Which Drawings Print on Which Document
Control which drawings land on each generated PDF, stop blank back pages, generate a document with no drawings at all, and pick the cemetery location map.
Written By Dennis Rodin
Last updated 10 days ago
Every generated PDF can carry the order's drawings, but each document treats them differently, and the controls live on three separate screens. This article covers all of them: where a drawing has to come from before it can print, how to stop a blank back page, how to remove a back drawing for good, and what the picker does when you generate a document.
What can go on a document
Any image attached to the quote or the order can be placed on a document, whatever document type it was filed under. Three kinds turn up:
Sketch pages built in Step 4: Sketch & Inscription. Saving the sketch writes one image per side, a front page and a back page, and hangs them off the quote.
Files you uploaded with the type Drawing in Notes & Files. A Front or Back sketch image you upload on the order's Order Details tab is filed there as a Drawing too. Right after that upload MonuDesk asks Show this drawing to the family? and offers Keep internal or Show to the family. Your answer decides whether the family sees it in the customer portal, not whether it can print.
Any other image on the order is offered as well, such as a photo of the existing headstone or a shot of the lot, so a reference photo does not have to be re-uploaded as a Drawing to get onto a document. The Cemetery Location Map MonuDesk saves when you pin the plot on the cemetery step is offered too, in a section of its own, covered under The cemetery location map below.
It still has to be a raster image: JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC or HEIF. A file you uploaded as PDF, DXF, BMP, AI or PLT stays on the order for your team, but it is not offered in the picker and never prints.
Only your newest save per side is used. Each time you save the sketch, MonuDesk writes a fresh pair of images rather than overwriting the old ones, so historic approvals still point at what was approved. The picker and the PDFs take only the newest front and the newest back, which is why saving the sketch five times does not put five copies of the same drawing on the contract.
Stopping a blank back page
The control is the Include back drawing switch, top right of the Sketch Builder card in Step 4: Sketch & Inscription. Hovering it reads: "When off, an empty back page is not saved or printed with the sketch. A back with content is always saved."
Here is the rule that explains the blank page dealers keep seeing. The stone outline you place on the canvas is drawn on both sides, so rendering the back always produces a picture, even on an order where nobody drew a back. That picture is not blank in any technical sense.
The switch and the save judge the back on its own content: text or shapes you added to the back side specifically. So:
The back has real content — it is always saved and printed, whatever the switch says. The switch can never drop work you did.
The back has only the shared stone outline, and the switch is off — no back page is saved and none prints.
The back has only the shared outline, and the switch is on — you get the back page, which is what you want when the back really is meant to be plain.
The switch is saved on the order, so the choice sticks between visits. Once you turn it off, the back drawing is also skipped on every document that is generated afterwards.
Deleting a back drawing for good
Turning the switch off stops a blank back page. Deleting removes a back drawing that was genuinely drawn and is no longer wanted.
Go to Review & Create, the last step of the wizard.
Find the Sketch card. When the order has a real back drawing you get two panels, Front Side and Back Side.
Click Delete in the Back Side panel header.
The confirmation reads Delete the back drawing? — "This permanently deletes the back side of the sketch and removes it from the invoice, quote, contract, receipt and shop ticket. The front side is not affected. This cannot be undone." Confirm with Delete Back Drawing.
Two things to know about what that actually does. It removes every saved revision of the back drawing, not just the one on screen — otherwise the next-oldest save would simply be promoted onto your next document. And it turns the Include back drawing switch off in the same move, so a later sketch save does not quietly put an empty back page back.
An approved drawing cannot be deleted. If a customer has already approved a drawing that includes this back side you get: "The customer has already approved a drawing that includes this back side, so it cannot be deleted. Withdraw that approval first, then delete the back drawing." The approval record is what proves what the family signed off on, so MonuDesk refuses rather than destroy it. If the family wants a different back, draw or upload a new version and have them approve that one instead.
The Back Side panel on Review & Create appears only when the back carries content of its own and you have not switched it off, so a front-only order shows a single full-width Front Side panel and nothing else. If you expected a Back Side panel and there is none, the back is genuinely empty.
