As you may know, MAS 500 has a built-in automated document transmittal capability. However, this capability does not come without some drawbacks.

The first drawback is that the document transmittal occurs on the client-side of the application and is reliant upon a local MAPI (mail application program interface) client application and valid profile. If this MAPI-compliant application happens to be Microsoft Outlook, the document transmittal process will be interrupted several times as it raises a security dialog to which the user must respond in order to allow this "process" to call Outlook's services to send the documents.

Another drawback is that the documents may only be transmitted in one of two formats: RTF (rich text file) or HTML (hypertext markup language). This is compounded by the fact that the underlying Crystal Reports-based process that converts the document into either the RTF or HTML formats for transmittal sometimes produces unexpected results. Recipients may not be able to read or interpret the resulting message.

Still another drawback is the fact that the user has little control over who will be the recipient of the transmitted document (the recipient is fetched from data in the document's source record in MAS 500) and the recipient may be only one per document.

Fortunately, there are a number of other solutions to this problem now available.

DocuFire for Windows is one such solution and presently offers automated distribution of the following document types from MAS 500:

  • AR Invoices
  • AR Customer Statements
  • SO Quotes
  • SO Sales Order Acknowledgements
  • PO Purchase Orders

Also, MK Software Inc., creators of DocuFire for Windows tells me that there are a number of ways to adapt DocuFire for Windows in conjunction with MAS 500 to transmit document types not listed above (such as an ASN -- advanced shipping notice).

Beyond just transmitting these documents, however, DocuFire adds these capabilities:

  • Digital document archiving
  • Integrated fax, email, and printing
  • Automatic delivery method selection

If you select the Standard or Deluxe Editions (as opposed to the Basic Edition), the following capabilities are made available, as well:

  • Custom accounting forms (MAS 500 reference: Business Forms),
  • Multiple contact distribution,
  • Recipient routing,
  • Multi-Company support,
  • Attachment support,
  • Sender aliasing,
  • Document routing,
  • Recipient distribution lists, and
  • The ability to group multiple documents by recipient.

Another possible extended solution for automating document transmittals beyond MAS 500's native capabilities is PDFBlaster. This solution allows you to auto-generate documents as faxes, emails (with attachments), or just PDFs directly from MAS 500 as your accounting application.

DocuFire for Windows and PDFBlaster are a couple of relatively low-cost solutions and should be investigated if you are facing any of these challenges using MAS 500's standard document transmittal capabilities.

Just think about the hundreds of dollars your firm can save in postage or paying someone to stand at a fax machine for hours every month.

-- Richard D. Cushing