Configuring Predefined Mailings for Customers and Vendors

Efficient processing of electronic documents can help organizations reduce costs and optimize investments, to stay competitive in today's dynamically changing economy. In MYOB Advanced, for each particular vendor or customer, you can specify how your organization sends documents to the customer or vendor's business: electronically or through postal mail (on paper). For businesses that want to receive electronic documents, you can easily set up sending documents by email, such as invoices and statements to customers, and purchase orders to vendors. You can configure the system to simultaneously send emails to employees who oversee operations with particular customers or vendors.

The functionality enabling you to send documents of a specific type by email is referred to as a mailing. MYOB Advanced provides predefined mailings that you can configure for customers in the sales orders and accounts receivable subledgers, and for vendors in the accounts payable, purchase orders, and purchase requisitions subledgers.

This article discusses the mailings available for customers and vendors and the use of mailings for sending and printing documents.

Mailings Available for Customers

You can select mailings from the list of basic customer mailings available on the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form. Also, if sales orders are used, you can set up the mailings listed on the Sales Orders Preferences (SO101000) form. For a customer, you can set up the same mailing differently on behalf of different branches of your company that the customer does business with.

For details on setting up a customer mailing, see Mailings for Customers.

Mailings Available for Vendors

MYOB Advanced provides the following predefined mailing for vendors available on the Mailing & Printing tab of the Accounts Payable Preferences (AP101000) form. For details on configuring these mailings for vendors, see To Set Up Mailings for Vendors.

Email Options

In MYOB Advanced, mailings are implemented with the functionality of automation steps. The system generates emails for active mailings when a user selects the action that initiates email generation.

The body of the email can be configured as one of the following:

• An MYOB Advanced report, such as a customer statement, invoice, purchase order, or sales order. Reports define how to arrange the information available in documents of specific types for emailing or printing. On the form where you set up a mailing—Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000), Sales Orders Preferences (SO101000), or Purchase Orders Preferences (PO101000)—you can select the format for report-based documents: Text, HTML, Excel, or PDF. If a recipient has preferences about the document format, the documents will be sent in the recipient's specified format. If you select PDF, the document will be sent as an email attachment.
  Note:

  Optionally, you can customize each report used in the mailings by using the MYOB Advanced Report Designer. You can provide settings specifying who will receive the report-based email and which format should be used, as well as possibly a specific template to be used as the email body (for email personalization). If these custom settings are added to the report, they will be used instead of the similar settings on the Mailing & Printing tab of the Customers (AR303000) or Vendors (AP303000) form. For details on modifying reports, see the MYOB Advanced Report Designer Guide.

  Additionally, you can attach multiple reports in the same or different formats to one mailing. For details, see Workflow Customization by Means of Automation Steps.

• Text—personalized at the moment the email is generated—based on a notification (email) template. Placeholders used in the template will be replaced with information from the vendor or customer record. For example, template-based emails can be used to notify customer contacts about expiration of their credit cards. When the system generates such emails for multiple customers, placeholders are replaced by the particular customer's information: card type, partial card number, expiration date, and so forth.

Using Mailings for Printing Documents

Your organization's policies might require users to print documents of specific types, either for internal needs or for sending them by postal mail to customers or vendors that prefer not to receive the documents through email.

You can also use mailings for printing documents of particular types. Users print documents based on the default reports provided for these types of documents; or custom reports developed with the help of the MYOB Advanced Report Designer.

If you plan to use the INVOICE mailing for printing invoices, consider whether you should make printing a required action. To require it, select the Require Invoice/Memo Printing Before Release check box on the General tab of the Accounts Receivable Preferences (AR101000) form. For particular customer classes and particular customers, specify that invoices of these customers should be printed by selecting the Print Invoices check box on the General tab of the Customer Classes (AR201000) form or the Customers (AR303000) form, respectively.

If you plan to use the STATEMENT or STATEMENTMC mailing for printing statements for customers of specific classes, select the Print Statements check box on the General tab of the Customer Classes form for the customer classes.

To avoid printing specific documents, you should to the following:

• For customer statements, select the Mark as Do not Print option in the Actions box on the Print Statements (AR503500) form
• For AR invoices, select the Don't Print check box on the Financial tab of the Invoices and Memos (AR301000) form
• For purchase orders, select the Do Not Print check box on the Other tab of the Purchase Orders (PO301000) form.