With the current foreknown release 2.10, we have once again significantly simplified the invoicing process, including the sending of invoices and activity reports via e-mail, so that only a few clicks are required to create and send invoices with activity reports securely and consistently.

Creating invoices and activity reports is one of the tasks that is repeated every month. All services for each individual customer must be compiled and prepared in a customer-specific way for the invoice and the activity report. Certain formats and details in the documents and emails have to be taken into account. And although the work steps are always the same, errors quickly creep in, which ultimately lead to invoices being canceled.

With foreknown, we want to ensure that your and your customers' requirements are defined once and then executed correctly month after month.

Standard Settings

The first step towards standardized invoicing is the configuration of the "Standard Settings for Invoices and Activity Reports". These settings can be used to define central and cross-customer standards for the creation and dispatch of invoices and activity reports.


Placeholders support the creation of invoice-specific names, file names and email subjects. The text blocks that can be managed in foreknown are used to generate invoice texts and e-mail content, so that individual texts can be generated using placeholders.

It is also possible to specify that all emails should always be sent in CC or BCC to specific email addresses, e.g. to a Datev mailbox or a CRM system.

Invoicing Profiles

There is always the situation that a customer has special requirements for the way how invoices and activity reports should be provided. In order to be able to realize these in foreknown, we have introduced invoicing profiles.


This not only makes it possible to overwrite the default settings, but also offers additional options:

  • Templates for invoices, performance records and emails
  • Patterns for names, file names and e-mail subjects for invoices and activity reports
  • Text blocks for introductory, closing and e-mail texts
  • Contact person of the customer with e-mail address
  • E-mail addresses for all recipients (To, CC, BCC)

E-Mail Dispatch

Now that we have enabled the integration of SMTP servers in foreknown, it is also possible to send invoices and activity reports as PDF documents directly from foreknown. All the settings described above are used to pre-populate the recipients, subject and content of the email, including attachments, as required.


This eliminates the need to print, download and send via their e-mail program. In addition, every invoice sent is documented in the notes so that communication with the customer is documented.

Conclusion

With these new functions in foreknown, we have created further opportunities to automate recurring processes such as invoicing as far as possible. This not only saves time, but also ensures a consistent way of working that is tailored to the individual requirements of your customers.

By the way, the creation and dispatch of offers and orders or order confirmations has also been extended to include standard settings and e-mail dispatch, so that many of the above-mentioned advantages are also available there.