QuickBooks 2011 and Web Mail
For the past few years we have had two options when emailing an invoice or report from QuickBooks – to use the Intuit email server, or Microsoft Outlook. If you wanted to use your Gmail or Yahoo account, you were out of luck. With QuickBooks 2011 Intuit has finally heard the complaints, now you can use almost any web-mail account that you want!
PLEASE NOTE that much of this is based on information from an early release of QuickBooks 2011 – it is possible that some features may vary from what is described here.
A few years back Intuit only offered QuickBooks E-mail as an option. I didn’t like it for a number of reasons. I didn’t have a good way to track what was sent, the lag time was longer than I liked, and sometimes the service just wasn’t available (see my articles on QuickBooks Service Outages). Then Intuit added Microsoft Outlook as an option, and I was very happy. I use Outlook as my primary email system, and that resolved all of the problems for me. However, many people use other kinds of email systems. People using Yahoo, Gmail, and other “web mail” systems had to work around this limitation, and it wasn’t convenient.
QuickBooks Web Mail Support
With QuickBooks 2011 we now have a third option, Web Mail.
Click the Add button, and you are given this window to enter your information.
Enter your email address as the ID, select your option, and you are on your way! Note that if you enter a Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail account the program will fill in the blanks with the most likely values for server and port.
I was also able to use my own server settings, although that takes a bit more knowledge to set up (but no more than it takes to set up those accounts in Outlook, for example).
You can set up multiple accounts, and when you send an invoice or report you can pick the account to use for that email (some info here is blurred for privacy).
The first time that you send, it will ask for the password for the account. It saves this so you don’t have to reenter it when you use this again in the future. I tested this with Gmail, and my own email server and it worked perfectly.
Note that this will send the email directly, just as with the older QuickBooks e-mail option. You can’t attach some other document or change anything other than what you see in the screen above. If you want to make other changes or attachments, you still need to use Outlook, or save the invoice as a PDF and attach it yourself. The big advantage with the new web mail feature over QuickBooks e-mail is that the email message will come from YOUR email server, and you can look at your history of sent emails there.
I have not used this extensively yet, as I use Outlook as my primary email system. From what I’ve seen so far, I really like this improvement.
Changes in QuickBooks E-mail
Up until now the QuickBooks e-mail option has been a free service provided by Intuit. You had the option to use the Intuit QuickBooks Billing Solutions service, which is available for a fee and provides a number of enhanced features.
Starting with QuickBooks 2011 this will change. PLEASE NOTE that Intuit may change these plans when the product is released, so please confirm this with them before making decisions.
- If you are a subscriber to Intuit Payroll, QuickBooks Merchange Services (or Billing Solutions), Enterprise Full Service Plan and possibly some other subscription services, then the QuickBooks e-mail service will be available to you at no additional charge.
- If you are a member of the ProAdvisor program or use the Accountants Copy Transfer service, then the QuickBooks e-mail service will be available to you at no additional charge.
- All other users must use Outlook or the new web mail feature.
Category: Program Updates, QB 2011
About the Author (Author Profile)
Charlie Russell is the founder of CCRSoftware. He’s been involved with the small business software industry since the mid 70′s, focusing on inventory and accounting software for small businesses. Charlie is a Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor. Look for Charlie’s articles in the QuickBooks and Beyond blog, as well as his California Wildflower Hikes blog.
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I can see we are not the only ones unable to communicate via email through the new Quickbooks. We have tried Outlook and it work sporadically (meaning it works fine one moment and your password is not valid another). Then we switched to yahoo and gmail options – both of which do the same thing. Basically we can get an email to send once out of 30 or 40 attempts.
I’m find this quite annoying and am starting to think this is another Quickbooks tactic to elicite more money from it’s users for repairs or to use the quickbooks mail send function.
Cyndy, all I can say is that I use Outlook and QuickBooks 2011 for all of my invoicing, and I never have any problems like what you describe.
Note that I’m using the 32 bit version of Office. If you are using the 64 bit version, you may find that you have issues. Other than that, it sounds like you have some sort of problem in your computer system that someone may be able to help you with.
I see where you have in depth knowledge on emailing from within QuickBooks 2011. A friend of mine has been using this version with WIN7 since October. She had been successfully sending invoices either singly or in batches using webmail option. A few weeks ago it stopped working. She gets an error message saying either id or password is incorrect.
She spoke with her ISP and they confirmed settings, i.e. ports, no SSL, etc. QuickBooks support has been unable to rectify. We have tried several workarounds but to no avail.
Would you have a suggestion? Right now she is saving each invoice as a pdf and sending via her own email which is a multiple step process. She would like to return to emailing right from the invoice window.
Thank you in advance for your ideas!
