Looking for a tool to send invoices to customers

[cetipabo]

Hello,

We have an ERP in our company which creates our invoices in pdf format.

I created an autoit script that reads an excel file in which there is the email and invoices to send to customers, and sends them through Outlook with the corresponding pdf file attached.

as you can see in my excel file, there are cases where I send an email with several invoices.

Today one of our customers told me that he has changed his billing system and that we have to send him each invoice in a single email ... I don't want to modify my script just for him, as well tomorrow another customer will ask me something else again, so I would like to ask you if there is already a free or paid software that allows you to do this kind of thing, ie from a database, send emails with attachments, according to criteria that we would have defined, for example:
Client X = an email with 1 invoice
Client Y = an email with several invoices

Thanks for your help !

[water]

I would simply modify the Excel sheet by adding a column after the mail address indicating how to process the invoices.
Then modify your script to send a single or multiple mails depending on the value of this column.
Takes 10 minutes to code and test.

[cetipabo]

unfortunately i can't change the system creating that excel file...i would have fixed it just by creating the excel file that way :

So for the concerned customers, create 1 line per invoice. But i can't change that...

adding an additionnal column at the end is complicated because we have to do it manualy, and with 4000+ customers it's going to be boring for the girl at the accounting...

Edited January 24, 2020 by cetipabo

[water]

Then add the customers who need a mail for each invoice to an INi file (easy to administrate if you only have a few of them).
Format could be:

[customer1@email.com]
mail=separate

Then you would search each customer in this ini-file using:

$sIniMail = IniRead("Invoice.ini", $sCustomerMailAddress", "mail", "")
If $sIniMail = "separate" Then
    ; Send each invoice in a separate mail
Else
    ; Send all invoices in a single mail
EndIf

 

[cetipabo]

well, so finaly i'll have to change my script 😢 and as it was done with Autoit 3.3.8.1 many years ago i'll have to fix the script because the functions to read a cell in Excel changed... 😭

i can't believe there is no existing tool for that....

Thanks @water for your help

Edited January 24, 2020 by cetipabo

[Musashi]

36 minutes ago, cetipabo said:

I created an autoit script that reads an excel file in which there is the email and invoices to send to customers [...]

How do you handle the Excel file within your script (the source code would be helpful). For example, will the data be stored in an internal array and then sent from there via Outlook? In this case you could create a CSV file containing the mail addresses that need individual invoices. This would in principle be @water 's suggestion to add a flag to the Excel spreadsheet (which your system does not allow).

As I am writing this, water has responded by suggesting to use an .ini file (which is basically the same).

7 minutes ago, cetipabo said:

well, so finaly i'll have to change my script 😢 and as it was done with Autoit 3.3.8.1 many years ago i'll have to fix the script because the functions to read a cell in Excel changed... 😭

Do I understand it correctly, that you cannot make any modifications to your script?

[water]

Changing your script to the latest version of Excel is no rocket science.
Post your script and I will do it in a few minutes (as I have written the new Excel UDF this should be quite easy )

[cetipabo]

@Musashi i can modificate and fix my script, but that was something i tried to avoid by finding a free or paid tool to replace it. that way it would be easier for us to handle the crazy things our customer are asking us  

Edited January 24, 2020 by cetipabo

[cetipabo]

@water i'll post my code if i can't fix it by myself, thanks ! i made a lot of comments but all in french, so i'll have to traslate a bit  

Edited January 24, 2020 by cetipabo

[water]

But even such a tool would need a place to store the additional information that can not be stored in the Excel workbook.
AutoIt offers much more flexibility to "handle the crazy things our customer are asking us".

[cetipabo]

yes , that's what i was thinking, i found Sendblaster Pro it support some scripting languages to handle this, but once again you'll have to code something...

i was pointed to this page by their support :
https://www.sendblaster.com/how-to-use-programmable-tags-for-multiple-automatic-email-merge-file-attachments-and-scripts/

i guess it's possible to handle my problem, according to a customer send 1 or several emails...but once again that's not something the accounting girl will be able to do...

[water]

On this forum you will find an ini-file editor so it should be easy for your accounting girl to handle the administration.