In addition to ‘Send Invoices via’ E-mail and Post, a ‘never send’ or ‘display only’ option that does neither. Actually, this would be good as a global option too. The invoice should still be able to be viewed and downloaded by the user (not the client) - it should be possible to mark it as SENT later.
In effect, add an option / other options that allow QuickFile to be used just for accounting rather than have it endevour to contact clients in any way: that is, for those who wish for that restriction. (My dread is of some strange page or email being sent to a customer without my knowledge: that at the moment is what is worrying me about moving to QuickFile, frankly.)
In our case absolutely zero clients will want to visit a portal of some kind - I refuse to for our suppliers too.
Background:
There is no ability to modify PDF’s before sending - we need to submit invoices with time-sheets and expense reciepts as a single file and thus have to modify the PDFs to add the addtional scans as pages. (I would point out that we have to do this with our current package, but it does at least offer a print to PDF and doesn’t try to take over sending the them.)
A number of our clients have automated processing systems - sending additional files is not acceptable.
A number of clients also specify the layout of the email which must also contain details of the invoice (so the email is processed too).
Emails do not come from our recognized domains, nor can we apply GPG signatures, etc., to the emails if sent via QuickFile.
We do not want an automated system to contact clients
If I understand correctly, you’re looking for an option to “Mark as sent”, but not be displayed to the end client through the dashboard. Is that right?
It’s also worth noting that emails can be customised before being sent (either on an account basis, client basis, or even on an individual send basis).
We also support SMTP settings, so you’re welcome to send emails from your own email address if you’d prefer.
Please don’t hesitate to let us know if you want any help setting these up.
‘Mark as sent’ would probably do - as long as I can still generate the PDF myself for download, modification and emailing to the client. If it can be for all clients (as a global option too) that would be good.
Better (or in addition) would be a ‘never contact clients or suppliers’ global option for those of us who like to control client-contact. It should prevent any email, post or other processing that contacts them.
The client dashboard is not something we would use.
I realise that email templates can be modified, etc. The SMTP stuff does not deal with the PGP (e-signatures) though and the overall point is that it would be handy to know that QuickFile will never send anything (for those of us who want that comfort).
There appears to be an additional problem. If I enter a client’s details but don’t tick email and do not provide an email address BUT enter contact details I can no longer see the Contact’s details. That’s not much good if I need to contact them. I can enter a phone number but the client’s contact name is now gone. This appears to be the problem with the CSV imports as well.
And I STILL cannot tick anything other than e-mail or Post. Mark as sent is not really that helpful, I feel.
Hmmm… and if I try to add them as a New Client Contact I cannot proceed without an email address - that’s not appropriate. It appears I will now have to duplicate the information elsewhere unless I make up an email address.
The ‘Mark as sent’ is not really what I need - I need an additional option along with e-mail and Post for ‘do not contact’ that lets me generate the PDFs of the invoice but does not automatically either email or post the invoice (nor, indeed, any other item).
It should also be possible to record contact details without having to have an email address, so that option would be needed in the ‘Add Contact’ for a customer / vendor also.
We’ll certainly leave this thread open for others to add their comments, and we’ll happily take a look at how feasible this would be should there be enough interest.
However, as you’ve discovered, as it stands the client system is built around giving your clients access to the invoices, which is why the email address is required for a contact.
That’s the point, though, it’s meant to be an accounting system, not a client system: expecting clients to go to another portal system is just not realistic for large organisation nor even small ones. As was pointed out to you, different organisations have different needs. I note that your own QFSupport comments in other threads recognize the problems with email:
‘Email delivery is a bit of a gamble in some cases, but we try our best to deliver these as reliably as possible. For instance, we use Amazon to send all our emails and run them through tests. But, even something as simple as the subject or the wrong word in the email can be detected as spam.’
We’re more than happy to monitor the interest in this request. Many of our feature requests are implemented based on demand, so we’ll leave this thread open to monitor interest.