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Email sales forms, invoices, and statements in QuickBooks Desktop

by Intuit6 Updated 1 week ago

Learn how to email sales forms, invoices and statements in QuickBooks Desktop for Windows and Mac.

In QuickBooks Desktop, you can email sales forms, invoices and statements to your customers. You can send them individually or as a batch, or save them to send when you're ready. This helps you save time when communicating to your customers, so you can focus more on your business.

Tip: You can also directly email the contacts associated with your customers. This enhanced emailing feature lets you enjoy the following:

  • Improved efficiency - Quickly find and select the contact email directly from the transaction window. This helps you save time, as you don't have to manually enter your customer's email address.
  • Enhanced clarity - The recipient list in the “To” field clearly shows the contact’s name and job title. This reduces the risk of misdirected emails.

Email a sales form to your customer

Note: Make sure you connect your email to QuickBooks Desktop before you proceed.

  1. Open QuickBooks Desktop.
  2. Go to Customers. Find then double-click to open the transaction you want to send via email.
    Note: If you don’t see a transaction, you can create one when you select the New Transaction dropdown.
  3. Select Email. This opens the email window.
    Note: QuickBooks automatically picks a template for the form you selected. You can edit this as needed.
  4. From the To ▼ dropdown, select the contact name(s) you want to send the email to.
    Note: If you don’t see them on the list, select Add New, then enter your customer’s or the job’s info.
  5. Edit the Subject field and the body of the email as needed.
  6. Select Send.

    Tip: You can also manage your contacts’ info when you go to Customers then select Customer Center.

Email sales forms by batch

  1. After you create a sales form, select Email later before you save it.
  2. When you're ready to email the forms, select File, then select Send Forms….
  3. Review the list of forms to email. Uncheck the ones you don't want to send yet.
  4. In the preview window, you can select another template or edit the email text as needed.
  5. Select Send Now.
    Note: If you need to send multiple forms to a single recipient, follow these steps:
    1. Select each form you want to send.
    2. Select the Combine forms to a recipient in one email checkbox.
    3. Select Send Now.

Add multiple customer contacts to your batch emails

If you want to send a message to multiple recipients, follow these steps:

Note: This feature is only available to QuickBooks Desktop Plus and Enterprise users.

  1. Use the To ▼ dropdown to select email addresses to include, or clear ones to leave off.
  2. If you need to add a new email address, enter it into the Add field. Any invalid email addresses are highlighted for your correction.

Remove an email from the batch

Note: Removing an email from the list only deletes the email address. QuickBooks doesn’t delete the form itself.

  1. Select the checkmark next to the email address(es) you want to remove.
  2. Select Remove.
  3. Select Remove Email.

You can email any of your forms with their attachments directly from QuickBooks. When emailing them, you can save documents as PDF, email attachments, and use email tokens.

Before you send your forms, make sure to connect your email to QuickBooks.

Send the form

  1. From the form, select the email icon.
    A poster of a pregnant person on a computer screen.
  2. Edit the email message text of the form that you want to send.
    Note: QuickBooks automatically picks the template for the form you selected but you can still edit it and customize your email.
  3. Edit the Subject field and the body of the email as needed.
  4. Select the From dropdown, then select the email address you want to use.
  5. (Optional) Select the Save emails as drafts in the email program checkbox. Otherwise, QuickBooks sends the email right away.
  6. If you use QuickBooks 2020 or below and want to email a .PDF of the form without text in the body of the email message, clear the Include text in emails checkbox.
    Note: In QuickBooks 2021, the option to exclude the text is available only if you use Send directly out of QuickBooks using your email Account.
  7. (Optional) When you're done editing, select Send or Save.

Send forms by batch

  1. After you create a sales form, select Email later before you save it.
    A computer screen with a person on it.
  2. When you're ready to email the forms, select File, then Email Forms.
  3. Review the list of forms to email. If you want to send all of them, select Select All.
  4. Select Email.
  5. Then follow these steps to email a single form.
    1. Go to the File menu, then select Send Forms.
    2. Select the checkbox for each form you want to send.
    3. Select the Combine forms to a recipient in one email checkbox.
    4. Select Send Now.

Send a smart invoice

Once you've saved an invoice and you've set up your QuickBooks Payments preferences, you can include a link in the email that lets your customer pay the invoice online.

  1. Select your preferred invoice, then select the share icon.
  2. (Optional) Customize the text your customer sees (QuickBooks uses "Pay Online" as the default).

Important: Make sure you don't change the token «payment link».

Change the default email client

QuickBooks uses your default email client when you email as .PDF. If it's not Apple Mail or Outlook 2011, here's how you can change it:

Change email client to Apple Mail

  1. Open Apple Mail.
  2. Go to Mail, then select Settings.
  3. Select General, then Apple Mail next to the default email reader.

Change email client to Outlook

  1. Open Outlook.
  2. Go to Outlook, then select Settings.
  3. Select General.
  4. Select the Make Outlook the default application for e-mail, contacts, and calendar checkbox.

Note: If you change your default email program to Apple Mail or Outlook, close and restart QuickBooks for the switch to take effect.

Save the document as a PDF file

You can save all sales forms, registers, graphs, reports, checks, lists, mailing labels, and 1099 forms as PDF files to keep records. Or, you can share them with your customers and vendors using email.

To share, view, or print PDF files, use Adobe's Acrobat Reader.

  1. Select the form you want to save.
  2. Select the Print icon.
  3. Select PDF, then Save as PDF.

If you have multiple documents to save, follow these steps:

  1. Go to File, then select Print Forms.
  2. Select the items you want to save.
  3. In the list that appears, make sure that all the items you want to print are selected.
  4. Select OK.
  5. Select PDF, then Save as PDF.

Note: All items are printed in a single .PDF document, one item per page.

Email a document as a .PDF File

Important: The supported email clients are only Apple Mail and Outlook 2011. If your default email client is different, make sure to change it.

  1. Select the form you want to email.
  2. Select File, then select Email (type of form) as PDF.

If you have multiple items to email, you can select Email later on each open item. Then, go to File and select Email Forms to send them.

Use email tokens

You can select email tokens so you don't need to enter each individual info every time you send an email to different customers. This lets you email forms to multiple customers at once.

A token has guillemet characters («»). For example, QuickBooks replaces «num» with the individual invoice number when emailing an invoice.

Here's the list of the email tokens that you can use:

  • Contact - Full name of your customer
  • First name - First name of your customer
  • Last name - Last name of your customer
  • Num - The number of the form you're sending (which can be a sales receipt, invoice, credit, memo, etc.)
  • Payment link - A link to the invoice on QuickBooks Payments
  • Po num - The customer purchase order (PO) number
  • Title - A salutation (Mr., Ms., Mrs., Dr., etc.)

Email attached documents

If you want to share a file, you can add attachments to your email.

  1. Open the transaction or record with the attachment.
  2. Select the Attachments A close up of a pair of scissors on a table. icon. The attachments window appears.
  3. Select the file you want to email.
  4. Select the Share icon.
  5. Select Mail. QuickBooks creates a draft email message using your default mail client.
  6. Edit the email message, then select Send.

Add an email address

If you don't have an email address for the recipient saved in the customer or vendor list, you can add an address on the Email Forms window. Double-click the Email Address column and enter the email address.

Note: You'll be asked if you want to use this email address once or if you want to save it in the customer or vendor list. Make sure that the email address you're sending the email to is valid.

Add a note

You can add a note to the emails so you can customize a message to your customer or vendor. On the Email Forms window, select Save email as draft in email program. Email messages with sale forms attached are saved in the Drafts folder of your email program.

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