WinTeam version includes the ability to send invoices to Customers by email. Following is a list of the most frequently asked questions regarding this feature and answers to those questions.
Note: If you are a TEAM ASP customer, you can skip to the last section titled "TEAM ASP - Questions Regarding emailing of Invoices."
What do I need to start sending AR invoices by email?
What is an SMTP mail server?
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is an Internet standard communication protocol for sending email messages. An SMTP mail server is responsible for sending email messages to its specified recipients.
Can I use Microsoft Exchange Server to send invoices by email?
Microsoft Exchange Server does contain its own SMTP mail server, so it is possible. However, it is best to avoid using your primary mail server to mail invoices. This is especially true for larger customers who already send and receive a lot of email through Microsoft Exchange. The best approach is to isolate invoice mailing to a separate SMTP mail server, which should ideally have proper DNS records in order to prevent mail from being blocked by intended recipients.
How do I set up my local SMTP mail server as an authorized email server?
You should consult with your network administrators to have this set up properly. It requires setting up proper DNS records for the IP address of the computer the Email Engine program resides on.
What can I do if I don’t have an SMTP mail server?
If the computer where the Email Engine resides has access to the Internet, it can also communicate to an external mail client server to send email. This could be a free Webmail service such as Gmail, Yahoo!, or Hotmail.
Common mail ports for SMTP: 25, 587, and 443.
If you use an external Webmail account, you will have to take into account their restrictions on sending email. Gmail allows 500 email messages to be sent per day. Yahoo! and Hotmail allow 100 email messages to be sent per day.
For a Gmail account, the EmailEngine.ini file settings are:
• CustomMailServer=smtp.gmail.com
• CustomMailUserName=YourAccount@gmail.com
• CustomMailPassword=YourPassword
• SMTPPort=587
For a Yahoo! account, the EmailEngine.ini file settings are:
• CustomMailServer=smtp.yahoo.com
• CustomMailUserName=YourAccount@yahoo.com
• CustomMailPassword=YourPassword
• SMTPPort=25
For a Hotmail account, the EmailEngine.ini file settings are:
• CustomMailServer=smtp.live.com
• CustomMailUserName=YourAccount@hotmail.com
• CustomMailPassword=YourPassword
• SMTPPort=587
For an account not listed here, the EmailEngine.ini file needs to have:
• CustomMailServer=(domain name of their smtp server)
• CustomMailUserName=YourAccount@domain.com
• CustomMailPassword=YourPassword
• SMTPPort=25 (if they don’t require SSL), 587 (if they require SSL)
Will the mailing of invoices slow down my SMTP mail server?
Depending on how many email messages are created in WinTeam, this may or may not have an effect on your SMTP mail server. Any slowness incurred will only happen during the mailing of invoices. The Email Engine service will have no effect on your SMTP mail server when it is not actively mailing.
Will I be able to view a history of emailed invoices?
Yes. There is a new feature in WinTeam called Email Review available in the Tools menu, which is located in WinTeam's System menu. There, you can review all Pending and Sent email messages created through the processing of invoices. Email Review also appears after you process a batch of invoices that have email recipients. You must have security in WinTeam to view Email Review.
Will the email messages appear in my Sent box?
No. Sent messages will not be stored in the From Address’ sent box. If you want to log all invoices sent by email, you might consider using the blind carbon copy (bcc) functionality in the Email Template Setup to bcc an email account you have access to.
How large can an email message be?
The attachment size limit for other attachments besides your invoice is 8 MB. That leaves 2 MB for the invoice itself, keeping the total under the common 10-MB size limit. This is to prevent the recipients mail server from blocking a message for being too large.
What happens to undeliverable email messages?
Based upon your SMTP mail server’s configuration, undeliverable messages should go to the specified From address if it is valid.
Why are my email messages being blocked?
There are many reasons email messages are blocked or fail to send. It is best to consult with your network administrators to diagnose the reason.
Possible issues are:
- Misspelling of email addresses.
- Email message is too large in size.
- Email message may have been marked as spam.
- Firewall problems.
- SMTP mail server is not recognized as an authorized mail server.
When and why do we recreate AR Invoice PDF's?
If the Invoice has not been posted yet, or if the invoice status is marked as “Needs Resent”, then the stored PDF is deleted and recreated. For all other Statuses, the stored PDF is used.
Why? The goal is to send the customer the exact invoice as it was delivered to them in its final form.
Example: If you need to send a pdf invoice one year from now, you would want to send the PDF stored in the database, versus trying to regenerate it. And that would be the case, since Posted would be true and the status should not have changed.
TEAM ASP Customers - Questions Regarding emailing of Invoices
Is there anything I need to set up for this to work for me?
No. TEAM has already set up everything necessary for you to start sending invoices by email on TEAM ASP.
Will the mailed invoices be routed to my SMTP mail server?
No. TEAM will mail the messages to the specified recipients through its SMTP mail servers located on ASP.
Will our customers be able to reply to our email messages?
Yes. Even though the invoices are mailed from TEAM's SMTP mail servers, a “Reply-To” address that is the same as your specified “From Address” is used so your customer can reply to you.
TEAM eHub Customers
Do non-posted AR Invoices show in eHub CSS?
eHub does not look at the Posted status to determine whether to show an invoice in eHub.
There are three parameters involved in determining which invoices to show (beyond security filtering):
- Print Status cannot be “Send Invoice” or “Do not Send”
-
Invoice Date must be recent. Recent defaults to include the last 15 months of invoice, but this can be changed through an eHub Custom Setting of “SSOpenInvoiceAgingDays”
-
The default is to only include the last 15 months of invoices
- “Show in eHub” must be checked on the Invoice screen
Why would we show non-posted records?
Some users might want to send an Invoice to their customers for approval, before actually ‘cutting’ the invoice.
Perhaps the Invoicing process is collaborative in nature, etc. In this case, they might:
- Process the invoice so it is available in eHub (or send it via PDF)
- Wait for feedback
- Make changes to the Invoice
- Reprocess the invoice
- Post the invoice