Printing invoices for U.S. Mail delivery is so last century. QuickBooks makes it easy for you to email them.
Cash flow is always an issue for most businesses, so you’re probably always looking for ways to speed up your receivables.
It makes sense that the sooner a customer gets an invoice, the sooner it can get paid. Dispatching these forms and others via email not only helps accelerate your payments – it makes you look technologically state-of-the-art.
Are you curious about other ways you may be behind the times in your use of QuickBooks? Find out by taking a QuickBooks class.
Depending on which version of QuickBooks you’re using, you’ve probably noticed a line with a checkbox at the top or bottom of the invoice form that says something like To be emailed or Email later. If you’re not yet set up to send invoices and other forms electronically, you can easily get started.
You’ll save time down the road if your QuickBooks customer records are set up to specify that specific customers would like to have their invoices emailed. This may take you some time to learn, but once you know, open an individual’s record and click the Edit icon (the little button in the upper right that looks like the tip of a pencil), then on the Payment Settings tab to the left. You’ll see a dialog box like this:
You can tell QuickBooks how individual customers would like to receive forms from you. (Screen shots taken in QuickBooks 2013.)
Click on the arrow to the right of the field for PREFERRED DELIVERY METHOD and select E-mail, then OK. Repeat the process for your other customers.
Now open the Edit menu and select Preferences, then Send Forms. At the top of the page under the My Preferences tab, click in the box to the left of Auto-check the “E-mail Later…” text. When you create an invoice for customers who prefer email delivery, it will automatically go in the email stack.
There are other options you can work with in this Preferences window. For one thing, you’ll have to set up your email client to work with QuickBooks so that your communications and forms go out through Web Mail (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.), Outlook or QuickBooks E-Mail (which is only available if you subscribe to one of several Intuit services, like QuickBooks Connect or Intuit Data Protect).
Click the Company Preferences tab, and you can change the standard messages that QuickBooks uses on many screens.
Personalize the message on QuickBooks forms and other documents by writing your own messages.
Every business – but especially those in highly-competitive industries – needs to use whatever edge they can get in order to stand out among their rivals. Personalizing and providing multiple options for form delivery are two ways you can do this. You can learn others from a good QuickBooks training class.
