If the tick box within the Send Invoice option - “Attach Invoice as PDF” was automatically ticked that would definitely be a solution, is that what you mean?
Yes that’s what I meant… I will ask for this to be implemented. It may be a few days before it goes live.
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Many thanks, that is great thank you - you have been sooooooo helpful… I really like QF and did not want to change to something else… 
thank you again
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Hello,
Sorry, I don’t like this change!
I’ve noticed that now, for any clients where I had “allowed” the pdf that it is now ticked by default when generating an invoice.
I liked the fact that the option was available to send the pdf to a client but not ticked by default - but I could tick it if say it were an estimate/quotation or the client specifially asked for one.
For invoices in particular I like the fact clients have to click a link to access the invoice as then I can see that they’ve received it. Now I have to remember to untick the “attach invoice as PDF” (but I don’t want to turn off the ability to send one if needed).
I think it would have been better to have had two settings. One, to “allow PDF’s to be sent to a client” and the other to “send a pdf by default”. Or, to keep it simple, have the “attach invoice as PDF” option available on all invoices/estimates irrespective of client settings but have the one setting of “send a pdf by default”.
Cheers,
Richard.
OK we shall rethink this.
Making so many options configurable does present it’s own challenges but I think it’s probably best in this case to revert this change for now until we have more time to consider a solution that works for all users.
Hi - I’m a recent recruit to Quickfile and so far am loving it. Really easy to use and configure interface and without any bloatware features or missing functionality (that I can see so far). I sent my first invoice today and noticed that the timesheet I attached and uploaded did not get sent with the email. However, the actual pdf invoice did get attached.
My last invoicing tool (Zoho invoice) DID include that capability and it would have been good to see that here. The last discussion on this topic is here and the request was rejected cause of internal hassle with dealing with large files. Could this not be dealt with by just including an upper limit to the size of file uploaded?
The fact is I will need this feature working as in addition to timesheets I may need to include pdf of receipts. The obvious easy solution is to email the invoice to myself and then use my google drive to forward and attach the necessary pdfs from my google drive. Not a biggie considering I only invoice monthly …
We have resisted going down the route of file attachments, largely due to the technical feasibility. Unlike quite a few other accounting applications we also developed a client control panel, allowing invoices to be more effectively tracked as well as providing end-users with inline payment options.
We also now have a file attachment option for sales invoices (documented here) that you may wish to take a look at. You can use this tool to attach documents to invoices directly from your document manager, although these aren’t email attachments but items that appear alongside the web preview.
sure thing - am aware of this - the subtle difference between email and a client control panel is between push and pull behaviours. I don’t trust my clients - usually agents - to really be responsive to a pull based used case. Would be good to hear your assurances to the contrary and based on usage analytics you may have. To me, the push of necessary documents via email is not really negotiable so will rely on gmail / google drive to get things sorted 
One of the problems we have is that we do not store client files locally on our servers, this means we need to pull the file down from our cloud storage provider, before attaching, this brings in a lot of extra latency.
One possible solution would be to add an optional token that can be embedded into your email body, perhaps something like @AttachedFileList@. This would then list out any attached files directly on the email, without requiring the user to go in to view the invoice.
Would that be a possible solution?
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I actually like that solution. It would make life easier in my opinion, and would also save clogging up clients inboxes
If the file list token returns clickable links to the pdf directly in order to then allow direct download then yeah that would be great, especially for people with big uncompressed files.
I would not have such files and I would therefore ideally require the actual attachments in the email. I also do not care about my clients inboxes if their requirement is to get the requisite information to them via email so I get paid on time. If the actual email takes 15 minutes to get there cause it has attachments then that works for me.
Ok, I appreciate this was not to @u4h37u liking, however this does still cause a problem for me, do we have any sort of timescale for an implementation?
If it is not something you are going to be able to do could you please let me know so I can start to look at other alternatives…
I personally do not see why you would “allow PDFs to be sent” but then not actually send them… just seems that if you want PDFs for a client then you would want this regardless not just on an invoice per invoice basis, from my point of view these are clients that request PDFs consistently, and will not accept them in any other format, not just adhoc, if it was just a one off then I could download it myself (by impersonating the client if needed) then attach it to an email?
Anyway… @Glenn if you could just let me know what your thoughts are on timescales etc…
Thanks
One thing I know from being on this forum for several years is that what’s intuitive and obvious to one person is not necessarily the case for someone else.
There’s always the default option to give users a choice but this effectively bloats the software and makes it harder for users to figure out what’s going on, it slows down our development and means more lookups and performance penalties.
I have to be honest, I don’t have a time frame for this right now. All I can say at this stage is we’ll listen to more feedback and make a decision in due course.
I’m sorry that I’ve put a spanner in the works on this for someone.
For me there are a few reasons why the way it works now is fine. One I’ve already explained and the other is the pdf setting applies to both invoices and estimates/quotes. We are quite happy for quotes to go out as pdf’s but with invoices we’re not keen on it as we lose the visibility of whether a client has seen the invoice or not. Having the client click a link to access the invoice has removed the old excuse for unpaid invoices of “but we didn’t receive your invoice”. Now I can see and prove that they’ve seen it.
We used to send all our invoices out on pdf (before switching to qf) and a few moaned when we stopped but now they seem happy. Most also like to be able to see all the invoices in their account and status.
I think if qf wanted to keep all users happy then making the option to attach a pdf should be available for all invoices irrespective of any client setting. Then have a client setting of “send pdf invoice by default” which then ticks the box for those clients.
I don’t get the impression that this is something qf want to do though.
I think in general Glenn and the team are quite open to tweaking anything but I think a lot of suggestions are from users saying “this is how it worked with X” or “client Y wants us to do $unnecessary-thing”. This probably falls in one of those categories, neither option is wrong, and similarly neither are correct as there is no right or wrong to apply this setting.
Seconded. If you don’t want to overload the user with too many choices then this is the obvious way round it - allow PDF attachments for all clients, and just offer one checkbox at the client level for whether or not PDFs should be the default. Either way it would be overridable for an individual invoice (to enable if the client setting is off by default or to disable if the client setting is on).
Extending the “Attach PDF” option to be globally visible for all users is not going to be an option for us. I just feel this would further encourage the usage of PDF attachments amongst new users who have yet to see how the client control panel works. It would actually get overused just because it’s familiar and likely then result in more questions as to “why can’t this be on by default?”.
There are cases where you do need this on for specific clients and it seemed logical that if you have this set at a client level it should also be ticked. The optimum was always to have a choice, we tried to shortcut this but I concede it’s best to add this as an account level setting, so we’ll look at doing that.
I think Glenn is right here. I know when we switched to QF the temptation was there to send out pdf invoices each time but having discovered the benefits of not doing this we prefer not too. The clients still get their pdf, but they’ve got to click a link to get it.
I have generally used the invoicing without sending the PDF. I like that I can see that a user has viewed the invoice, and experience has shown that the payment normally arrives shortly after. I therefore agree with the position to not enable this as a client default. As a community that benefits from this superb free service (although some pay), we should avoid things that will push up the burden on servers.