Emailing reports

How to email Sage 50 reports, layouts, invoices, statements

Guide : How to setup emailing reports

To setup any report to be sent as email, you need to do 2 things.

Setup email and then set up each report.

PART ONE

You need to setup how the email will be sent SMTP or MAPI, (you may want to set up both)

SMTP has the advantage that it all just happens in background, you don't need to install a MAPI complaint email clients and you don't have to fill up your email client with all the accounting emails. I t also has the disadvantage that you don't have a record of what got senet, this can be worked around, by sending a CC copy to your own email address and having a filter in your email client to automatically file the copy invoice in a folder.

MAPI has the advantage that after creating the email, you can open it in your email client alter it a little and then send it. It also has the disadvantage that you have to open all the emails and send them.

Open the report designer

Tools>Option>Email Setup

Click on the MAPI option and chose a profile to use, if you want to use your default profile or only have one you do not have to do anything.
Whilst in theory any MAPI compliant email client should work, it appears that in practice only Microsoft Outlook does work, even then there are some issue with some versions of Sage 50.

Now use the test button to check everything is working with MAPI

Click on the SMTP option
Click configure

Enter your settings
Press OK

Now use the test button to check everything is working SMTP

PART TWO

For each report you now have to "explain" to the system how to send the report.

Edit the report and go to properties, assuming you had just opened the report yuo should be in the root section and you should see and email options.

There are only a few options, but it is important to understand what they are.

There are now some minor changes between versions of the report designer, I am using V1.3.2001.25

Email should contain: The drop down box contains all the sections of the report, we don't normally want to send all our invoices to the first email address, we normally want to break them up on the INVOICE_NUMBER section and send each to the appropriate email address for that Invoice.  I have seen peope group invoices by customers and send the Customer Group containing several invoices used to spilt the report for email.

TO: This is the email address you are going to send the email to, typically this would be a variable for a report, fore example it could be SALES_LEDGER.EMAIL but you are not restricted, you can put emails in other fields and use them. I have seen people use the additional contact field to store and extra email address, where statements get send to a different place to invoices. You could also put a fixed email address in there, for example on your P&L report you might want to email it to the CEO. You could even use and expression.

CC: this is the addresses that you want to send copies to, this can be plain text or a Variable or an Expression.  When I send huige batches via SMTP I CC a copy back to one of my email address so I know what got sent if there is any query.

SUBJECT: this can be either plain text or a Variable or an Expression. Here is an example of a subject line for an invoice using an expression.

"From My company  - To  " + SALES_LEDGER.NAME + " - " + INVOICE.INVOICE_OR_CREDIT + " No " + CString(INVOICE.INVOICE_NUMBER) + " attached"

Plain Text/Attachment:  I nearly always use PDF attachments however here you can select how you want to send your report.

Body: The message boby is PLAIN TEXT you can not put any HTML in it, you can however, put in line breaks by doing shift-enter

Format: Attachments can be a variety of formats, PDF's create the most consistent look

Filename: Here you can enter an expression to build up a filename, my email client automatically saves the attachments on emails that are invoices into a directory, the filename if I use a format like AccountRef-Year-Month-Day-InvoiceNumber.pdf  I can open the directory, find a customer, and then locate their invoice without opening Sage or my Email client 

Read Receipt: The read receipt is something that people ask for and then realise is of little value.  I never acknowledge any emails, my email client is set to ignore such receipts, and so are a lot of peoples, as a result, this option has little value.  If you were to get a receipts what would you do with it?   It all takes time and money to deal with.  It might have some value if you are sending final demand type letters, but for everyday use, it has no real value at all.

Sending options

When emailed: The final option is how you want them sent.  For SMTP there is only the option to send automatically. I tend to use SMTP for all the bulk work and send automatically and use MAPI and save to invoice for the occasional extra copy as I can add a note to the message.  I sometimes make 2 layouts one for automatic and one for manual sending.