Save and Share Link

Intuit is constanting working hard and adding new features to QuickBooks Online (QBO) on a frequent (almost monthly!) basis. I have been really happy with sending invoices from within QBO as it allows my clients to enter a payment online either via credit card or bank draft, as I also have a QuickBooks Payments account linked to QBO. One of the great features of sending an invoice this way is the ability to view activities related to the invoice, such as any questions asked by me or my client and best of all, when my client has viewed the invoice (date and time!). Sometimes though, my client hasn't viewed an invoice, but this may be because they didn't even see it. And this can happen as the invoice sent from within QBO comes from Intuit's own email server with the email address "quickbooks-email@intuit.com". This has the potential of falling into one's spam email box. However, Intuit may have resolved this issue by

registering

 this email address with service providers so that it doesn't get associated as spam. It could be that a client is just ignoring the email, knowing that it is an invoice just based on the subject. In any case, there is a solution.

There is a new option when saving an invoice in QBO called Save and Share Link.

This allows you to copy a unique URL that can be used anywhere you want. And when a client clicks on it, QBO still tracks the activity as if was sent via Intuit's email server. By clicking on the Copy link and close button, the URL is saved to the clipboard so that you can paste it later elsewhere.

I use

Google Apps for Work

, so my primary email address uses my domain but I send and receive emails via Gmail. I could just easily past this URL into an email, but I think it is not really clear as to what page that URL redirects to, being so long and just a jumble of words and numbers. Therefore, I like to use images, such as buttons or pictures. But unfortunately, you can't just click on the image and add a URL, like you can with a line of text. You just get picture options.

There is a little trick to associate an image with a URL. Click on the image, hold down the left button of your mouse, and drag

ever so slightly

until the image is highlighted.

Then, you can click on the Link option in the editing toolbar at the bottom and insert a URL.

And now the image or picture is clickable and will take the user to the link so that they can view the invoice as if it came directly from QBO. 

You can use whatever image you want, anything that will capture the attention of the recipient and make them click on it. And of course, you can put whatever subject you want in the email that you think will entice the recipient to open and view the email, like

Urgent

or

Important

. 

Or course, you don't have to use Gmail to share the link, as you can use whatever email provider that you have. And it may be that you can insert a URL into an image much easier using other email providers. Or maybe not all, as what happened when I tried doing this in Yahoo Mail. It's been a while since I have used Outlook, so I am not sure how that will work there. But feel free to leave a comment based on your own experience!