Transactional document distribution

Transactional documents are the lifeblood of any business and their speedy distribution is crucial to the success of the company. Web invoicing of transactional documents can play a vital role in this process. With web invoicing, transactional documents can be made available online to customers without the need for special software or services at the customer's premises. This form of document distribution is increasingly gaining acceptance within the business community and is the core business of Newsnet. Whereas at one time, companies preferred to receive paper copies of invoices or statements - whether via fax or post - these days electronic equivalents are seen as equally acceptable.

Transactional Documents

The term transactional document is intended to cover those documents which support the enacting of a transaction including invoices, statements and also dunning letters. Dunning letters being the letters sent to chase payment of an invoice, typically with escalating suggestions (threats) of legal action.

Web Invoicing

With web invoicing, customers have the ability to view their transactional documents in a web page. There's no document distribution via post or fax (although Newsnet do also support these distribution mechanisms). Newsnet's Netsend system presents the document (invoice, statement or dunning letter) to the customer in PDF form embedded in a web page. The customer is sent an e-mail informing them of the presence of the online document and invited to click on a link that takes them directly to the web page containing the invoice or whatever.

Fallback Mechanisms for Web Invoicing

One of the benefits of using the web for transactional document distribution is that the sender can be informed when the customer clicks on the web page link. The act of viewing the web invoice triggers a message within the Netsend system. This message can be used to prevent repeated presentations of the transactional document to the customer (whether by further e-mails or fax or post). Where needed, the further e-mails could be a repeat of the initial one, complete with the web link to the invoice (web invoice) etc. or they could have the invoice attached to the e-mail. Should these fail to gain the attention of the customer, the same document can then (after a suitable delay) by distributed by fax and then by post.

As such, the distribution of transactional documents can be carefully orchestrated to ensure proper attention is paid to them.

Secure Distribution of Transactional Documents

To ensure transactional documents are distributed securely, Netsend's web invoicing system uses the web's secure sockets layer (SSL) which provides a very high degree of protection against eves-dropping. Furthermore, in order for a customer to view their web invoice, they will need to enter a user name and password. These will have been previously sent to them via fax or post and can be altered on the web site as required.

Distribution of Historical Transactional Documents

It is not just the latest transactional document that can be distributed via the web. Should the customer wish to see an earlier invoice or statement, all of these are made available on the web via Netsend. These documents are listed on the web page in date order and can be viewed in PDF form. Thus customers can view previously distributed transactional documents and use Netsend as a filing cabinet for them. Obviously, this same functionality is available to the sender of the transactional documents and the intention is that web invoicing eliminates the need for storing paper copies of the same.