Confirm invoices sent by e-mail

Two that I can think of:

1. Buy a rubber stamp that reads "E-mailed __(date)__". Apply it to printed copies of your emailed invoices put them in a filing cabinet.

1. Include the Invoice Number in either the subject or body of your email (or both). The email message is then your documentation - save and/or print copies of these messages.

Realistically, there is no better way to prove that an invoice has or has not been snail-mailed, either - in QB or in any other accounting program. There is a presumption in most systems that saved invoices have been sent - whether by snail-mail, email or fax. Some systems may indicate HOW an invoice was (presumably) sent, or the default method for each customer, but to my knowledge this is not a feature of small-business software like QB and its competitors.

We cc: ourselves when we send the e-mail. That way, we have a digital copy on file.

Neither of these methods give any hint or clue if your e-mail server was able to contact the recipient's mail sever. If you need that, you have to dump the mail server log files. Not every failure to connect or deliver results in a bounce message anymore.

Anyway, I assume you do really want to know if the customer got the invoice ... well your collections people might want to know so they can start a skip trace much earlier.

If all you want is knowledge you attempted to send it, a rubber stamp is a perfect soluti> In this case CC is better than BCC. That way the reciepient _knows_

Another option is to save the invoice as a .pdf and send it as an attachement using your OWN e-mail server rather than Intuit's.