Setting a Customer's Invoice, Statement, and Contract Communication Preferences

Setting a Customer's Invoice, Statement, and Contract Communication Preferences

Quick Intro

Your customers can opt to have different important account documents - Invoices, Contracts, and Statements - delivered by post or email. In addition, they could also choose to receive different documents to different email addresses. A number of batch processes in Havenstar - such as the Contract Invoicing function - use this configuration automatically. This article explains how to check and change these settings.

Where To Find It

You can access this configuration by opening Contact Manager from the Nav Bar, in the CRM section. From there, navigate to the Contact Account tab, indicated by a money icon.

Alternatively, there is a shortcut button to Contact Manager in the Customer Details tab of the Set-up Boats (F10) screen.

Changing the Preferences

The options can be found in the bottom-left of the Contact Account tab in Contact Manager.

For each document type - Invoices, Contracts, or Statements - you can select whether the customer would prefer to receive the document by post, by email, or both.

When setting to email, you will also need to select the preferred email address using the drop-down selectors. You can also use the DEL key to clear the currently selected email. Note that these settings are saved automatically, as soon as you change them.

Notes
The customer must have one or more email addresses on file, with the Internal Use preference ticked. Otherwise, it won't show up in these drop-down selectors. You should also double-check the correctness of the email address, otherwise the customer may not receive their document when expected.



A screenshot of the Contact Account screen in Contact Manager, indicating the document communication preferences.

In the screenshot above, the customer's preferences are set as follows:
  1. Statements - receive by post.
  2. Invoices - receive by email to their @havenstar.com address.
  3. Contracts - receive by email to their @mail.com address.


What Effect This Has

A number of batch processes in Havenstar automatically refer to and consider these preferences.

For example, the Contract Invoicing routine raises and optionally dispatches batches of contract mooring invoices in one go. When this happens, the following protocol is observed:
  1. If the customer's Contract preference is set to Post, then a copy of their invoice will be printed out (as it looks when previewing it in PDF form). The dynamic personalised fields are filled in automatically, as usual.
  2. If the customer's Contract preference is set to Email, then a copy of their invoice will be emailed to the assigned email address as a PDF attachment. The actual Body and Subject of the email are configured separately, via the Email Templates settings.
  3. If the customer's Contract preference is set to both, then both of these things will happen.

Other affected batch processes include (but are not limited to):
  1. Print Statement - in this screen, there are separate lists for email customers and posting customers.
  2. Print New Invoices - this is for finalising unposted invoice lines in bulk (such as electricity meter reading invoice lines).
  3. Copy Invoices - this is for despatching copies of previously-raised invoices in bulk.

Notes & Tips

  1. The customer's email address must be set to include the Internal Use option; otherwise, it won't appear as an option in the drop-down selector. You can change this in the Contact Communication Preferences tab in the Contact Manager, or in the Contact Details tab in the Set-up Boats (F10) screen.



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