QuickBooks Desktop 2020 Combine Multiple Emails

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Intuit released QuickBooks 2020 Desktop on September 3 (2019) to QuickBooks ProAdvisors (for Desktop), Enterprise Users, and QuickBooks Pro/Premier 'Plus' subscribers who were notified about the availability of the initial release of the software. Soon QuickBooks Desktop 2020 versions will begin appearing on retailers' shelves. 

Insightful Accountant was privy to various pre-release versions of these products for months, and had multiple communications with Intuit personnel, including product managers and developers, so we could help you learn about the new products. This article takes a closer look at one of the features released as part of the QuickBooks Desktop 2020 product updates.

If case you haven't read my article summarizing the Desktop Products then the chart below, courtesy of Intuit, reflects which new features are available in which QuickBooks releases. Of course, I would encourage you to read 'My QuickBooks Desktop 2020 Summary article'.

Be certain to tune in for the September edition of QB Talks scheduled for 2 PM Eastern on September 18, 2019 to hear about QuickBooks 2020, there will be more information about that webinar outlined in a future article. You can register HERE.

Combine Multiple Emails

This is a feature that you will either love, or you will say, “what on earth would I ever do with that?” Some QuickBooks users will never need this feature, but others will make use of it all the time and for them they may well think that this is “the best thing since sliced bread!” 

With this new feature QuickBooks users can improve their customer service by combining all their invoices meant for a single Customer into a single Email without having to manually combine them outside of QuickBooks. Yes, that’s what I said, you can combine multiple Emails from within QuickBooks to the same Customer into a single Email.

But before I get too far along in the feature let me review which QuickBooks Desktop product users have access to this functionality.  The good news is that 'ALL' versions and flavors of QuickBooks Desktop, and all three country versions (U.S., Canada, and United Kingdom) have this new functionality. The bad news is, as I note below, in the United State versions this feature doesn't work (at the present time) if you are trying to combine emails with QuickBooks Payments embedded in the associated invoices, so Intuit has disabled the feature for US customers with Payment subscriptions (it just won't work).

So, if you're not using QuickBooks Payments in your QuickBooks Desktop 2020, and you have Customers for which you have multiple jobs or projects going on simultaneously and you invoice all of them on the same day, then this new feature is for you. Until now you have probably sent each of those invoices via a separate Email. That meant that your Customer got multiple Emails with an attached Invoice on each one... "what a pain in the you know what for your client!"

Of course you could have been like one of my clients and spent a lot of time producing PDF copies of each Invoice so you could then attach all of those PDF invoices to a single Email you sent from outside QuickBooks. Unfortunately, when you did that your Invoice Email(s) didn’t show up in the Customer Sent Email tab inside QuickBooks. So, while it was a convenient work around for your client, "it was time consuming pain in the you know what for you", and if didn't even track your emails properly either. 

But with this new feature you have the option to combine all forms to a Customer in a single email which allows you to send all of their invoices you generate together and that's just “pretty neat, isn’t it?”  To accomplish this magic, simply check the ‘Combine all forms to a customer in a single email’ option checkbox (as shown in the illustration at top of next page) at the bottom of the Select the email(s) you want to send window and click Send Now on the Send Forms transmittal window.

Problems identified with this new feature:

  1. This feature only works in files without QuickBooks Payment subscriptions.
  2. There is only one transmittal Email template (per type of form) that is used for the transmittal of combined forms; in other words there are not multiple Email templates available from which Users can choose (at present).

The good news is that the Intuit development team responsible for this feature is aware of both of these problems and is actively working to resolve both of them but no time frame has been given as to when we can expect a resolution of either or both of these issues.

Just think about the convenience your Customer will experience, no longer will they have to open multiple Emails to detach and print multiple Invoices (or other forms). No longer will you have to worry if your Customer missed one of your Emails because there were so many being sent in succession. And no longer will you have to try to manually turn multiple PDF forms into a single Email outside of QuickBooks without a way to record it in the Customer’s QuickBooks Email record. QuickBooks 2020 gives you the convenience of combining Email forms with a simple checkbox, something you are probably now thinking, “why haven’t we had this all along?”

We are getting really close to the end of this mini-series looking at the details of each of the new features, in fact I only have one or two more left to share in the next few days' headlines, but if you have missed several of the past feature articles then you may just want to head over to my QuickBooks Desktop (for Windows) 2020 Summary here for a quick review of all the new features, and also check out my companion QuickBooks for Mac 2020 Summary which can be found here.

Editor's Acknowledgements

By the way, my very special thanks go out to Laura Madeira who helped cross-check my work with her own to make certain that we were consistent in providing accurate information regarding this 2020 release. For the official Intuit version of “QuickBooks Desktop 2020 – What’s New and Improved” you will find Laura Madeira's article posted at this Firm of the Future blog website. 

I also want to thank the following Intuit personnel for their dedication not only in providing information, briefings and responding to questions, but in guiding the actual product developments within QuickBooks Desktop and this release: Chetana Arakanakere, Rachna Arya, Nipun Bhatia, Aditya Dixit, Varshitha Gokari, Sumit Poddar, Raman Verma. Of course there are entire teams, composed of hundreds of Intuit personnel, behind these people that make the magic happen and too often we forget to say, thank you, to them as well; so to all involved, "THANK YOU"!