Emailing Orders, Shipments & Invoices

Backbone MRP can email a sales document straight to your customer. Three document types can be sent this way:

Order confirmations — from an open order; sent with the order attached as a PDF.
Shipment notifications — from a shipment, letting the customer know their order is on the way; sent with the packing slip attached as a PDF.
Invoices — from an invoice, requesting payment; sent with the invoice attached as a PDF.

Each email is sent under your company's name and is formatted so it looks professional in the customer's inbox.

The attached document is written in the customer's Preferred Language when one is set on their customer record, so a customer in Germany receives German paperwork without you having to do anything.

Sending an email

Open the order, shipment, or invoice you want to send, then click the Email button on its editor. This opens an Email tab where you can review and adjust the message before it goes out:

Recipients — one or more customer email addresses. Backbone MRP pre-fills this for you (see below); you can edit it or add more addresses separated by commas.
Subject — pre-filled with your company name and the document number (for example, Acme Manufacturing Co.: Invoice #INV-1042). Edit it if you like.
Send Email — sends the message with the PDF attached.

The message body and the attached PDF are generated automatically; you don't need to write anything. The body greets the customer, states what the document is, and lists the key details (document and order numbers, dates, and, for invoices, the amount due) so the customer can see the essentials at a glance, with the full document attached.

After you click Send Email, a confirmation appears right on the Email tab — no popup to dismiss. A green message confirms the email was sent successfully; a red message explains why it couldn't be sent (for example, an invalid recipient address or no connection to the server) so you can fix it and try again.

Previewing before you send

The Email tab shows a preview of the message below the Subject field, rendered exactly as your customer will see it in their inbox. This is the same content that gets sent — what you preview is what goes out.

You can also check the attachment: click the Preview the attached PDF link and Backbone MRP opens the document's PDF in your computer's default PDF viewer, so you can confirm it looks right before sending.

Tip: the PDF preview is the exact file that will be attached to the email, so use it as a final check of the document's contents and layout — including, for a customer with a Preferred Language set, that it reads correctly in their language.

Who the email is addressed to

Backbone MRP fills in the recipient automatically using the customer's contact details:

First, the email address on the order's, shipment's, or invoice's ship-to location.
If that location has no email address, the customer's Billing Email is used instead.

If neither is on file the Recipients box starts empty — just type the address in before sending. You can always change or add recipients regardless of the default.

Tip: Keep each customer's Billing Email and location emails up to date on the Customer Editor so the right person is filled in every time.

Making sure it arrives

Emails are sent through Backbone MRP's mail service on your behalf. Each message shows your company name as the sender, carries a plain reply-to address, and includes both a formatted and a plain-text version — all of which help it pass through customers' spam filters and land in the inbox.

Send from your own domain. With the Personalized Email Addresses add-on, these documents go out from your own address (for example sales@your-company.com), DKIM-signed for your domain for even better deliverability and branding. The number of document emails you can send each month is set by your Email Volume.

If a customer says they didn't get it: ask them to check their spam or junk folder and to add your sending address to their contacts or safe-senders list. Confirm the recipient address was spelled correctly, then resend.