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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.