I am considering using this software and have set a few things up to see how it works. I am confused about the methods of sending invoices to clients.
When I set up a client I did not add a contact as that said a control panel would be created for my clients to sign into to view their invoices. I do not want to do that because from my experience, when I have to do that for a supplier it annoys me.
I simply want to create a pdf invoice which I can then attach to an email that I will send to my clients. Can this be done, or do I have to find an alternative accounting package?
A control panel will be created where they can (if they wish to) log in to view all their invoices and statements. Logging in is not mandatory though, you can send invoices as PDF attachments, but you will need to add a contact to the client to be able to send it.
I’d set yourself up as a contact though and send yourself the invoice email before discounting the feature, the client gets the email and they click the link, that’s it. It is not the annoying control panel that a lot of suppliers provide.
Having had a further thought, should I just mark the invoice as sent when I create it, then view it , choose print and then use a pdf printer to create the pdf?
If that is the workaround, can it be applied to recurring invoices?
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. I was suggesting just setting yourself up as a contact on a test client and sending yourself an invoice to see what the email contains and what the process actually is before discounting it.
I’m sort of past using test clients! I have setup all my clients, entered all my opening balances! Etc. I cannot now introduce a test client just to try something out. I have looked at a few of these online accounting programs and the thing I find consistently bad is the poor guides about how to use the software.
If you are saying that I now need to delete everything and check how this might work, then start again, how many more times am I supposed to start over every time something doesn’t work because the effects of what you are doing is not properly explained!
No. I am suggesting sending a test invoice to yourself, using a dummy client or even a real one. You can delete the invoice after sending, doesn’t matter what you do with it if it is from a test client really. I never said you should delete all your data. I have no idea how you have your account set up so I cannot suggest exactly how you do anything specific to the way your account works or how you do your workflow.
I do get your frustration with the guides and instructions. This forum is hopeless and the info is all over the place, and the “Knowledge Base” is OK if you know how to use it, but otherwise it is terrible. Part of the issue is is that the Quickfile developers are pretty good at fixing bugs and adding features at a fairly decent pace so the guides and manuals become obsolete pretty quickly. You’re definitely not the first person to mention this.
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It wasn’t anything specific, some articles are a bit lacking or are out of date slightly, but I realise it is quite a job in itself to keep it up to date so it wasn’t a complaint as such. I quite often go to search for an article I know I have seen but struggle to find it so I know for a fact that new users have no chance. I think a better platform for the KB would be an improvement, more of a proper document/article platform would be an excellent step one and would make finding articles and navigating it for new users a better experience. Maybe some sort of wiki type thing, I’m sure there are a few members here who would contribute to keeping it up to date?
Glenn mentioned a while ago about changing the feature/voting system, which would be a good idea too as no-one knows how that works.
I have noticed on the forum side of things that the tags seem to get ignored a lot now so they can sometimes be a bit of a red herring and you can lose some results in searches when filtering. Also what’s with all this “let’s welcome wossername to the community” and “thingy hasn’t been here for 3 weeks” stuff about? Can you not turn that off, or do you want it to turn into Facebook where it’s mostly random chatter?
That isn’t necessary, QuickFile is able to send invoices out directly as PDF attachments but you have to enable that setting for each client for whom you want to use it (on the client settings page), it isn’t switched on by default. For clients where you have enabled PDF attachments there will then be a tick box when you send an invoice by email which you tick to make it attach a PDF for this particular send operation - again it isn’t enabled by default.