The drawing picker
Open an order, click Document Generation at the top right, and choose Generate Quote, Generate Invoice, Generate Shop Ticket, Generate Receipt or Generate Contract. A Select images panel appears with a thumbnail of every image on the order — sketch pages, uploaded drawings and reference photos alike. The subtitle spells out the deal: "Only the selected images are included on the [document]." Click a thumbnail to tick or untick it, then click Generate.
The picker opens whenever the order carries at least one image it can print, or a saved cemetery location map. An order with a single drawing opens it too, so you always get the chance to change your mind. Only an order with no printable image and no saved map skips the dialog and generates straight away.
Defaults differ by document, and this is the part that surprises people:
Quote, Invoice, Receipt and Contract: sketch pages and files typed Drawing start ticked. Reference photos and every other image are listed but start unticked, so you tick what you want to add. There is no limit, and you may untick every one of them: with nothing ticked the dialog reads "No images selected. The [document] will carry the order's inscription details instead of a drawing." and Generate still works, which is covered under Generating a document with no drawings below.
Shop Ticket: nothing starts ticked, drawings and sketches included. Tick the images the shop needs, then click Generate.
The one exception on the quote, invoice, receipt and contract: on an order with no sketch and no Drawing-typed file, whatever images it does have start ticked instead, so the picker never opens with nothing selected.
Purchase Order and Foundation Order: nothing starts ticked, and the cap is two. The panel says "Maximum 2 images per document." and trying to add a third gives a Limit reached message. Those two documents are laid out for at most two drawings, so pick the ones the vendor actually needs.
If the order has no eligible images, the picker shows "Upload a drawing or reference image in Notes & Files to include it here." That means the file you had in mind is not a raster image (a PDF, for example).
Documents MonuDesk generates for you carry drawings only. The quote or invoice created automatically when you create or confirm an order, and the copy that goes to QuickBooks, take sketch pages and Drawing-typed files and nothing else. A reference photo reaches a document only when you tick it in the picker and generate that document yourself. The cemetery location map works the same way: it is never added on its own, and prints only on a document where you ticked it.
Generating a document with no drawings
You can untick every image in the picker and still click Generate. The dialog tells you what you are about to get: "No images selected. The [document] will carry the order's inscription details instead of a drawing." The document then contains no drawing images at all, and neither does the copy stored on the order, shown in the customer portal or attached to the notify email. This works on the Quote, Invoice, Receipt, Contract and Shop ticket.
On the Quote, Invoice, Receipt and Contract, an Additional Details section prints in place of the drawing pages. It holds a box headed Lettering listing, for each decedent on the order (sub-headed Decedent, or Decedent 1, Decedent 2 when there is more than one), the inscription content you entered on the order:
Given Names
Surname
Dates
Additional Text
Facing
Only fields that carry text are printed. These are customer documents, so only the inscription text prints here: engraving styles stay on the Shop ticket.
Two more kinds of line can join the box. A stone finish that is not one of the standard short codes prints as a Finishes: line on the Quote, Invoice and Contract, prefixed Stone A — on a multi-stone order; the Receipt has no Finishes line. A free-text etching description prints on all four as Etching (style): description. When there is nothing at all to show, the section is left out.
Design Notes print on the Contract, under Additional Details and below the Lettering box. When every decedent shares the same note it prints once under Design Notes:; when they differ, each prints under Design Notes — [decedent name]:, or Design Notes — Plot 1: where the plot carries no name. A long note flows across pages. Design Notes print on the Contract and the Shop ticket only, never on the Quote, Invoice or Receipt. You type them in the Design Notes field on Step 4: Sketch & Inscription, and can edit them later in the order's Notes & Files tab, where each plot's note shows as a Design Notes pill.
The Shop ticket is the exception to the rest of this: unticking every drawing removes the drawing images, but its lettering, engraving styles and design notes print either way.
Note: Ticking only a cemetery location map counts as no drawings. The document prints the Additional Details section plus the map in its own Cemetery Location box.
The cemetery location map
Turn on Pinpoint Location on Map on the Cemetery & Logistics step, search an address or click the map to drop the pin, and save. MonuDesk stores two images of the pin on the order, Cemetery Location Map (Satellite) - [cemetery].png and Cemetery Location Map (Street Map) - [cemetery].png. Both are listed under Notes & Files, where they can be renamed. Moving the pin replaces them, and switching the pin off removes them.
