Sending Invoices by Email
Posted invoices and credit memos are emailed to the customer as a PDF automatically. You do not press a send button -- you post the document, and a background queue picks it up and sends it within about five minutes.
What You Do
Post the order. That is the whole flow.
The Post and Send and Post and New actions are hidden on the sales order on purpose. Post and Send would send the invoice immediately, outside the queue, and the customer would then receive the same invoice twice. If you need an invoice out right now, post it and use Resend Email on the posted invoice (below) -- it goes into the very next queue run.
Which Customers Get an Email
This is decided by the customer's Document Sending Profile, a standard Business Central setting on the customer card -- not by anything travel-specific:
| The customer's profile | What happens |
|---|---|
| E-Mail is active | The invoice is emailed as a PDF by the queue. |
| Electronic Document is active | The invoice belongs to the e-invoicing channel. The queue never emails it, and the status shows E-Invoice. |
| Neither is active | Nothing is sent automatically. The status shows Not Applicable. |
A customer is never on two channels at once: an e-invoicing customer never also gets a PDF by email.
The email address is the customer's ordinary Email field, unless a specific invoice address is set under Document Layouts on the customer card. Note that the address is copied onto the order when the order is created -- if you correct the email address on the customer card afterwards, already created orders keep the old one.
Following Up on the Posted Invoice
The Invoice Email group on the posted sales invoice (and Document Email on the posted credit memo) shows how the send went:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Waiting for the queue. It is sent within a few minutes. |
| Sent | Handed over for sending. The time is shown in Invoice Email Sent DateTime. |
| Error | The send failed. The reason is in Invoice Email Error Message. |
| Skipped | Someone marked the document as not to be emailed. |
| Not Applicable / E-Invoice | The customer is not on the email channel -- see the table above. |
Two actions are available on the posted document:
- Resend Email -- queues the document for a new send. Use it after fixing the cause of an error, when the customer says the invoice never arrived, or when an invoice must go out immediately.
- Skip Email -- marks the document as not to be emailed. The queue ignores it until you use Resend Email.
To find everything that failed, open the Posted Sales Invoices list, filter on Invoice Email Status = Error, and work through the list.
When Something Goes Wrong
The two most common errors are shown directly in the error message:
- The customer has no email address. Fill in Email on the customer card (or the invoice address under Document Layouts), then choose Resend Email.
- The invoice report is not set up for sending. This is an administrator setting (Report Selection). Report it -- every invoice for every customer is affected, not just this one.
If Resend Email answers that the customer is not set up for documents by email, their Document Sending Profile is not on the email channel. That is a customer setting, not an error in the document.
A failed send never blocks anything else: posting always succeeds, and the other invoices in the same queue run are sent as usual.
Sent means the invoice was handed over for sending, not that it reached the recipient. If a customer says an invoice never arrived even though the status is Sent, the message is in Business Central's Email Outbox or Sent Emails -- ask your administrator to look there.
If Emails Are Not Being Sent At All
Automatic sending has a master switch, Auto Email Invoices Enabled, on the AIR Setup page. When it is off, posted documents stay at Not Applicable and nothing is emailed -- for example while an external distribution service handles invoice delivery. Ask your administrator if you are unsure which applies to your company.