Ability to print letters (thank you, dunning letters, confirmation letter, reminder letter) for CRM accts (customer, prospect)

[demo2010]

Hi, Is it possible to add the equivalent ability of Microsoft Mail Merge functionality? For example, I want to print confirmation letters to a list of CRM accounts. The content of the letter is fixed; however, customer name, customer address will be the variable. At the moment, I have to download the list of customer to Microsoft Access, then use the Mail Merge to print the letters.

This will be a very useful ability.

Regards

[demo2010]

Hi, thanks anderson for sharing your thought. I'm fairly new with xTuple and even newer with Report Designer. I supposed this need a person with strong technical skills. It would be a tricky for me how to "add a button on the Customer form". Having some simple example would probably help....though I'm not sure if I can get it working....lol.

[jrogelstad]

That's a tough one for us because Microsoft Word is a proprietary product that does not work the same or at all on all operating systems.

However, you can do things similar to that with xTuple Connect. In particular, there is a built in workflow for dunning where you generate an incident from the receivables workbench that will generate an email. You can also submit customer statements, invoices and so on electronically with Connect installed. Here's a link with more information.

http://www.xtuple.com/connect

[demo2010]

After reading your reply, I realized I made a mistake in describing the new ability. I do not mean "send letter" as in email. On the contrary, I meant printing a hard copy. The ability is quite the same as printing a PO. Rather than printing a PO, I want to print a letter. I run a kindergarten. After a prospect parent has registered their child, I'll convert prospect to customer. After which, I'll send the parent an enrollment confirmation letter (via snail mail). Since their address and contact info is readily available in xTuple, it should be quite simple, in my opinion. The enrollment confirmation letter is always the same and can be made into a template where in only the address and contact info is a variable. This new ability perhaps can be included under CRM > Accounts. It is also can be a To-do item to "print enrollment confirmation letter", for example.

I hope is it clearer now.

[anderson]

What you are after is fairly simple. You just need to use the Report Designer to design your letter (this can be any format you want). You just need to define the variable fields in the report (customer, address) and print the report.

The trick will be running the report and passing the customer number to the report to print. You could add a button on the Customer form to print this report. I would possibly add a menu option. You could have a menu that opens a screen that asks to supply the customer number and print a one off letter, or tell it to print all converted customers that day to print off a bunch of letters (just like your mail merge).

All achievable in xTuple without too much effort.

[exis]

ExisXto transfters contact information from xTuple CRM to Microsoft Outlook. You can then use Microsoft Mail Merge to create your letters. If you would like to try it out, please contact me at mbhuta@exisone.com.

[anderson]

You'll need some developer experience with xTuple to link a report to a menu or screen. Writing the report(s) themselves is relatively easy. There are some free packages such as Simple Sales Order and POS which are intended to give you a start on how the developmnent works including menus

There are a few of options to get this done for you:

[1] Use the Existo solution as suggested
[2] Develop it yourself (if you have the expertise)
[3] Pay someone to do it for you (could be a development partner or xTuple)
[4] Start a featuremob like xTuple did with their email solution so the development cost gets covered by many parties.