Disclaimer: Please correct me where I am wrong and I will update this post, because I’m trying to sort this out in my understanding along with helping others know the “gotchas” that were not apparent to me.
I can’t find good documentation on this, and I’ve been burned before by sending invoices to people at larger clients, who should not see or get them… So, maybe we can build a nice matrix / table of descriptions on precisely what a particular setting will do if you modify it?
Admin (Global) - > Invoices → Preferences
- “BCC All Invoices and Estimates here”: Regardless of which customer, everything will be sent to this address, commonly used for the service provider to have proof of Emails being sent.
Customer → Customer Settings
- “Receive Billing Emails”: Must be enabled for any type of billing Email to be delivered, useful as an override to disable such Emails
- Customer Information “Email”: This ‘main contact’ Email address will get all Invoices if it’s populated, the above setting is enabled. If this Email address is also on a contact who has “receive billing emails” enabled, they will be listed in the To: twice.
- “Additional Invoice CC Emails”: Applies to all invoices for this customer (on a given invoice it populates “Invoice Email” field, and vice versa as well, see below). Gotcha: the addresses here will get the Email regardless if that Email Address is found in the customer contacts records, and furthermore regardless of any settings a contact with the same Email Address has (i.e. If “Receive billing Emails” is not enabled, this Email address will still get the Email). Think of this like a override to always force the invoice to be sent to this address.
Customer → Contacts → Contact Settings
- “Receive Billing Emails”: When enabled, this person will be CC’d on every Invoice Email that goes out. Gotcha: Their email address will not appear on the Invoice’s screen before sending, so it’s not always apparent when sending the email, that this person is going to receive it. I recommend building a quick custom report to list for you any contact that has this setting enabled
Invoices → Bill to Customer Settings
- “Assigned Contact (Name/Email)”: The assigned contact does not receive Emails for this Invoice, just because they are assigned but… there is an option to do so when you send the Invoices(s) with “bulk actions” menu (see below), but in EITHER CASE, the invoice “assigned contact” will not receive the Email unless the contact has enabled “receive billing email”.
- “Invoice Email”: This field is populated from and always in real-time sync with the customer setting “Additional Invoice CC Emails” Gotcha: If you change this value on a particular invoice, you have unknowingly also changed it at the customer level, and it will effect the very next invoice you send out (even if that invoice in just a moment later in a different browser tab)
Invoices → When using “Bulk Actions” to send
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Select JUST “Email”: The invoices will go to the contacts who have “receive billing emails” enabled, AND the email addresses listed in customer setting “Additional Invoice CC Emails” which is always in sync with the invoice setting “Invoice Email” field.
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Select “Email” and “Send an email to the Invoice Contact in addition to the Customer”: Same as above, but again the invoice contact will only receive this Email if the contact has enabled the “receive billing emails”… (but since that setting enables all invoices to send to that contact, what is even the scenario where “send an email to the invoice contact” ever makes sense?)
This is exhausting…