For an online fashion retailer where every invoice doubles as a warehouse packing slip, document quality is not a back-office concern. It affects how fast staff work and whether they process returns correctly. Curvaceous, an Australian plus-size clothing retailer on BigCommerce, implemented Printout Designer, powered by PDF Generator API, to replace generic default invoices with professional, automatically printed documents that their warehouse team actually relies on.
The result was a simpler print workflow, cleaner documents, and a resolved long-standing issue with displaying discounted pricing that the team had been trying to fix for some time.
A family-owned fashion brand that ships hundreds of orders through BigCommerce
Curvaceous is an Australian family owned online retailer specializing in plus-size clothing for customers across Australia and New Zealand. Founded by Shane and his wife Jen in 1999, the business grew from a small home based operation into an established e-commerce brand, officially becoming a company in 2012. Today, Curvaceous operates on a small batch production model with limited runs of around 200 to 250 pieces per print, processing all orders through BigCommerce where invoices also serve as packing slips for warehouse fulfillment.
That dual role matters. The invoice is not only what the customer sees. It is what the warehouse team uses to pick, pack, and process returns. Getting it right has operational consequences.
The challenge: generic invoices and repetitive manual printing
Before implementing Printout Designer, Curvaceous relied on BigCommerce’s built-in invoice output. The documents were functional but fell short of what the company needed both visually and operationally.
“BigCommerce has their own invoicing which can be used, but it doesn’t look good. The invoices do not look professional. It is a very generic type invoice.”
Beyond appearance, the printing process itself created unnecessary work throughout the day. Staff had to manually trigger print actions for each incoming order, which added repetitive administrative overhead to an already active fulfillment operation.
The third problem was specific to their product range. Curvaceous runs regular discount promotions, and the company has a firm policy of not refunding discounted items. That meant warehouse staff handling returns needed to quickly identify on the invoice whether an item had been purchased at a discount. The default BigCommerce invoice did not display that information clearly.
“That’s actually what we’d been chasing for a little while.”
The solution: automated printing and customized invoice logic
Curvaceous implemented Printout Designer to replace the default BigCommerce invoice output with a template based generation workflow. This gave the company control over the invoice layout and data structure while keeping their existing BigCommerce order processing system unchanged.
Invoices are now automatically generated and printed as orders arrive, without any manual intervention from staff.
“It is a very simple process. The invoices come in and it just gets printed through Printout Designer automatically.”
The template setup also resolved the discount visibility problem. Working with the Printout Designer support team, Curvaceous established a workaround for how BigCommerce structures discount data, and the invoice now clearly displays both the discounted price and the discount field for each relevant line item.
The impact: faster fulfillment, clearer returns, and professional documents
With Printout Designer in place, three things changed across their daily fulfillment operations.
Printing is now fully automatic. Orders arrive and invoices print without staff having to trigger each one individually. The manual clicking is gone and the fulfillment team moves faster as a result.
“It saves time because it just automatically prints through. Previously it was a lot of clicking individually to print, so the automation does make it a lot quicker.”
Returns processing is more accurate. Discounted items are now clearly marked on every invoice, which matters because Curvaceous does not offer refunds on discounted purchases. Warehouse staff can identify those items at a glance without checking the order system separately.
“Now the staff that does returns can actually see what is a discounted item and what isn’t, so it makes it a lot easier for them to do their job.”
Invoice presentation matches the brand. The documents the company sends out and uses internally now reflect a level of quality that the previous BigCommerce output did not.
“Now our invoices look very nice and professional.”
Cost and support
Curvaceous evaluated the available options for invoice generation and found that larger alternatives carried pricing that did not make sense for a business their size. Printout Designer provided the functionality they needed without the overhead of enterprise-level software.
“The only other options are like bigger companies which do cost a lot more. Being a small business you want to try and keep your costs down as much as possible.”
The support experience during the template setup also stood out. The team worked through a technical challenge around how discount data is pulled from BigCommerce and delivered a working solution for a problem that had gone unresolved for some time.
“My recent experience with you guys has been brilliant.”
Conclusion
For Curvaceous, improving invoices was not only about creating more professional-looking documents. It was about reducing manual effort in the warehouse, giving staff the information they need to process returns correctly, and resolving a discount display issue that had been an open problem for the business.
By implementing Printout Designer, the company connected automated invoice generation directly into their BigCommerce workflow without changing their existing order processing setup or adding enterprise software to their stack.
