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DEAR allows you to email purchase orders to suppliers and sale quote and sale invoices to your customers. Video instructions for editing mail merge templates are available here. In this article we will discuss how to manage the basics of emails in DEAR such as configuring email senders and stopping emails being marked as spam. 


Prerequisites


Table of Contents


Email a purchase/sale document

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To do this:

  1. Click on the E-Mail button on the purchase/sale order screen.
  2. Select the document you wish to email. Different documents will be available to email/print depending on the tab (Order, Invoice, Credit Note etc.) of the screen. 


By default, a blank email with a blank subject line will open, with the document attached as a PDF. You can uncheck the box next to the PDF document to send an email without the document attached. The To field is auto-filled from the customer/supplier information but can be changed. In General Settings, you can specify the email address you will be using to send messages, as well as the email sender to CC & Global BCC address.


Add product and customer/supplier attachments to an email

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Some of our customers require additional product information to be sent to customers with a sales order. For example, the Australian food industry requires product specifications to be sent to customers.  

DEAR allows the user to add existing attachments for products and suppliers to be added to purchase emails, and existing attachments for products and customers to be added to sale emails. This feature is not available for bulk emails.


NOTE: Attachments must already be added to products, suppliers, or customers in order for them to be attached to sales/purchase emails. 


Navigate to Settings → General Settings → Sale process customisation or Purchase process customisation and slide Additional email attachments to active.


During the sale process, click Email to send a sale invoice etc. to the customer. Existing attachments for the products and customers involved in the sale can now be selected for attachment.


During the purchase process, click Email to send a purchase order etc. to  the supplier. Existing attachments for the products and suppliers involved in the purchase can now be selected for attachment.


Configure an email template

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To save time, you may want to set email templates for your sales/purchase documents. Email and document templates in DEAR are created in MS Word using Mail Merge. See Manage Document and Email Templates for more in-depth information. 


By default, none of the DEAR provided documents have an email template set. Go to Settings → Documents & Email Templates to add new templates. We have provided a downloadable sample email template for you to edit, which can be found at the bottom of the article. Additionally, we have a dedicated support team for handling template queries – please do not hesitate to contact DEAR support if you are having template trouble. 


Here, we will show you how to add an email subject line and a simple email body template with a company signature for the purchase order. 


NOTE: When editing templates, it is important to make changes to the field codes, not the field names. <<field names are displayed like this>>. {MERGEFIELD field codes are displayed like this}. You can make field codes visible by:

  • right-clicking on a field and selecting Toggle Field Code 
  • OR using Alt +F9 (on Windows) or Option + F9 (on Mac) to show/hide all field codes on the document.

Adding an email template:

  1. We will start by downloading the sample email template found at the bottom of this article. 
  2. We can delete the parts we do not want to use (e.g. footer content, tables). By copying and pasting the required fields, as well as adding new ones if necessary – in this example, (MyName) field has been added using the steps shown in Manage Document and Email Templates - Add a field. Remember to make all changes when field codes are toggled on using Alt + F9/Option + F9. 
  3. Right-click any changed fields and select Update Fields to show your changes. 
  4. Check that any TableStart tag has a matching TableEnd tag, then save your template.

  5. On the Manage Document & Email Templates screen, select a purchase order. 
  6. Add an email subject line – when you click the email subject field, a menu appears with clickable options which can be inserted into the email subject line.
  7. Choose the new email template, and Save your changes.


Now when emailing a purchase order to a supplier, your new email template will be applied:



An downloadable sample email template is attached at the bottom of the page.


Configure default email recipients

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You can configure who receives an emailed document via default from Settings → Documents & Email Templates.


Configure default email recipients for a document:

  1. Select the document to configure email recipients for to open a pop-up window. 
  2. Under the Configure email recipients, you will see several options. This specifies who this document will be sent to by default (you can always email the document to different recipients manually from the purchase/sale/inventory document screen).
  3. The following default email recipients are available:
    • All active users: Send email to all active users of your organisation. 
    • All company contacts: Send email to all of your organisation's Company Contacts
    • Mailing List: Send email to all contacts added to a Mailing List. Mailing Lists are available for users with the Automation module subscription. 
    • BCC addresses: Any other email addresses, separated by commas.
    • Send to the Supplier: Sends email to the supplier for the purchase order. By default, this is enabled (only available for purchase documents).
    • Send to the Customer (only available for sale documents): Sends email to the customer for the sale order. By default, this is enabled (only available for sale documents). 
    • Send to Sale Rep: Sends email to the sales rep associated with the sale order (only available for sale documents). 
  4. Save your changes to finish. 


Configure email sender

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You can configure the email sender, changing which email address appears in the From field. This is configured from General Settings → Organisation


You can either choose currently logged-in user which will use the email of the current user whose actions trigger sending the email, or the default company billing address set in Reference Books → Company Contacts


Both of these settings have a sent from the system option which will send the email from the selected email address, but will display to the receiver as the company name instead. This option can help stop emails from ending up in the Junk/Spam folder of your customers. 


Stop emails being marked as spam

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DEAR generates emails to send to customers. If your organisation is using a custom domain to email customers, DEAR emails can be flagged as spam by the customer's mail server and not appear in a customer's inbox. This is resolved by adding a line to your organisation domain's SPF record. SPF is a mechanism the recipient mail server uses to verify if the DEAR domain (@post.dearsystems.com) is allowed to send a email behalf of another domain.


You will need to add this line to the custom domain SPF record:

+include:post.dearsystems.com


When this is done, the email will not be marked as spam by the recipients mail server.


We also recommend whitelisting the following DEAR IP addresses:


  • DEAR Inventory IP address: 23.96.51.98
  • DEAR Inventory mail server IP address: 168.245.23.25


The whitelisting of the mail server IP address is particularly helpful in case you're not receiving any emails from DEAR, which may have been dumped to your mail server's spam folder all the while. If you are unsure about how to go about whitelisting IP addresses, kindly seek your hosting provider's support.


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