I use a cloud based accounting software called FreeAgent (NB, it's not "Free") for my bookkeeping. I also do my invoices with it. I have a contact saved with his or her address, phone number, email address etc. Once I finish the invoice, I hit "send by email" and the software sends my client an email with a pdf of the invoice attached. The invoice goes to them from my email address - I don't really know how this is done, but hey, that's what it's supposed to do. Only sometimes when I query payment, or want to give them additional info about the invoice that isn't on there, they tell me they haven't received it. To be fair, they're straight and I know (in as much as one can "know" such a thing) they're not just pretending it's not been received.
So is there a problem at their end or with my server? (It's a .mac address)
Only thing I can think of is that they have a pretty strict spam control as I sent an email once with the word "arse" in it...as in something like "Oh, that's a bit of an arse..." and it got rejected as spam. So, now maybe my email address has extra strict filters applied because I once wrote "arse"? Maybe the invoices are getting rejected as spam but I'm not getting them returned to me as if I'd sent them directly from my own email address?
It's not the end of the world, as I can save the invoice as a pdf to my desktop and email it that way, it's just that the automated way of doing it is quicker. After all, I pay for the functionality and one of these invoices is a biggie that really needs to be paid this week or I go hungry. 😐
I use free agent and not had this happen...I'd say the most likely scenario is that your emails are being caught by the recipients spam filter - can they not check?
I don't know the specific software you are using, but a small company I used to work for both sent out and recieved invoices from a generic email address with no header in the email, just a pdf file attachment with a letter / number serial code as the filename. Unsurprisingly, the spam filters for most email software didn't like that.
Have you tried sending yourself an made up invoice, to see what the format of the email is?
Also I wouldn't expect a response from their mail server if they had filtered it as spam. Because they don't want to confirm that the email address you used is active and because in that case they have received it but they have quarantined it.
Ok, thanks folks. I suspect spam filtering is the most likely cause of it. I send myself a copy of the invoice each time (there's a tick-box for this on the "send by email screen), and it comes through just fine.
I use free agent and not had this happen
Yeah, it doesn't [i]always[/i] happen, just sometimes. 😕
can they not check
Well, they could, but they're a wooden flooring company and not very IT-ish. And as it's me wanting the money from them, I think it might be down their priority list a bit.
EDIT: when I send them an email (completely harmless ones) and it gets rejected as spam, I get a returned email telling me. Like I said, I don't really understand what would happen were one of my invoice emails generated thru FreeAgent to be rejected as spam.
Print out the invoice and post it to them. Make it simple and easy for them to pay.
[i]Have you tried sending yourself an made up invoice, to see what the format of the email is? [/i]
Just do this, using a dummy account.
Otherwise you may have the same issue with other clients and be sat waiting and/or always worried that it might occur.
can you cc yourself in to each invoice and ask for a delivery or read receipt?
You can then FWd on the invoice in say 48 hours to be sure they got it ?
Not really what you're asking but I thought I'd try to clear up the email address thing for you 🙂
Making an email look like it's come from any address is very easy ([url= http://www.webfaq.co.uk/spoofing.htm ]header spoofing[/url]). This is often done as part of a hacking/malware attack, but it has valid uses too. FreeAgent will be doing this (with your permission) to make emails look like they came directly from your address rather than from themselves.
I'm not clear on how the customer's email server will handle what it thinks is spam in this case though.
FFS, just emailed them pdfs of the invoices and the email came back as spam. That's a few times now and one of the reasons was: "Sender email is commonly abused enduser mail provider" so I'm thinking it's their spam filter doing it.
The only way I could send them in the end was as a reply to a previous email thread. I've let them know so they can get my address removed and start afresh* as I think the more my emails get detected as spam, the bigger and redder the flag that gets raised when I do email them.
*this won't happen.
See, old fashion post is the way to go.
Royal Mail, it gets through email filters 🙂
See, old fashion post is the way to go.
Yes gramps.