Emailing Invoices

StreamV allows you to generate email shipment confirmations, and electronic invoice copies, and to automatically email them to your customers.  This section provides an overview of the process used for emailing invoice copies to your customers, and it lists the formatting and configuration options that are available with this option.

Invoice Document Type

The Invoice documents which are emailed out to your customers by the system are billing copies of the invoice (ie they show prices regardless of the payment terms used for the invoice). 

Program used to generate the emails and invoice copies

The customer emails and invoice copies are generated using the Email Invoices program.   This program is normally located on the AR Reports Menu.

Invoice Delivery Method

StreamV allows you to store the customer invoice delivery preference in each customer record – so that you can ID the customers that would like to receive invoice copies by email, and the customers who would like to receive invoice copies by regular mail.

The Invoice delivery preference is stored in the EDI_INVOICES field in the customer record.  If the field is set to E, the system will default to emailing the invoices to the customer.  If the EDI_INVOICES field is not set to E, the system will default to printing the invoices for the customer so that they can be mailed out to the customer.

Email address logic

This section describes the logic used by the system when determining which email addresses to load into the emails being generated by the Email Invoices program.

Customer Email Addresses

The system uses the first AP Contact for each customer (based on the contact last name)  as the recipient for each emailed invoice being sent out.  The AP Contact flag is located in the Demographics tab of the Contact Detail panel.  The system also allows you to send emails to all ap contacts for the companies being processed – if this option is checked when the Email Invoices program is run, the system will send an email and a copy of the invoice to all AP contacts for the company (not just the first ap contact by last name).

From or Sender Address

The email from address or sender in the emails generated by the Email Invoices program is based on the operator who is running the program.  This operator must have their valid email address specified in the operator record for the operator.

Rep Addresses

The Email Invoices program allows you to send a copy of the emails being generated to any or all of the Rep, Outside Rep or Inside Rep associated with the invoice or customer being processed.  When these options are used, the rep code must also exist in the operator table and the operator record for the rep must contain the valid email address for each rep.

Email Components and Configuration Options

This section describes the components that are included in the emails generated by the Email Invoices.  This section also describes the configuration options that are available.

Email Components

The email sent out by the system by the email invoices option contains the following components

•      Subject Line – This is the subject seen by the recipient – it normally includes the customer invoice number.  An option allows you to customize the subject line.

•      Body  - The body of the message.  This section includes an Email Message that can be defined in the System Properties Program, a section that prints the tracking information for the shipment associated with the invoice, and a message line indicating how the attachment for the email can be viewed.

•      Attachment:  The file containing the customer invoice.  This file is normally generated as a .pdf (Adobe pdf file).

Email Configuration Options

The emails that are generated by the system and that are used when emailing invoice copies to your customers can be customized to a certain extent.  This section describes the

Subject Line

Standard Subject Line

The standard subject line of each  email defaults to “Invoice#: xxxxxxx” where xxxxxx is the invoice number being sent to the customer.

Custom Subject Line

The system parameter F248:AREMSUBJ can be used to customize the subject line for the emails generated by the Email Invoices to Customer program.  For example, if the parameter info field is set to “USEDES” and the description is set to “Email shipment confirmation, invoice copy for invoice #INV#” the system will move this message (and replace the #INV# in the text with the actual invoice being sent) to the subject line of each email being created.

Body Format

The body of the email created by the Email Invoices program consists of  the following components.

•      Custom Body Message. 

This message is usually set to something like

“Dear Customer,  This email is a shipment confirmation and invoice copy for an order that was processed today.  The tracking information for the shipment is listed in the body of the email below, and a copy of the invoice is included as a .pdf file.

Thank you for your business!”

This message can be created and maintained using the Messages Tab in the System Properties program.  The message is located in the panel that says Email Message included in Emailed Invoices.   The record being displayed in the panel, and used by the program is a Textdata record.  The Texdata record has a DOC_TYPE of  “EDI”, the CODE field is set to “EMAILMES” and the ID field of the record is set to INVOICEB.  The text used for the email is stored in the text or comment field in the record.

•      Tracking Information Section

The Tracking information lists the shipment method used for the invoice (ie “Shipped via: DHL GROUND on: 05/01/09), and any tracking numbers associated with the shipment.

•      Footer/file format section

The last section of the email body contains a message to tell the customer that the document can be viewed using Acrobat Reader (StreamVcreates the email attachement/invoice copies using a .pdf file).

Email Processing Issues

Note:  When you are using the Windows email interface and are running Outlook, you will be prompted each time the system tries to send an email out of the application.  You must confirm each email in order to actually send it out to the customer.  If you use Outlook Express, (the free version of outlook included with windows), this confirmation prompt can be disabled.  For this reason, we recommend that you run the Email Invoices to Customer process on a machine that has Outlook Express installed on  it.

More:

Accounts Receivable Sub-ledger Management