Invoicing and statements to clients

[meshsupplies]

Hi

Is there a way to send invoices / statements to clients without having to compare names against list I have created in excel

Currently when I am sending either invoice/statements out to clients I compare list in excel to see if client will accept e-mails or requires them posting out.
Some clients say will except invoices via e-mail and statements via post.

Is there a setting or way to tell sage in clients file or somewhere else which clients like them e-mailed and which ones want them posting?

Current comparing list in sage and excel takes a lot of extra time must be an easier solution!

cheers

Neil

[brucedenney]

Yes!

There are lots of ways to do this.

First of all, invoices by email are fully legal and you are under no obligation to provide paper invoices.

What I would do is to make 2 copies of your invoice layout.
One would be for printing (perhaps using a service such as PDQit to save time, money and hassle)
The other for emailing.

You need to have a field set up to identify who does or does not get emailed invoices.

There is a tick field in Sage called SEND_INVOICES_ELECTRONICALLY this would seem a good choice.
In one copy you filter for that filed to be true and in the other for it to be false.

You print all the invoices to Printer, it skips all the ones that will be emailed
You print all the invoices to email, it skips all the ones that will be printed.

You could use the email address, if it is blank then print, otherwise send as email.

[AirfilProPack]

Is it then possible to automatically record this in the customer communications tab? We have a lot of customers who state that they have not received their invoices by email, and that's why they have not paid the account. From the invoice list we can see if he invoice has been printed or emailed by the 'yes' in the relevant column, but if we could record this against the communications tab with a date / time / user it would really help!

[brucedenney]

You can't record the sending of an invoice in the communication history in Sage
however it would be in your sent mail of you use outlook or gmail or other smtp mail service provider that keeps copies of outgoing mail.

There will always be customers who don't get the invoice whatever method you use to send it to them.
You will need to speak to them and have them white list your email address in their spam filter, send the mail make sure it gets through, you can them send them statements every week once they are overdue and keep prodding them, hopefully they will pay you rather than have to keep getting statement emails form you, but you may still have to call them, impose statutory late payment penalties and so on.

(I use late payment penalties on any late customers as far as I am concerned, they can pay the costs of having to chase them or they can go and be a pain somewhere else, but I am rather fortunate in not being short of work.)

[AirfilProPack]

Kind of gone off point there, the issue isn't with debt collecting but as an audit trail. Our business is located at various sites, and Goods control at one location are responsible for emailing invoices and dispatch notices to customers, whilst our accounts department are at another location, and our credit insurers are a third party. The accounts department / credit insurers don't have access to the Goods Control mail box, and the credit insurers receive a copy of our sage back up, weekly. They are the ones asking if the communications history can record this to provide a more accurate picture for there needs. Never mind we'll continue to try to remember to do a manual record!

[brucedenney]

You could post it to the wish list if you like. Sage might implement it in future.

http://www.makingithappen.co.uk/sage-su ... h-list.htm