E-Mailing Invoices in AdSystem

For a demo of AdSystem’s E-Mail Invoicing click here.

Invoicing is Good

Sending invoices is good and getting paid is even better.  After you have sold and published an ad you can send the customer an invoice and then you get paid.

Sending invoices by e-mail is awesome because it means you’ll get paid more quickly.  It also means that you’ll spend less on paper and postage, you won’t need to lick stamps (ugh!), and you’ll spend less time doing it.

But, What About Tear Sheets?

For decades the industry practice in publishing has been to tear out the page of the publication that contains the customer’s ad and to include that “tear sheet” with the invoice.  It provides physical evidence that you indeed ran the customer’s ad.

But, how do you include a tear sheet with an e-mailed invoice?  Will customers still pay if you don’t include a physical page torn out of the issue?

There are actually several answers to those questions:

1. Yes, you can include tear sheets with e-mailed invoices.  They just have to be scans or images of the ad, rather than a page physically torn from a printed issue.  You can sometimes provide a link to an online digital issue showing their ad.  Your billing system must allow including a scanned image of a tear sheet with the invoice.
2. Advertisers and agencies are increasingly comfortable with alternatives to traditional tear sheets.  Most will readily accept scans or images in place of an original.  In many cases advertisers and agencies don’t require a tear sheet at all.  In a few cases they may refuse to pay unless you send them an old fashioned physical tear sheet.  Therefore, your billing system must allow you to designate which advertisers accept emailed billings and which ones require a physical tear sheet sent by mail.

Can I Trust My Receivables to E-Mail?

One problem with e-mail is that you don’t usually know when a person receives and opens it.  If you send a bunch of invoices to customers, how do you know that they’ll get paid?  What happens if your invoices get eaten by spam filters?  What if the recipient has left the company or is on vacation?  What if your email arrives on a busy day and gets ignored?

E-Mailing Invoices in AdSystem

AdSystem makes it easy to e-mail invoices to customers.  It offers:

• E-Mailed Invoices sent individually or in a batch.
• Proof of publishing through digital tear sheets or links to online editions.
• Selective E-Mailing: Designate which advertisers receive e-mails and which ones receive mailed invoices.
• Two Kinds of E-Mailed Invoices: PDF Attachments and E-Invoices¹.
• Click-tracking: If you use E-Invoices, AdSystem will track which e-mails are viewed, opened and printed.
• E-Mail Invoice Report showing which invoices were emailed, which were opened, and most importantly, which ones were ignored.

If you’d like help setting up E-Mail Invoicing in AdSystem, please contact Datafest Support.

¹E-Invoices are only available for AdSystem Online customers.