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Document Output & Letterheads

Company letterheads, printing and e-mailing ERP documents as PDFs, the release rule and watermarks, and attachments and notes on every document.

Letterheads

A letterhead is what every printed and e-mailed document of a company carries: its registered name and address, company and VAT numbers, how to pay, its logo, and the e-mail account documents are sent from. Each company has one, and purchase orders, goods received notes, remittance advice, quotes, order acknowledgements, delivery notes, invoices, credit notes and statements all use it.

Where to find it

Admin Panel → ERP - Setup:

  • ERP Documents — the Output & letterhead tab, for holders of ERP: Administration

Architect Panel → ERP - Setup:

  • Documents — the same console, with the same Output & letterhead tab

Who can change it

The console opens for holders of the ERP: Administration role and for architects. You can read the letterhead of any company you can read, and change it only for companies you have write access to; otherwise the form says you can read it but not change it.

Setting up a letterhead

  1. Open the Output & letterhead tab and choose the Company. A company with no letterhead yet is marked (not set up), and a status label reads Not set up, Incomplete or Ready. It is Ready once the address line, postcode, company number and VAT number are filled in.
  2. Registered details: Registered name, Trading name (optional), Company number and VAT / tax number (printed on invoices, credit notes and orders).
  3. Registered office: Address line 1, Address line 2, Town / city, County / state, Postcode and Country.
  4. Contact: Phone, E-mail (printed on documents; invoices to you go here) and Website.
  5. How customers pay: Bank, Account name, Sort code / routing number, Account number, IBAN (checked before it is saved) and BIC / SWIFT. These are printed on invoices and statements.
  6. Sending: Send documents from (the e-mail account documents go out through), Replies go to (optional), and Footer line (optional).
  7. Logo: Upload a PNG or JPEG (up to 300 KB). It prints about 4 cm wide. Tick Remove the logo to take it off.
  8. Press Save letterhead. The form shows when it was last changed and by whom.

How the letterhead is used

  • Footer line: printed on invoices, credit notes and statements only, never on a purchase order or remittance. Use it for your payment terms.
  • Labels follow the country: a company whose country is the United States prints "Tax ID" and "Routing number"; a UK company prints "VAT no." and "Sort code"; Canada, Australia and New Zealand get their own labels.
  • VAT analysis: priced documents show tax by rate, worked out from the lines and reconciled to the totals the ledger posted, so the printed figures always agree with the books.
  • Send from: documents are e-mailed through the account named here. If the tenant has exactly one e-mail account it is used; with several and none chosen, sending is refused rather than guessing. Only an ERP administrator may pick a different account when sending.

E-mail accounts themselves are set up under E-mail Accounts.

Recently sent documents

Below the form, Recently sent documents lists what was e-mailed for the company: When, What, To, Result (Sent or Not sent with the error) and By. Documents are sent from their own screens (Purchasing, Sales, Receivables) with Send by e-mail.

What goes wrong

  • Sending is refused because no account is chosen: pick Send documents from.
  • "That image is over 300 KB": make the logo smaller; it only prints about 4 cm wide.
  • The IBAN is rejected: it failed the check. Copy it again from the bank's letter.
  • Invoices show no bank details: the payment section is empty for that company.

Worked example

A group has a UK parent and a US subsidiary. The ERP administrator fills in the UK letterhead with its VAT number, sort code and IBAN, the footer "Payment due within 30 days of invoice date", and the accounts mailbox as the sending account. For the US company they enter the EIN as its tax number, set the country to United States, and fill in the routing number. US invoices now print "Tax ID" and "Routing number", and both companies' statements show how to pay.

Recommendations

  • Set up every company's letterhead before the first document is sent.
  • Use a shared accounts mailbox as the sending account, not a person's.
  • Put payment terms in the footer line; it appears where customers need it.
  • Check the Ready label after any change of address or bank.

Printing and E-mailing Documents

Every ERP document prints, saves as PDF and e-mails through one service, on its company's letterhead. A document that is not yet released, such as a draft order or an unposted invoice, still prints but is watermarked and cannot be sent, so nothing reaches a customer or supplier before it is final.

Where to find it

Admin Panel → Sales:

  • Sales — Print / PDF, Send by e-mail and the Print and send card on quotes, orders, deliveries and invoices

Admin Panel → Receivables:

  • Receivables — the same card on invoices and credit notes, the invoice run and statement e-mailing

Admin Panel → Purchasing:

  • Purchasing — the Print and send card on orders, receipts and bills, and remittance advice after a payment run

Admin Panel → ERP - Setup:

  • ERP Documents — the Output & letterhead tab and its list of recently sent documents

Released or not

Each document type has a release point. Up to it, the document is a draft; from it on (including later statuses such as Receiving or Paid), it can be sent:

  • Purchase order: Issued. Goods receipt: Received. Requisition: Approved.
  • Quote: Sent. Sales order: Confirmed. Delivery note: Shipped.
  • Invoice and credit note: Posted.

A document before its release point prints with a watermark across every page: DRAFT at its opening status, or NOT YET followed by the release status (for example NOT YET ISSUED for an order pending approval). A cancelled, lost, rejected or reversed document prints marked with that status. The Send button is disabled with the reason beside it. A supplier invoice is the supplier's own document as entered; it is only ever sent back to them, to ask for a credit.

The release point comes from the document type's Lock On Status; see Transactional Documents.

