Invoices: Bulk print

This same topic has been highlighted as an issue several times previously, but no solution was offered. 

Previous posts include:

          Starboard   25-8-2014

          dpcam1   25-4-2015

          Sonic security 23-03-2014

and numerous others

This is a very simple potential solution.

The Invoice Print button also causes the Summary to show the invoice as sent.

Apparently this is because it is possible to have sent the printed hardcopy invoice by manually mailing it without MYOB being aware of it.  So it is an audit rigour thing.

In fact the reason that 99% of users hit the "Print" button is to make a checkprint of the draft invoice.  They do not intend to snailmail the draft checkprint as they will use email when happy with the look of the invoice.

The fact that the invoice is now shown as "sent" is worrying and confusing.  I did numerous tests with dummy customer and dummy invoices and proved that this button actually does not send any email, even though it changes the email button to "Resend Email".

Please implement the following idea to prevent this confusion once-and-for-all.

1. Change the name of the existing "Print " button to "Print invoice for manual mailing".   The button then does exactly what it does now, and updates the summary to "sent" and the email button to "Resend email"
2. Add a new button named "Preview  Invoice without sending".  This button only prints the invoice to the selected printer (pdf or hardcopy). a pdf view only that can't be hardcopy printed or emailed. There is no change to the status of the invoice in the summary.  The "Email "  button remains unchanged. The user can then check the invoice and edit as necessary.

As creating an invoice is one of the first things a prospective trial customer will do, it makes sense not to throw away those customers who come across this thing as it now is, and decide to trial Sageone instead.

Hi Matthew_W, thanks for the reply.

Have you actually used this feature?

The minute you hit PRINT, it opens a new tab and dispplays the invoice as a PDF for printing, then it marks the invoice as sent. There is no option to enter an email address when hitting the print button. 

I just ran a test invoice through the system, hit print and went back to the invoice page only to see it marked as sent. However, I don't believe it has actually sent anything, it's just marked the invoice as sent. 

A tad annoying. 

Hi SonicSecurity 

Yes I have used this feature a fair bit in my time as Technical Support for Essentials.
I did not mention using the print function because, as you have suggested in your message that you would like to preview it, as it would be sent to the client, the way to check that with certainty is to use the email feature.

Your original message seemed to suggest that you did not actually want it to be automatically sent through to the client before you had previewed it, which is why my suggestion was one that wouldn't send anything through to the client. The email workaround that I suggested and the print alternative that you have posted above are imperfect workarounds but will let you view the information without it being sent through to your client until you use the 'Resend to Customer' button to actually process it through. If there was a perfect workaround for this, then the suggestion would have been marked 'Already in Product' and closed, as this is not the case I have marked it as 'Under Consideration' so the community can vote on it and we can get an idea for the demand for it so that it can be added in fully at a later date.

I hope this clears up any confusion that you may have on the Ideas Exchange process and my above post.

Kind Regards,
Matthew

Thanks Matthew.

It just seems to be clumsy for thesake of being clumsy. I don't see why it would behave in that way. 

As you say, we'll let the community decide its worth.

Definitely agree with SonicSecurity -we should be able to preview an invoice before emailing it. In the past I've tried Print, then got a message saying it's been emailed. Wow! If I'd wanted to email it to the customer at that point, I'd've hit Email, not Print!!

But then, as SonicSecurity suggests, I'm not actually sure it really has emailed it to the customer at that point - the invoice screen says it has, but I didn't get the email dialogue box... so do I resend it to the customer to make sure, or what?? Will the customer get no invoice or two invoices? I hate being made to look unprofessional because I'm not sure what my software is doing.

I've tested this extensively and the conclusion is that it is once again simply sloppy coding by the teenage engineers. 

Once you hit print on an invoice that has NOT been sent, it will change the green EMAIL button to RESEND TO CUSTOMER but the system does not email the invoice. 

This is a problem because if I print it and I then get distracted, coming back it is easy to assume that it has been sent as the "activity log" at  the bottom of the page is as informative as a blank newspaper!!

I agree, it is a bit confusing that when you print an invoice the display changes to RESEND TO CUSTOMER - implying that it has already been sent.

I usually PRINT the invoice it to preview it for it's accuracy and read-ability before actually sending it.

This is definitely something that needs some attention.

I'd also like a preview option. Just to give the invoice/quote a once over to decide if I want any changes before sending it on.

I totally agree. We just printed an invoice so we could check it, but we are not ready to send yet. Now it is marked as sent, so we are going to have to be really careful that it doesn't get overlooked when we are ready to send it.

Even a little pop-up option 'Mark as sent? Yes/No' after printing would be helpful.

Alternatively it would be great if we could mark it as a 'pending' invoice like we were able to do with Banklink.