Best Practices for E-Invoice Functionality

Epicor ERP 10
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For delivery of e-invoices via APR or some other method (10.2.500 seems to have a built in set of controls for this, but probably uses the same underling mechanisms), the SMTP server/port/account used is the one defined in the Company configuration. This SMTP is also used for any other mail sent out of Epicor, such as BPMs.

Currently, I use a local SMTP that we set up in the networked environment. This allows lots of flexibility for account impersonation (i.e. who is the “from” address) and has no real limits on how many emails can be sent. This mostly works well for e-invoices, but fails to excel at delivery when the recipient conforms to higher levels of email filtering (think of hospital IT systems). Many of our customers are simply blocking any non-trusted sources of emails, so the natural thought is to use a email API rather than attempting to have our local server white listed.

I have also tried using an Office 365 account configuration, but I see several glaring downsides that I hope others can speak to their experience.
For starters, there is an API limit on email from a 365 account to 30 emails/minute. Haven’t tested this, but a simple daily batch of invoices being sent via APR would exhaust this API limit as I image the tasks are all submitted to the O365 API at once…
Secondly, O365 allows for “send as” type permissions, but this requires additional configuration within O365. Given the need to configure this at the company level, it also becomes problematic for any BPM/system emails that do not conform to the strict sender permissions required by O365.

I have looked into Gmail API as well, but it’s the same set of issues with even more API limits.

What are others using for this?

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No takers, eh? Well, you know where I’m going… :cloud:

SendGrid and Amazon have reasonable cloud-based email services.

The other option is to go portal and let the Customer pull invoices when the portal notifies them. That way you can also make sure that someone actually opened it. Someday attachments may may be verboten as virus issues expand - even PDF files.

Mark W.

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Thanks Mark! I was surprised at the lack of discussion as well :wink:

I have definitely also looked into a SendGrid or Amazon option. These definitely seem to be good fits for e-invoicing, but poor fits for internal (i.e. BPM) type emails.

We would need to, in my case, come up with some sort of custom portal solution like you described, but I am not entirely sure how that would look. Perhaps if we could push the invoices up to some storage (s3?) and create an “invoice record” on the portal with a simple link in the email for the customer to pay, that would work.

What would be reallllly nice in my opinion is a setting for e-invoicing that is disconnected from the Company SMTP settings.

At any rate, thank you for the response! Seems like an area where there needs to be a next gen solution versus what we currently have.

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I am just looking into the options and wanted to know if @Aaron_Moreng or @Mark_Wonsil or anyone else has come up with a solution that works? So far I have not as it times out as Aaron has said.

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We use the O365 connector from our local IIS relay. This gives us flexibility and does not have the limits on the send as options.

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