Sending one document

  1. Open the document and press Send by e-mail, or use the Print and send card.
  2. The form E-mail ... as a PDF is filled in for you: To is the customer's billing e-mail or the supplier's contact e-mail, with a Subject and a plain-text Message suited to the document (an invoice's message gives its due date). Add Copy to if needed.
  3. ERP administrators also see Send from to choose another account; everyone else sends from the company letterhead's account.
  4. Press Send.

The e-mail carries one attachment: the document as a PDF. A plain-text entry such as "E-mailed purchase order UK-PO-0018 (PDF, 1 page) to ..." is written to the document's history, and the card's sending history lists every attempt, sent or not, with who sent it.

Sending many

  • Invoices and credit notes: the Receivables console's invoice run e-mails a period's posted documents to each customer's billing e-mail.
  • Statements: the statement run e-mails each customer's statement.
  • Remittance advice: each payment in a supplier payment run has its own advice to print or e-mail.

In a batch, a document that is not released is skipped with the reason, a counterparty with no e-mail address is skipped and named, and one failure never stops the rest.

Who may send

Sending needs write access to the document: the right ERP role for the document type and write access to its company. Printing needs read access. Statements need ERP: Receivables or ERP: Finance with write access to send; remittance advice needs ERP: Payables or ERP: Finance.

What goes wrong

  • Send is disabled: the document is not released. The reason says what status it must reach.
  • Sending refused for the account: the company letterhead names no sending account and the tenant has several. Set Send documents from on the letterhead.
  • A batch skips a customer: no billing e-mail on the customer.
  • "Document output is not installed": the hosting administrator has not applied the document output update.

Worked example

A buyer creates a purchase order and opens Print and send. Send is disabled with "can be sent once it is Issued", and the print preview shows DRAFT. They send it for approval; it now prints NOT YET ISSUED. Once approved and issued, the card's form is filled in with the supplier's contact e-mail and a message asking them to confirm the delivery date. They press Send, and the order's history records the e-mail.

Recommendations

  • Complete the letterhead first; every document depends on it.
  • Keep customer billing e-mails and supplier contact e-mails current.
  • Use the batch runs for month-end invoices and statements rather than sending one by one.
  • Check the sending history before resending, to avoid duplicates.

Attachments and Notes

Every ERP document can carry files and notes: the supplier's own invoice beside the bill, the quote behind a purchase order, a signed proof of delivery on a delivery note. Files and notes belong to the document, so anyone who can open the document can see them, and nobody else can.

Where to find it

Admin Panel → Purchasing:

  • Purchasing — the Attachments and notes card on requisitions, orders, receipts and bills

Admin Panel → Sales:

  • Sales — the same card on quotes, orders and deliveries

Admin Panel → Receivables:

  • Receivables — the same card on invoices and credit notes

Who can see and change them

Viewing attachments and notes needs read access to the document; attaching, removing and adding notes needs write access. Access comes from the ERP role for that document type and the company grant, the same rules as the document itself, not from datastore permissions. A storeman who can read an order sees its attachments; a salesperson cannot see a supplier's bill.

Attaching a file

  1. Open the document and find the Attachments and notes card.
  2. Drop a file on the box (Drop a file here, or choose one) or click it to choose one.
  3. Choose What is it?: Supplier's invoice, Quote, Delivery note, Contract or terms, Correspondence, Proof of delivery or Other.
  4. Optionally add a note about the file, then press Attach.

Accepted files are PDF, images (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP), Office documents (Word and Excel), text, CSV, XML and e-mail (EML and MSG), up to 15 MB each. The file's contents must agree with its extension: a renamed program, or a web page saved as .txt, is refused. Files are stored with the document in the database, so they work whatever file store your installation uses.

Versions, previews and removal

  • Upload a new version replaces a file while keeping the old one. Earlier versions lists them.
  • Preview opens PDFs and images inline. In Purchasing, a file filed as Supplier's invoice opens beside the bill, so the reviewer compares the two side by side.
  • Remove asks Why? and then Yes, remove it. Every version comes off the document and the removal is recorded on its history; the file itself is kept, not destroyed.

Notes

Type in Add a note and press Add note. Notes are plain text, kept on the document's history with who wrote them and when, and shown to everyone who can open the document. Use them for the things a colleague will need: "Supplier confirmed delivery for 14th", "Customer disputes line 3".

Where filed invoices are used

When Payables asks a supplier for a credit note from the Invoice Match Queue, the e-mail carries the supplier's own invoice file if one is filed on the bill as Supplier's invoice, and otherwise a rendering of the bill as entered. Filing the original therefore makes the request clearer to the supplier.

What goes wrong

  • "Attach files of up to 15 MB": compress or split the file.
  • A file is refused although its name looks right: its contents do not match the extension. Save it again in the right format.
  • No Attach button: you can read the document but not change it.
  • "Attachments are not installed on this system": the hosting administrator has not applied the document output update.

Worked example

A supplier e-mails a PDF invoice. The payables clerk keys the bill, then drops the PDF on its Attachments and notes card as Supplier's invoice. When the Finance manager opens the bill to approve it, the PDF opens beside it. A week later the supplier sends a corrected invoice; the clerk uses Upload a new version, and adds the note "Corrected invoice received 12 Oct, price on line 2 reduced".

Recommendations

  • File every supplier invoice PDF on its bill, as Supplier's invoice.
  • Use versions, not new files, when a document is reissued.
  • Write notes for the next person, not as reminders to yourself.
  • Remove with a real reason; it stays on the history.