The Batch Manager can be used to email an Invoice to a Customer as a .PDF attachment. To accomplish this, we have to establish the Customer's email details, along with the contents of the message we want to send. We also need to review the Customer's Form Assignments. Then we will need to generate an Invoice and indicate we want it delivered via email. Let's see how these simple steps are accomplished.
Unlike the emailing of a Sales Order Acknowledgement, which requires the creation of a Form keyed on Sales Orders, the report definition that is used when an Invoice is printed or emailed is determined by the Customer Form Assignment screen. To reach this screen, follow these steps:
Follow this path:
The following screen will appear:
As you can see in the screenshot, the Customer Form Assignments are based on Customer Type. This means that whenever Invoices are printed for or emailed to a Customer, the Form assignment for that Customer's Customer Type will be used. In this example, no changes are required. However, there may be cases where you would want to associate different Invoice Forms with different Customer Types.
To reach the Customer master screen where the Customer's email details may be entered, follow these steps:
Follow this path:
Open a Customer record for editing
Select the "Transmission" tab
Select the "Invoice" option (we explored the "Sales Order" option earlier)
In the "EDI Email" field, enter the Customer's email address
Tip
You may enter multiple email addresses by separating each address with a comma (",").
In the "Cc" field, specify addresses you want to receive a copy of the email
In the "Subject" field, specify a subject―optionally include the </docnumber> token to dynamically include the Invoice Number in the subject line
In the "Filename" field, specify the name you want to give the attached .PDF file version of the Invoice―optionally include the </docnumber> token to dynamically include the Invoice Number in the file name
In the "EDI Email Body" section, enter a detailed message to the Customer to be used whenever Invoices are emailed to the Customer―optionally include the </docnumber> token to dynamically include the Invoice Number in the message body
Tip
Make certain the content of your message appears legitimate so that spam filters will not reject it.
Don't select the "Send Email as HTML" option, which, when selected, enables you to embed HTML references in the body of the email message
The following screen illustrates the steps referenced above:
Once you are satisfied with the content of your Customer EDI Profile, select the SAVE button. You can also always return to the Customer email information and change it at a later date.
This next step assumes you know how to create an Invoice from a shipped Sales Order in xTuple ERP―and that you already have one created for the Customer you've been using in the exercise. We'll begin on the E-mail Invoice screen. To get there, follow these steps:
Follow this path:
Select an Invoice for the Customer, using the browse button
The following screen will appear:
As you can see in our example, all the details from the Customer master have been transferred to the email message. Notice how in several places the </docnumber> token has been replaced by the actual Invoice Number. Also notice how the "From" email address is the same as the email address for the user who submitted the email delivery request. You may at this point manually edit the email body if you want to change the default information displayed there. Any edits made to the email body will be included in the email to the Customer. However, if you want to make permanent changes to the default outgoing message, you need to make those changes on the Customer master.
Once you select the SUBMIT button, the job will be sent to the Batch Manager, awaiting its turn to be processed. When the job is completed, the Vendor will receive an email with a .PDF of the Invoice attached.
Note
To check on the status of the job, simply open the Batch Manager screen―either in xTuple ERP or the Batch Manager client―and review the information there. In this case, look for jobs whose "Action" type is "RunReport". To see jobs which have already been processed, use the "Show Completed Actions" option.
Finally, we want to see what our Customers see when they receive emails from us with Invoices attached. The following screen illustrates a sample email received by our Customer:
As you can see in the sample email, our Invoice is attached in .PDF format. The following screenshot shows what the file looks like when the .PDF is opened:
Note
The attached Invoice in .PDF format will look exactly the same to the Customer as it does to you when you print the same document yourself in xTuple ERP.