Emailing Bills using Delivery Method

The Check Delivery Method workflow activity combines with saving bills into CCH Document Management to allow firms to automate the generation and delivery of fee notes via email. This is particularly useful for repetitive fixed fee services such as VAT and Payroll and can result in significantly reduced administrative overhead and faster cash collection.

Users can email to clients or publish to Portal the bills from Practice Management by using the Check Delivery Method activity in a Document workflow. The Check Delivery Method activity checks the Delivery Method value set on the Billing Wizard and allows users to assign three outcomes corresponding to the values of the Delivery Method field: Post, Publish toPortal or Email.

Delivery Method is a new field on assignments. The value set on this field at assignment level is used in Billing Wizard. After the bill is created and filed into Document Management, a Document workflow that contains the Check Delivery Method activity can be started. This activity checks the value of the Delivery Method set on the bill and depending on this value, the bill is then emailed to clients or published to Portal.

Details

The Check Delivery Method activity checks the Delivery Method value set on the bills that are filed into Document Management and allows users to assign three outcomes corresponding to the values of the Delivery Method field: Post, Publish to Portal or Email.

1. Create a Document workflow that contains the following activities:

• Check Delivery Method
• Convert doc to Email
• Publish document to Portal
• Central Task or another step type if the Convert doc to Email fails to progress
• Central Task or another step type if the Publish document to Portal fails to progress
• Central Task or another step type if the Convert doc to Email is progressed with success
• Central Task or another step type if the Publish document to Portal is progressed with success
• Central Task or another step type if the selected choice for the Check Delivery Method is Post

1. Set the properties for the Check Delivery Method activity. Set the three outcomes like in the example below:

• Selected Choice: Email > set the step to jump to: Convert Doc to Email.
• Selected Choice: Publish to Portal > set the step to jump to: Publish document to Portal
• Selected Choice Post > set de desired step to jump to.

1. Set the properties for the rest of the workflow steps.
2. Save the workflow.
3. Select File > Maintenance> Document Management > Workflows.
4. Select:

• Source: Practice Management
• Library: Client
• Type: Bill

1. Move the corresponding workflow from the Is not available to the Is available section, then click OK to save the changes.

8. Open a client and select the Bills tab.

9. Click on the Billing Wizard. Enter an Invoice Number.

Within the Feenote Information section, select an Email Type. If the Delivery Method set in the next step of the Billing Wizard is Email, then the selected choice for the Check Delivery Method workflow activity will be Convert doc to Email and, as a result, the bill will be emailed to the email address set in the Feenote Information section within Billing Wizard.

If a Relationship is selected, then the email will be send to the associated contact of the client.

In the example above, ‘UK Express’ is an organisation and the selected Relationship is an associated contact.

10. Click Next.

11. In the Stage Two of Billing Wizard enter an amount for the bill against the desired assignment. Click Next.

12. In Stage Three of Billing Wizard, the Delivery Method is populated by default with the value set on the Delivery Method field from the assignment. In this example, the bill amount was entered against two assignments (Audit and Bookkeeping) that have the same value for the Delivery Method: Email.

If the assignments had different Delivery Method values, then the Delivery Method field from Billing Wizard would appear blank.

The Delivery Method can be changed in the Billing Wizard with the desired value. Click Next.

11. In Stage Four, click on Submit, Authorize and Post to post and file the bill into Document Management.

        When the bill is filed in Document Management, the workflow that was associated with the Source: Practice Management and        Document Type: Bill starts on the client and:

• if the Delivery Method set on the bill has the value Email, then the selected choice is Convert document to Email and as a result the bill is emailed to the email address set in Stage Two of Billing Wizard.

In this example, the email is sent to the associated contact of the organization because in Stage Two of Billing Wizard is selected a relationship.

• if the Delivery Method set on the bill has the value Portal, then the selected choice is Publish document to Portal and as a result the bill is published to Portal.

• if the Delivery Method set on the bill has the value Post, then in this example, the selected choice is Convert to PDF and as a result the bill that is filed in Document Management will be converted to PDF.