkbox: tick it and the customer is emailed a link to view the document. When a document generates without a popup, a small prompt appears at the bottom left for a few moments offering the same choice.

Automatically generated documents

When MonuDesk generates a document, it files and categorizes it for you automatically:

  • Invoice, Receipt, Quote, and Contract PDFs → Financial Document, customer-visible (External) from the moment they are generated, so they appear in the Customer Portal right away. Flip one to Internal to keep it off the portal.

  • Shop Ticket PDF → Instructions, Internal only. It's stored as an Instructions document with the static Internal status (no toggle), so it never appears in the Customer Portal.

  • Purchase Order PDF and Foundation Order PDF → Financial Document, customer-visible (External) with the normal toggle. Flip one to Internal if you would rather keep it from the family.

  • Sketches built in the Sketch & Inscription step → Drawing, Internal by default. A sketch counts as monument artwork, so it starts ticked in the image picker on the quote, invoice, receipt, contract and shop ticket.

Regenerating a Quote, Invoice or Contract now replaces the copy already on the order instead of stacking a second file with the same name beside it. The old file is removed only once the new one is safely stored, and the replacement is labelled with its generation — V2 Invoice #ORD-53-1, then V3 — with the downloaded file named to match (v2-invoice-....pdf). The first one you generate carries no marker. This is also what stops a customer opening a superseded quote in the Customer Portal after you have edited the order.

Receipts and Purchase Orders are deliberately left out of this. An order legitimately has several of each, so every one you generate is kept.

When you replace an order's monument thumbnail, MonuDesk automatically saves that image to Notes & Files as a Drawing so it flows onto the shop ticket's drawing page. If that automatic save fails, you'll see a toast letting you know, so you can add the image manually under Notes & Files and it still appears on the shop ticket.

When you pin the plot on the map in the Cemetery & Logistics step and save, MonuDesk fetches a satellite view with a red marker on the pin and files it on the order as a Reference image named Cemetery Location Map - [cemetery name].png. It shows up in Notes & Files, prints on the shop ticket and the foundation order in their own Cemetery location section, and is listed in the image picker so you can put it on a purchase order for whoever is going out to the plot. Moving the pin replaces the image and switching the pin off deletes it, so a stale location can never end up on a document. Orders that already exist only get a map the next time somebody touches the pin. If the image can't be fetched you'll see a Location map not saved message and the pin still saves normally.

Learn more: What's on the Invoice PDF, What's on the Receipt PDF, What's on the Contract PDF, What's on the Shop Ticket PDF

For internal notes on the order, see How Internal Notes Work.

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