Why can't I send an invoice as a PDF

This is a question that is asked from time to time, so we thought it may be worth clarifying why we don’t offer this feature as standard (although you can still enable it for specific clients here ).

QuickFile allow you to deliver your invoices to clients via a link embedded in an e-mail. When your client receives the e-mail they will be able to follow the link and instantly view the invoice within a secure area. There is no login form to get in the way, just one click and the invoice is there. What’s more, when the client clicks the link, this is tracked and is visible in your ‘Invoice Management’ area, so you can see which clients have viewed their invoice and precisely when.

When a PDF is attached to an e-mail it needs to be sent across the internet and this slows down the whole process. Attaching a PDF to an invoice makes the total payload of data over 100 times bigger than if you were just sending a link. With the super fast broadband connections we all enjoy these days, it doesn’t make a huge difference in terms of how long it takes to reach your client. When our servers need to do this 1000s of times a day it certainly clocks up a lot of time and resources. PDF documents also require that your clients have the appropriate software to view it, namely Adobe Reader. This is fine for most desktop PCs but some mobile browsers struggle to display PDF documents correctly. Unlike when you click a link, opening a PDF invoice from an attachment cannot be tracked. You effectively miss out on a major benefit of invoicing in QuickFile. You are also not able to offer a range of electronic payment options within the PDF document. By viewing the invoice online your clients can query, download, print, and mostly importantly pay your invoice from the preview screen.

We don’t wish to antagonise your clients by not allowing PDF attachments of the invoice to be sent and that is why we enable you to set this function for those specific clients who request it. That said we hope this article serves to highlight the many benefits of sending invoices by trackable links.