How to format CCK fields printed in custom template
You'll need to preprocess these elements into the template and format them to the way you want.

Let's take this practical example.  Let's say we have a content type of 'blog' and we wanted to preprocess the same variables as above to be used in the template file...

/**
 * Preprocess variables for node.tpl.php
 *
 * @see node.tpl.php
 */
function theme_preprocess_node(&amp;$vars) {
  if ($vars['type'] == 'blog') {
    if (isset($vars['field_invoice_due_date'][0]['value'])) {
      // Makes June 1, 2012 format from the time provided
      $vars['date_format'] = date("F j, Y", strtotime($vars['field_invoice_due_date'][0]['value']));
    } else {
      $vars['date_format'] = '';
    }
    if (isset($vars['field_invoice_amount_to_bill'][0]['value'])) {
      // you can use whatever function to format the money value, this is just an example.
      $vars['amount_to_bill'] = "$". number_format('%i', $vars['field_invoice_amount_to_bill'][0]['value']);
    } else {
      $vars['amount_to_bill'] = '';
    }
  }
}


if your moving these fields into a custom template, than you can preprocess with this hook as well:

 /**
 *
 * Implements hook_preprocess
 *
 * @param $variables
 * @param $hook
 */
function hook_preprocess(&amp;$variables, $hook) {
  if ($hook == 'custom_template') {
    // do your preprocess magic here, you can find the variables by either dsm() or print_r()
  }
}


then, in the template do this:

&lt;?php print $date_format; ?&gt;
&lt;?php print $amount_to_bill; ?&gt;