A map is never added to a document on its own. Once an order has one the Generate dialog always opens, and the map sits in its own Cemetery location map section below the images: "Optional. Pick one view to print the pinned grave location on this document." Neither view is ticked to begin with, and ticking one unticks the other, so a document carries at most one view of the pin.
Shop Ticket and Foundation Order: a ticked map prints in its own box headed Cemetery Location. On the shop ticket that box prints only for a cemetery installation.
Quote, Invoice, Receipt, Contract and Purchase Order: it is embedded like any other image you selected.
A ticked map does not use up a drawing slot. It does not count towards the "Maximum 2 images per document." limit on the Foundation Order and Purchase Order pickers.
Unticked drawings stay off
Generating a document does two things: it downloads a PDF to your computer, and it saves a copy on the order under Notes & Files. That saved copy is the one that matters afterwards — it is what a customer can open, what goes out as an email attachment, and what reaches QuickBooks.
Your picker choice applies to both. Untick the back drawing on a contract and the stored contract has no back drawing either.
The rule holds even at the edges: if everything you picked turns out to be unprintable, the stored copy stays drawing-free rather than falling back to the automatic list. Your choice is respected, not second-guessed.
Regenerate to correct a document. There is no way to change the images on a document that already exists. Generate it again with the right ones ticked. For a quote, invoice, contract or shop ticket the new copy replaces the old one: the earlier file is removed from the order once the new one is safely stored, and the replacement is labelled with its version, so the second copy reads V2 ahead of the document name and the third V3. The first generation is unmarked. There is nothing to clean up, and the customer portal shows only the current quote. Receipts and purchase orders stack, because an order legitimately has several of each, so delete an earlier copy from Notes & Files yourself.
Blank and duplicate pages are dropped
Two clean-ups run on every document, whether you picked the drawings or MonuDesk chose them. A blank image never prints: a near-empty back page saved on an older order is detected and skipped even when you tick it, so no wasted sheet comes out of the printer. And repeat saves of the same drawing collapse into one, so a sketch you saved a dozen times prints once.
How each document lays drawings out
Contract and Quote: each drawing gets a full page of its own, headed Front Drawing, Back Drawing, or Drawing 1 of 3 for uploads that are not sketch sides. There is still exactly one signature line, on the last drawing page — a page split must not turn one signature into one per drawing. Past four drawings the full-page layout would turn a two-page contract into a booklet, so it falls back to the compact stacked layout below.
Invoice and Receipt: drawings sit inline under the line items. One drawing prints full width, two print side by side, three or more stack down the page, moving to a new page when they run out of room.
Shop Ticket: a single drawing is scaled up to fill most of a page so the shop floor can read it, moving to its own page when there is not enough room left. Several drawings stack. Sketch pages and uploaded drawings are treated the same.
Purchase Order and Foundation Order: one drawing prints full width, two print side by side. That is the whole reason for the two-drawing cap.
If something looks wrong
A blank page prints at the end of the contract. The order has an old back-side image saved before the current rules. Turn Include back drawing off in Step 4, or delete the back drawing from Review & Create, then generate the document again.
The same drawing prints twice. You have both a sketch page and a separate upload of the same design. Untick one of them in the picker.
A drawing I unticked still reached the customer. Generate the document again with the right drawings ticked; the stored copy follows your choice. A new quote, invoice, contract or shop ticket replaces the old one. Delete any other earlier copy from Notes & Files.
My file is not in the picker. Any document type works, as long as it is a raster image (JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, HEIF). A PDF, DXF, BMP, AI or PLT is never offered. Save it as an image and upload it again in Notes & Files.
A reference photo did not print. Reference photos start unticked. Open Document Generation, tick it under Select images, and generate the document again. A cemetery location map works the same way: tick one of its two views under Cemetery location map before you generate.
The picker never opened. The order carries no printable image and no saved cemetery location map, so there was nothing to choose. The document generated straight away.
The Delete button on the Back Side panel does nothing but warn. A customer has approved a drawing that includes that back side. Withdraw the approval first.
The back drawing is back after I deleted it. Reopen Step 4: Sketch & Inscription and save the sketch once. The deletion clears the saved images immediately, and saving finishes clearing it from the canvas the editor reloads from.
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