About mailings for customers

A mailing is made up of the following:

• Identifier: The mailing identifier or Mailing ID is used to configure a mailing workflow that uses automation steps. Visma.net ERP provides a default mailing workflow for predefined mailings.
• Body: A notification template can be assigned to any mailing to serve as the email body. The body consists of text that can be personalised while the email is generated with the help of placeholders used in the template. These placeholders are replaced with information from the customer record. You can modify a notification template to comply with your company policies.
• Attachment: For a mailing, you can select a report that will generate a document to be sent as an attachment. A report holds data from the system constructed in the required format. Visma.net ERP provides default reports to generate invoices, notes, statements, and dunning letters. A report may also provide text for the mailing body. You can select the attachment format from the list of supported formats.
  • You need to specify either a notification template or a report for a mailing. If a notification template is not specified, the text for the email body is taken from the report settings.
  • You can attach multiple reports in the same format or different formats to one mailing.
  • If the email body contains no specific text and the HTML format is selected in the email settings of the report, the report is inserted in the email body in the HTML format instead of being attached to the email.

The mailing workflow consists of the following steps:

1. Mailing configuration: You can set up mailings for a group of customers by using Customer classes (AR201000) window or for a specific customer, by using the Customers (AR303000)window. You can configure the list of mailings and recipients, as well as notification template and attachment settings. Customer class provides the default settings for the included customers, but these default settings can be overridden to make the mailing configuration more specific. Mailings modified for specific customer (in the Customers (AR303000) window) are marked as overridden (the Overriden check box is selected). If you change mailings configuration in a customer class, these changes affect mailings of all customers of this class, except those that were modified specifically for a customer (overridden).
2. Mailing mass processing configuration: You can control whether invoices and statements are available for mass emailing. For details, see Set up mass processing of mailings .
3. Document preparation and preview: Generally, you prepare the email and the attached document, if any, and then preview them in the Pending emails (SM507000) window. If mass-emailing is being done, the preparation of statements may be a time-consuming process; thus, mass preparation and preview of statements are separated.
4. Email sending: By default, the system doesn't perform the actual sending of the emails right away. Prepared emails are gathered in the queue shown on the Pending emails (SM507000) window; use this window when you're ready to actually send them.
   This is the default email workflow; consult your system administrator to find out whether it has been modified.

You can view the list of predefined mailings and add new ones by using the Mailing settings tab of the Customer ledger preferences (AR101000) window. Here you can configure the basic settings of each mailing, these settings will be used by default when you add a mailing to a customer class or a customer. See table 1 below.

When you create a new customer class all mailings (predefined and manually created) are added to new customer class by default. Also, if the Inventory workspace is activated, the mailings listed in the Sales order preferences (SO101000) window are added to new customer class. You can modify this list, leaving those that you need for customers of this class. See table 2 below.