Email Statements Crash / Hangup

[martins]

Hello,

First of all I'll give you some background on our setup:

We are operating Sage 50 Accounts Professional, version 16.0.17.0156.
We have three users, all using Windows XP, on reasonable spec PC's.
The data is stored on its own hard drive on PC 1, to which PC's 2 and 3 are mapped to across the network, therefore, PC 1 is effectively acting as a server.
PC 1 is used by our accounts lady each day, PC 2 & 3 reference the data on and off through the week.
We use GMail as an email client and Affixa is installed to handle the attachment side of things.

At first, our aim is to be able to email customer statements. Once this is running smoothly, we shall look to email invoices, followed by remittance advice etc.

The statement we try to email is "e-Mail Statement - O/S Only" as a PDF attachment. I have followed the guide from the Making It Happen website and successfully emailed individual customer statements (to myself as a test) using SMTP.
In the individual customer account, the "I email this customer statements and invoices....." is ticked for each customer.

The problems occur when I try to email statements in a batch, even two customer statements crash the system.

Sage does run slower across the network, it is improved by turning off the Avast anti virus, but it does run.
Even when going directly to PC 1, with no other logins accessing the data and the anti virus disabled, it is not possible to email more than one statement at a time without the system crashing.

I have checked our data for errors and there are none.

Please help!

All the best,
Martin

[brucedenney]

Why have you got Affixa ? Sage works fine with Gmail direct.

What are the smtp settings are you using?

[martins]

Affixa was originally installed to handle Mail to Links.

In Sage Report Designer, within the necessary statement, SMTP settings are:

Server Details:
smtp.ukservers.net
port 25
This server requires a secure connection (SSL) - ticked

Sender Details:
email address and display name entered

Logon Details:
"Use username and password" - selected
"User" email address entered
"Password" password entered

Thanks

[brucedenney]

You want to configure smtp to use Gmail

smtp.gmail.com
I would use port 875 to avoid any intercepts by your ISP
you need ssl on
the username is your gmail account email
the password is your gmail account password.

If you use gmail for sending, the nice thing is all the emails are in your sent box.

[martins]

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for the suggestion, however, the changes have made no difference to the amount of time taken to send a statement.
Typically, a single statement is 45 seconds and multiple statements hang up (I only had patience to watch the screen not change for 5 minutes).

Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Martin

[brucedenney]

I am wondering if this is nothing at all to do with emailing

If you run the report to preview rather than email does it work ok?

What version of the report designer are you running?

[martins]

Very good question.
I assumed the preview worked but it doesn't, it hangs up.

When we create paper statements using "A4 Stat with Tear Off Remit Adv", the preview works, all be it slowly.

Report Designer v1.0.0.5
File Version 1.2.2009.60

[brucedenney]

Ahha!

Try running statements using one of the layouts 2008 styles and see if they work well.

eg "2008 A4 Stat with Tear Off Remit Adv, Individual & O/S Items Only"

I am thinking this might be a data problem!

Not sure about your report designer version, sounds very old. Have you checked you are fully up-to-date at http://www.sage.co.uk/au I would expect you to be on Report Designer v1.3.2011.30

[martins]

Hi Bruce,

It's all working!!! I was nearly jumping for joy last night when it finally came together.

Thanks a lot for all your help.

Hopefully this thread will be of use to others.

If I get stuck with the setting up of Invoicing, I'll come knocking.

Cheers,
Martin

[brucedenney]

If you are saying that using the 2008 statement resolved the issue, then it is not quite the cvase.

What you will find is that during an upgrade, the default address for the customers has not been set.

This has led tot there being no default address to send the statement too on some customers.

This will cause other things to break as well, so you have only worked around the issue.

This is issue is very easy to fix, just export customers as CSV files and then import them back in again. This recreates any missing links for default addresses.

[martins]

Sorry for the slow reply, I have been out of the office.

Before I do the Export / Import procedure, could you confirm that what I intend to do is correct.

I have read through these articles;
http://import.makingithappen.co.uk/impo ... sv_old.htm
http://import.makingithappen.co.uk/impo ... el_csv.htm
http://import.makingithappen.co.uk/csv_ ... fields.htm

Do I pretty much follow what is said here?


Thanks,
Martin

[brucedenney]

Run the customer export report and "export" to CSV format

This will create a CSV file that you can import and it will have the "standard" customer mapped fields in the standard order.


Go into File>Import
select customers
select the file you just made
select the csv option
load the standard customer map
and import.

[martins]

Thank you.

One last question,

We normally print invoices by highlighting them and clicking "Print" through the "Invoice List". Our customer database isn't complete in regards to inputting customer emails so we still need to print a number of them.
Is there a way to change the "Invoice List" view to see email addresses (you can right click on top bar and change view to have Type, Date, Name, Amount, Contact Tel Number etc. but not email)

[brucedenney]

You can't see that.... but

what you can do is to make 2 copies of the layout.

1 for print and one for email.

use a filter to skip if email address is empty in one
and to skip if email address is not empty in the other

Print the whole batch to email and the whole batch to printer and those with emails go by email and those without go to the printer.