Linda, without hands on a system there isn’t much more that I can say. The first thing I might look at is Internet security products that you might have installed, which may be interfering.
Thank you. This is a good idea.
Hi, We just install QB 2011 and we are trying to email from Outlook, it goes through the process, but the test emails we send never arrive…HELP
Janice: Can you see them in the “sent” folder in Outlook?
Yes
Janice, if it is showing as being “sent” by Outlook, then your issue is not in QuickBooks. QB just hands it over to Outlook, then Outlook sends it. And it has been “sent”. Next thing to do is to look in the recipient’s “junk mail” or SPAM folders to see if the message has been shunted aside. Or check with any junk/spam filtering with your ISP if they do that. The email has a PDF attachment, overzealous filtering my stop that message. The email MIGHT have a link in it (for IPN, if you haven’t turned that off), and overzealous filtering might stop that kind of message.
This is so frustrating. Spent almost a day to fix the problem
My “My Preference” tab does not have the “Send email using” portion as showed on the above screen shot. I am using Qbs premier Accountant 2010.
Jina, you may note that this article is about QuickBooks 2011 – the web mail option isn’t available in QuickBooks 2010.
What do you see if you go to “Send Forms” and look at “My Preferences”? You should see “QuickBooks E-mail”. You might see Outlook if Outlook is installed and a profile is set up. Web Mail isn’t going to be there, you have to upgrade to 2011 for that.
I have just installed Windows Live Mail 2011 on top of my Qb Premier 2010 and everything works beautifully.
But you have to remove Outlook first and get an account with liveid at http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mail.
It works for both Win XP 32 and Win 7 64.
Thank you, Lee. I’m guessing that you wouldn’t have to uninstall Outlook, just change the email profile settings in Internet Explorer, HOWEVER, if you are using Live Mail then you wouldn’t need Outlook anyways…
I have QuickBooks 2011. I want to send an invoice through webmail. I can do this just fine. No problems. But I want to change the default message and subject. I have done so at edit>preferences>send forms>company preferences>change default for “Invoices”. All is fine, my amended changes stay put. But when I send email, the original subject and message is still there. I have reset QuickBooks and even my compluter but, even though the changes are still evident at edit>preferences>send forms>company preferences>change default for “Invoices”, when I try to send, again, the original default message is still there. What can I do? Please help.
I had this problem too and I found an article that basically said that if you check “To be emailed” checkbox in the invoices, it caches the current content of your preference mail. The only way to update the invoice after the fact is to uncheck and recheck that box in the invoice. I’ve done that as a workaround, but VERY time consuming when you have 200+ invoices to update. HTH!
Jill, that sounds like a different issue than what Dana was describing. Also, I’m not seeing that particular issue in my system when I test it. However, I’ll note that these days I mostly am working with QB 2012, not 2011.
Dana, I don’t have an answer for you at this time. I just tested that feature in my sample system, and it works properly. There must be something hung up in your system somehow. Can you create a NEW company file for testing, and see if it works that way in that file?
I have Quickbooks Enterprise 2011 and Windows 7. 90% of the time that I try to email an invoice through quickbooks (I have downgraded my new computer to Microsoft Office 2007), I get an uncoverable error. I have worked with qb tech for over 1 month and they have no answers so far. We have tried everything and qb tech suggested another computer -32 bit for invoicing and use mine as the server. I don’t have any guarantee that will work and not sure I want to spend the money. My computer tech has suggested a VM XP service with my other computer where I am having no problems sending invoices (It is an XP) Do you have any other ideas before we try this procedure?
Gail, those kinds of things are really tough to diagnose (as you have found). I don’t have a solution for you off hand, particularly if you are finding that it works sometimes and not others. However, out of curiosity, have you tried these two things?
1) Create a NEW company file, and test that? Takes time, particularly if the error doesn’t happen EVERY time. If the new company file works then you might start thinking about some damage in the company file. Logically that wouldn’t be what you would look at, but I’ve learned to not use logic in relation to QuickBooks in situations like this.
2) How about testing web mail, instead of Outlook? That isn’t hard to set up, and it can be tested fairly easily. That would tell you if the issue is more on the Microsoft side or on the QuickBooks side, possibly.
Those aren’t solutions, but they would be the kind of thing that I’d be trying if I were on site…
I just upgraded to QB2012 because I had Pro 2009 and purchased a new computer with windows 7
and QB said the two weren’t compatible
so I needed to upgrade…$200 later I cannot email invoices to my customers
I have a roadrunner email/business account that is set up through Windows Live
it is operating perfectly receiving/sending emails on its own
but I tried to send invoices out of QB, and I’m getting the same problem as alot of others in this forum I see
I verified the port with roadrunner because QB customer support blamed roadrunner, then roadrunner blamed QB
I did set up my gmail account as a test and that worked and let me send an invoice no problem
but when I go back to the roadrunner account as my default email in the QB preferences
it just keeps popping up saying the password is incorrect or its my firewall
i’ve checked both, over and over
HELP!?!?!?
