Print Welcome Letters

When a new customer starts a business relationship with your firm, an optional Welcome Letter can be issued to the customer.
This utility to trigger the Welcome Letter can be accessed from the Collections sub-menu on the Accounts Receivable menu.
It is restricted to use by one operator at a time.

This feature is only available to firms that use the forms control processing as setup in Customer Forms. The standard form that is associated with the Welcome Letter is TX_ARCF71.RPT.

There are two approaches for setting up the letter contents:

1. The standard approach is to create a pre-printed form letter with the desired contents for the body of the letter on your letterhead paper, and then to run the Print Welcome Letter utility for the selected customer range, using the pre-printed form letter as the printer paper.
   The Print Welcome Letter utility will then complete and personalize the letters by adding the customer name and address on the top right, and the customer number, date, and customer division, on the top left.

   One advantage of this approach is that the letter contents can be easily changed to issue a different message.

2. An alternative to the standard option, is to design a custom Crystal or Jasper Forms document containing the letter contents.
   Contact Texada Support Staff for information if your firm elects to use this custom option.

This program respects division restrictions as defined for the operator by Access Values in the Divisional Restricted Views.
It only applies to customers flagged as On Account.
The date that the letter is sent, is posted to the Credit Information window in Customer Information.

The prompts to generate the customer welcome letters are:

FROM CUSTOMER #

Leave this field blank to include all on account customers, or enter the starting customer in the range, or select one from the Accounting Customer Search window.

TO CUSTOMER #

Leave this field blank to include all on account customers, or enter the ending customer in the range, or select one from the search window.

FROM ACCOUNT OPEN DATE

A date range selection can be defined for customers who should receive a Welcome Letter based on the date the customer's account was opened as stored in the Credit Information window.
A letter will also be triggered for any customers with no date in the Date Account Opened field.

If a customer range is selected this date defaults to the current month start, and if a single customer has been selected this date defaults to the selected customer's Date Account Opened.

Accept the default starting date or over-type it with a preferred starting date.

TO ACCOUNT OPEN DATE

If a customer range is selected this date defaults to the current month end, and if a single customer has been selected this date defaults to the selected customer's Date Account Opened.

Accept the default ending date or over-type it with a preferred ending date.

LETTERS TO PRINT

Select one of the following letter filter options:

• Select Unprinted to print letters for customers in the customer selection range with Account Opened dates that fall within the selected date range, that have no date in the Date Welcome Sent field in the Credit Information.

• Select Printed to print letters for customers in the customer selection range with Account Opened dates in the selected date range, that already have a date in the Date Welcome Sent field in the Credit Information.
  Note: Existing Date Welcome Sent dates are not replaced or updated.

• Select Both to print letters for all customers in the customer selection range with Account Opened dates in the selected date range, regardless of whether they have received a letter before.

EMAIL

This prompt is only available when Jasper Forms are deployed company wide in the Customer Forms.

Uncheck this box to print the Welcome Letter Jasper documents and mail them to the customers.

Check this box to email the Welcome Letter Jasper documents to customers who have contacts setup with an email address and are flagged to receive a "Welcome Letter" in Contacts.

A Document Log is generated after the print run indicating which customers were sent emails and which documents printed.

Finished?

A printer can be confirmed or re-selected from the Printer option located on the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Click the ACCEPT button to begin printing the letters, or CANCEL to abort.
Today's date is posted as the Date Welcome Sent in the Credit Information, window for these customers in Customer Information.

If a record locking situation on a customer record occurs, the letter is printed but an information report is generated warning that the Date Welcome Sent has not been updated for that customer.

Start-Up Suggestion:
Because letters will be printed for customers with no Date Account Opened assigned, before the first real letter print run is initiated it is recommended to generate a "bogus" letter run for an earlier date range (e.g. the end of the previous year) to capture all the customers with no account opened date, and to flag them as having already received a Welcome Letter by setting the Date Welcome Sent.
The letters themselves can be discarded as they are not appropriate.
This will prevent letters from being generated for these old customers when letters are being printed for new customers using the Letters To Print - Unprinted option.