A/R Inbox
The A/R Inbox is a shared mailbox with workflow tools purpose-built for accounts receivable and billing work. With the A/R Inbox you can both send and receive emails from customers without having to leave Invoiced. The A/R Inbox improves team collaboration and visibility into customer billing inquiries.
A/R Inbox gives you new capabilities in addition to the standard Invoiced email capabilities:
- Manage customer emails in a central place.
- Send non-transactional emails to any email address, with file attachment support.
- Receive incoming emails from customers, including messages sent from the customer portal.
- Allow any Invoiced user with appropriate permissions to view and send emails.
- Workflow tools to manage conversations: status (open/pending/closed), assignee, internal notes, and more.
A/R Inbox is already enabled with most accounts depending on your plan. If your account has A/R Inbox then you will see this reflected with the Inbox page in the main navigation. There is no required configuration to start using A/R Inbox. Please keep following for recommended configuration to adopt best practices.
You can configure Invoiced to send email using your email server instead of the Invoiced email infrastructure. This typically results in better delivery rates to your customer's mailbox because emails are coming directly from you instead of a third party (Invoiced). This is not required to take advantage of A/R Inbox.
The Emails Guide has instructions on how to set this up.
If you use an alias for your billing emails, like billing@mycompany.com or accountsreceivable@example.com, then you can set up an email forward to receive those emails in your A/R Inbox.
Steps to set up an email alias:
- Go to Settings → Emails → Delivery Settings to get your A/R Inbox email address. This is automatically generated and unique to your company. It will end with @invoicedmail.com.
- Create a mail forwarding rule in your email system to forward emails sent to the alias you wish to use (i.e. billing@mycompany.com) to your A/R Inbox email address (@invoicedmail.com).
- Ensure that the reply to address is set to your alias in the Invoiced delivery settings.
- Once you have created the forward it is recommended that you send a test email to your alias to make sure the forwarding is working correctly. If it is working you should see the email appear as an open email thread on the Inbox page of the Invoiced app.
You can send a transactional email, such as an invoice, account statement, or payment receipt, to a customer by following these steps.
- Go to the customer or document you wish to send.
- Click the send button (location varies based on document). Using an invoice as an example you click Actions → Send Invoice.
- Each document will maintain its own thread. Sending an invoice will create a thread for that invoice number. Any subsequent reminders will be stored in that same thread. Similarly, sending an account statement or chasing notices will create a thread for that customer number.
You can send a non-transactional email to a customer by following these steps.
- Go to the Inbox page and click the + button.
- Draft your email.
- Click Send. A new thread will be created with your message. Any replies will appear within that thread.
On the Inbox page you can see all customer conversations, resolved and unresolved. Conversations are grouped into the categories: Open, Pending, Closed, All, or Sent. The Open, Pending, Closed, and All categories are based on thread status. The Sent tab contains a list of all outgoing emails sent through , including automated and non-automated notices.
If you click on a conversation from the Inbox page you can see all the emails in that conversation, use the workflow tools, view or create private notes, and send a reply.
You can also find conversations from the Recent Emails card on the customer detail screen. This will give you a list of recent conversations with the ability to see all email history for that customer.
Invoiced will set the initial thread status depending on the context. Incoming emails set the thread status set to Open. The thread status is Open regardless of whether the incoming email is added to a new or existing thread.
Outgoing emails that cause a new thread to be created will set the thread status will be Closed. If an outgoing email is added to an existing thread then the thread status will be unchanged.
If you want to change the status of any thread then you can follow these steps.
- Go to the email thread that you wish to change.
- Click on the thread status in the top left to change the status to Open, Pending, or Closed. It is permitted to re-open a previously closed thread.
Conversations are not assigned to any individual by default. An unassigned conversation implies that anyone in the team can respond to the inquiry. You have the ability to assign the conversation to any Invoiced user (including yourself) to indicate who will be responsible for replying to and resolving the conversation.
If you want to assign a thread to an individual then you can follow these steps.
- Go to the email thread that you wish to assign.
- Click the assignee dropdown to assign the thread to any other user.
You have the ability to reply to any email within the Inbox by following these steps.
- Open the conversation from the Inbox page or go to the Conversation tab of an invoice.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page. There is a form to draft a new reply.
- When drafting your reply you can change the recipients of the reply and add file attachments.
You can create private notes visible only to Invoiced users on any email conversation by following these steps.
- Open the conversation from the Inbox page or go to the Conversation tab of an invoice.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page. On the form to draft a reply click the Add Note button.
- You can now create a note that will be seen by yourself and other Invoiced team members. Any files that you attach to a note will only be visible to Invoiced users.
Newer accounts have A/R Inbox enabled out of the box. If your account was created prior to the availability of the A/R Inbox feature then you are using the legacy commenting system, which allows customers to leave comments on invoices in the customer portal. A/R Inbox retains this capability and adds many more.
It is recommended to switch to A/R Inbox to gain these benefits:
- There is a new page (Inbox) where all customer communications can be seen. Previously comments were siloed on invoices.
- You can now receive incoming customer emails from any source and not just the customer portal. You can receive emails at your A/R Inbox email address from accounts payable portals, billing questions sent over email, or if a customer replies to any transactional email (i.e. invoice or account statement) sent from Invoiced.
- The A/R Inbox includes a threaded email client built into the Invoiced app. This means that emails are intelligently grouped into conversations based on customer account or invoice number. The grouping works as you would be accustomed to in any other email client.
- There are workflow tools for collaborating on customer conversations, including internal notes, thread status (open/pending/closed), user assignment, and more.
- You can send an email with any content to any email address. Previously you could only send transactions (i.e. invoices and account statements) to a customer or contact in the system. In addition to the previous sending capabilities, the A/R Inbox lets you send communications to any email address which makes it easier to loop in individuals which may not fit squarely into the customer contact concept.
The migration to A/R Inbox is easy. In order to migrate you go to Settings → Emails and click Enable A/R Inbox. It will only take a few seconds to complete.
Migrating to A/R Inbox will result in the below changes:
- There will be a new Inbox page in the left navigation where you can see customer communications. It will already be populated with recent email activity.
- The Comments tab on the invoice detail screen will be renamed to Conversation. This tab will now include comments AND all emails sent or received regarding that invoice.
- Email bounce notification rules will be removed because any bounced emails will appear as a new message in the relevant email thread instead of an activity log event.
- Emails sent will no longer appear in the activity log because all emails are saved to your new A/R Inbox and can be found on the Inbox page.
These will NOT change after the migration:
- Customer Experience - Customers can still ask questions when viewing invoices in the customer portal as before.
- Emails and comments from before you enabled A/R Inbox will remain visible on Invoiced.
If you wish to see emails sent to your primary billing email address (i.e. billing@mycompany.com) in your A/R Inbox, then it is recommended that you set up a mail forward from your company billing email address to your A/R Inbox email address. The "Create an email alias" section in the setup steps explains how to do this.