Lisa, I can’t help. I don’t have access to a Roadrunner account. There are some kinds of accounts that just won’t work correctly because they have special requirements for logging in that might not be accommodated by QuickBooks. Also, setting them up can be a bit tricky sometimes.
Hi Charlie,
The email client that I am trying to use with QuickBooks 2011 would be in the “others” category. I have setup the settings just like I would if I were setting up Outlook, using my outgoing server information. However, when I try to email the invoice, I get the email address or password is incorrect message. I put the password in again and it continues to fail. I did see that QB help said that you may have to put in the password multiple times, but I have tried for three days now and it still is not working. Do you have any ideas? Thanks!
Braden, I’m sorry, I don’t have any good clues for you. Some people report that there are problems. I’ve never had any, but I’ve not used it very much, only with a few relatively straight forward account types.
I just had that same problem today with my hotmail.com address. Turns out they had flagged my account as potentially sending spam, so I had to go in and enter some extra security info (they sent me a security code) so I could verify I wasn’t a spammer. As soon as I did that, no more prompting for my password.
Thanks for that note, Jill. I would think that if you had that issue, then you would also see a problem if you just tried to use your hotmail email independently and directly, outside of QuickBooks?
Hi Charlie,
I just saw the post above mine and they are having the same issue. Thanks!
I am trying to email out invoices and a box appears that QB has the wrong email address or password. Am I to enter my email password?
Monique, you don’t mention what QB product you have or what email method you have chosen. In general, if you are doing “web mail”, you have to enter your password for your web mail account. Usually you only have to do that the first time.
This is for people using the “Email Provider” -> “Others”.
Many ISPs (Comcast, TDS, & others) have started blocking port 25. Port 25 is the old default port for sending out email. If Port 25 does not work for you, try setting it to port 587. Port 587 is the mail submission port.
Your ISP may have started blocking port 25 and not informed the customer support people that you’ve contacted.
Thanks for the reminder on that, Scott. I always use port 587 on my system (Comcast), and I tend to forget to point that out to people. Good tip!
I have a Windows 7 Pro 64 bit with QB 2011 Pro. I have Web Mail setup and it works perfectly for Sending Invoices via email, but it will NOT send Reports via email. When I attempt to send a Report (Send as PDF) I get the Email window asking for To address and such, but when I click Send Now, it goes nowhere. Send Invoice shows the Web Mail option selected and Send Now asks for the password ONCE, then it goes and is sent. BUT Email Report as PDF (or Excel) does not work. Email Report does not show the Web Mail info at all. WHY?
Dennis, I can’t say, without hands on the system. I would suspect that the issue is more on the PDF creation side of things, but that is just a guess at this point.
Dennis, I have a client with the exact same problem. She’s using QB 2011 Pro, Windows XP and Yahoo! webmail. She tells me it used to work on both invoices and reports, but lately reports are not working (going nowhere, as you said). Invoices weren’t working before I went and reset the Edit/Prefs/Send Forms stuff, but mailing Reports remains dead.
Unfortunately, I’ve no help to offer other than commiseration.
Todd, I’ll add some commiseration. Again, without hands on the system, it is hard to diagnose. The problem can be in the PDF driver, possibly, although if invoices create a PDF and reports don’t, that is less likely. You may find that deleting the printer QBPRINT.QBP file can make a difference.
I am using an internal server and email is going out correctly. QB is appending my message with:
View your account online at:
https://www.intuitbillpay.com/…….
How do I get rid of that?
Depeneds on what year of QuickBooks you are using, but it should be a “payments” preference you can turn off.
See this article about that: http://qbblog.ccrsoftware.info/2011/08/turning-off-the-online-payment-link-in-quickbooks-invoices-2/
HA! You are all a step above me…I don’t even HAVE a preferences option! I keep trying to set up my email account in QB so I can invoice via email, and as per every tutorial I have looked at, I am told to go to “edit-preferences” when I open QB. Which would be great–except there IS no “preferences” tab under edit. Anyone have any suggestions as to why this might be?
Most likely you don’t have the same QB product.
What version/edition/nationality/year/operating environment of QB do you have? This article relates to the US Windows desktop versions…
thank you, thank you, thank you!
I was running into all kinds of problems until I read your post. I was trying to email paystubs for the first time, and couldn’t for the life of me get it to work. I didn’t realise that I was supposed to be entering my actual email password.