Uncovering the QBO Email Invoice Bug

by

Sometimes we just need to listen, especially to our clients.

Recently, I was with a client who kept describing a situation that sounded bizarre. So I started to question his abilities. I know it’s awful, but I thought, “He just doesn’t know what he’s doing."

He told me that he had to always edit the email invoice greeting to remove the "odd script”. In my expert voice, I said, “If there is a generic message you wish to say to all your customers, then we can set one greeting message for all invoices.” 

He said he had done this, but that he still needed to remove the odd script.

I was half convinced I had a user who just didn’t understand how to email when he said, “Let me show you what’s happening.”

I was growing annoyed with my client, but I held my breath and waited for him to walk me through his emailing odd script.

I was completely fascinated with what he did to make the odd script appear. He was, in fact, using the invoice emailing function properly, but he had discovered a "bug." At least it seemed to be an unreported bug to me. I didn’t know if he could feel my body language change completely, but I went from being impatient to utterly amazed.

I tend to think bugs are rare and most often fixed prior to the public even knowing they exist, so sometimes it’s just fun to be in the know.

So, you can be in the know, too. Here I am sharing the emailing bug with you:

  • After the company’s invoices are created, they email them out one by one to their recipients
  • From the Customer screen, click on the action field drop-down and select Send: 
  • The Send emails screen will appear, and you will see the "bug" (underlined in blue in the illustration below):
  • I wanted to test this bug to determine if it also could be seen by customers, so I emailed an invoice to myself. From my email inbox, the invoice message also contained the odd Script:

Preventing the Bug

Obviously, you don't want your customers receiving a bug in the messages associated with their email invoices. So here is a temporary fix/workaround:

  • Just opening the actual customer invoice and selecting Send will prevent the bug:
  • Now the customer Send email screen appears, but there is no bug in the email greeting:
  • From my email inbox, the invoice has no bug and appears as it should with our preferred company greeting:

It's a bit of an inconvenience to have to open each email in order to send it without the bug. Hopefully, the QBO team will get this fixed and we'll be back to a state of bug-less bliss. 

Other than sharing the bug with you, and including you in the know, the moral of this story is to "be patient with your clients." Often, they're overwhelmed and frustrated because explaining a system they don’t fully understand is just plain hard. When it comes to an oddity, it can be even more difficult to translate. 

My quick judgement betrayed me and I was wrong in my assumption, but in this case it turned into an enthralling discovery.