How to Customize Page Styles in Acumatica Without Modifying .aspx.cs Files

If you’ve ever stared at the red highlight in Acumatica’s Approvals screen and wished there was a way to soften the UI—good news: you don’t need to override the .aspx.cs code to make visual improvements. In fact, you can customize how rows and cells appear on existing screens like Sales Orders or Approvals through an extension of the graph, without ever touching the underlying page files.

Many developers assume modifying colors or UI styles requires editing code-behind files in Visual Studio, but Acumatica’s web controls and styling system offer cleaner alternatives. You can apply custom row coloring, conditional formatting, and even override default color schemes directly from a graph extension using standard event hooks and style rules.

Using Graph Extensions to Style Grids

Below is a working example of how you can inject custom CSS styles into an existing screen—specifically, the Sales Order Entry screen—using a graph extension:

How It Works

• The Initialize() method hooks into the page load lifecycle.
• Inside Page_Load, several PXStyle rules are defined and injected into the page’s stylesheet dynamically.
• You can target existing Acumatica CSS classes, or create new ones based on row conditions.
• The RowDataBound event on the grid allows for fine-grained row styling based on runtime data—for instance, highlighting rows where unit price is zero.

No Need to Touch .aspx.cs

This approach means you never need to modify the page’s code-behind (.aspx.cs), which is beneficial for both maintainability and upgradability. The extension lives in your customization project and doesn’t interfere with the platform’s internal page lifecycle or ASP.NET events.

Styling the Approvals Screen

If your goal is to tone down the red styling in the Approvals screen, a similar pattern can be applied to EPApprovalProcess or whichever graph is tied to that screen. You would define a graph extension, identify the grid control on the page (usually named grid or something similar), and apply your own style logic just as shown above.

Once styled, you can replace the red highlights with softer tones or highlight only the rows that truly need user attention.

Final Thoughts

Acumatica’s styling system is extensible, and developers have the freedom to adjust the look and feel of screens in a way that’s fully supported by the platform. By using graph extensions, style rules, and event hooks, you can improve usability and align the system’s UI with your company’s branding or user experience preferences—without ever touching the .aspx.cs file.

If you’ve been living with default styles that don’t suit your eyes or business requirements, now is the perfect time to change that—with just a few lines of well-placed code.