In AbtracOnLine you can email invoices directly, without the need for email software.

Email Configuration and Preferences

Before you start emailing invoices, you might like to read this article on how emails are sent from AbtracOnLine and how to ensure your email is sent successfully.

In summary, in order to ensure successful email delivery, the default setting for sending emails is using the donotreply@abtraconline.com ”From” address belonging to your Abtrac database. 

If you choose to remove the ‘Use AbtracOnline email account to send emails’ selection and send from a customised ”From” address, you are likely to have problems with email delivery.

From Administration >> System Settings >> click on the ‘Invoices’ tab to confirm your BCC and sender details

From here, you can set a BCC email address for invoice copies.

Here, you can also tick the box if you would like to ‘CC Invoice Email to Job Owner 1’.

It is also possible to choose a unique BCC address from Home >> Edit My Settings >> ‘Email Address’ setting, but only one BCC email will be sent.

From Home >> click on the profile symbol >> click on the ‘Edit My Settings’ option.

The below page will appear. Click on the pencil ‘edit’ button to enter the BCC email address and click save.

The order of preference is first the address from ‘Edit My Settings’, and then the address from Administration >> System Settings >> Invoices.

Whilst you cannot customise the email “From” address, you can specify the name that emails are sent from.

By default, the email display name is the name of the current user: “Logged In User Employee Name + Abtrac Licensed Company Name”.

You can amend this from System Settings >> Invoices tab >> Email Configuration. It is useful when emails are sent from an accounts or management team, as opposed to an individual.

From Administration >> Settings >> Invoice Settings >> go to Email Settings under the Invoice Settings section to set a default email subject and message text.

There are character limits for the default email preferences

• Invoice Email Subject limit is 255 characters
• Invoice Email Text limit is 500 characters*

*There is an option to edit the default email subject, recipient and text settings before sending. In this instance, the character limit for the email text is increased to 5,000 characters.

If you would like to include your invoice number, job code or job description in the ‘Invoice Email Subject’ or ‘Invoice Email Text’, just select and drag the characters from the right and drop into the relevant box/boxes. This will automatically bring those details in.

‘Online pay link’ can also be selected and dragged similarly, but only to the ‘Invoice Email Text’ Box.

If HTML is selected as ‘Text Style’, then an edit button appears through which you can add links, etc. to the email text.

 

Sending and editing individual invoice emails

Go To Invoices >> Load Invoices >> click on the relevant invoice number to go to Invoice Management screen. From here, click on ‘Report Options’ button and choose Email to view the Edit/Send Email screen.

You can also access this screen from Invoices >> Load Invoices by selecting a single invoice and then clicking on the Email Invoice(s) button.

The invoice email recipient is initially determined from the client or project invoice address details.

You can edit the invoice email address(es) before sending.

From any email recipient field, to add multiple email addresses, separate each with a “;” (semicolon).

The email subject and content will be copied from your default invoice settings, but can also be edited before sending. The character limit for the email text is increased to 5000 characters when emails are sent from this screen.

Sending bulk emails

From Invoices >> Load Invoices screen, you can send multiple invoices by selecting the required records and clicking on the ‘Email Invoice(s)’ button.

You will be prompted to confirm that you are happy to send emails directly using the system defaults.

Checking email delivery status

Although you will receive confirmation from AbtracOnLine immediately after an invoice is emailed as to whether it has sent or not, it takes a while longer to confirm whether the message has been delivered successfully, received and read.

If there is a problem with any email sent, you will receive a red notification next to your login information within AbtracOnLine. This is at the top right of every page in Abtrac Online. At the same time, ‘Abtrac Message Board’ appears below the Homescreen dash board.

These notifications are only visible for the AbtracOnLine user login that the email was sent from. Clicking on the link in the pop up will take you to the ‘Email Activity’ screen. Alternatively, click on the ‘View Details’ link in ‘Abtrac Message Board’ to go to ‘Email Activity’.

To remove a problem email from notifications, you will need to acknowledge the message by clicking on the green tick button indicated below.

The below pop up will appear. Click ‘Yes’ to acknowledge the message and ‘No’ to leave it unacknowledged.

Untick or tick the box indicated below to view all email activity, or ‘Only show undelivered emails not yet acknowledged’ respectively.

Administrators can also view the status of all emails at any time regardless of notifications. The same screen is also accessible from Home >> Email Notifications.

Email Delivery Events/Status

• Processed
  Each message you send from within AbtracOnLine will create a processed event.
• Dropped
  There are a number of reasons your email will not even be sent to a recipient for delivery. This event informs your system when an email has been dropped.
• Deferred
  When an email cannot immediately be delivered, but it hasn’t been completely rejected, the delivery is deferred. Sometimes called a soft bounce, AbtracOnLine will continue to try for 72 hours to deliver a deferred message.
• Bounce
  If a server cannot or will not deliver a message, AbtracOnLine fires a bounce event. Bounces often are caused by outdated or incorrectly entered email addresses. Many times you won’t know a bounced email address until it bounces.
• Delivered
  When an email has been accepted at the receiving server, the delivered event fires. This event does not guarantee that the email was placed in the recipient’s inbox.
• Open
  Like all email service providers, the AbtracOnLine email application uses a transparent image beacon to track opened messages.
  This event fires every time the email is viewed with images turned on. This beacon is currently the only way a sender can tell if an email has been opened.

Abtrac KB# 2080