Printing Statements
Mike_C1
Member Posts: 14
Please add a facility to print statemants. Some of my customers don't have email addresses and need a statement on paper.
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Hi, @Mike_C1.
Thanks for your feedback! Could you tell me in what field you work in? Do you find that you have a lot of customers who don't have email addresses? The more information we can have on your business and client base, the better will be able to assess this feature suggestion.
I know that there are a few users who use a PDF creator extension for their browser to download and print customer statements. It might be worth trying to do that for now.
I am a director of an IT company in the UK and have experience of operating and selling accounting software over more than 30 years. I am now operating a small company in the Philippines with students and low paid people as customers, many of whom don't use email since alternative methods of communication are easier and more desirable i.e WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook to name but a few. I have tried a number of ways of generating a printed statement from Wave but as the software stands this is difficult. A cut and paste to Word for instance overflows an A4 document and therefore isn't practical. You provide a print option for invoices why the reluctance with statements?
Hi, @Mike_C1.
I wouldn't say that we're reluctant to build this feature as much as it simply isn't something that we haven't prioritized yet. Detailed feedback like this is exactly the kind of information that helps our product team assess what we should build next, so thank you for taking the time to follow up with us.
While this isn't a solution to the problem at hand, you might be interested to know that you can send invoices through those apps, if you send them out with the Wave Invoices app. It doesn't solve your issue with Customer Statements, but I thought it might still be useful in your situation.
I am aware of the Invoices App which I find useful My problem is that the authors have presumed that everyone is computer savvy and has an email address. This isn't the case in the Philippines.
The receipt facility is great but needs development. The receipt data needs to be searchable. It should also be accessible from the transaction to which it relates. It would also be nice to be able to add a receipt after the transaction has been created. (Quick-Books stores the link to the receipt with the transaction)
There is a bug in the receipts software. I have two data sets in one login. One is in GB Pounds the other in Philippine pesos. On random ccasions the receipt in the UK data set comes up as pesos when it should be pounds. Easy enough to correct but it shouldn't happen.
Please understand that I am trying to help you with constructive criticism. On the whole I think Wave is great and I enjoy using it.
Hi, @Mike_C1.
Thank you for your feedback!
As for the issue with currencies changing, there haven't been reports of other issues with the currency changing when scanning a receipt. The currency should be to the default currency of your business, which you can then change. Currency selection isn't automated. Can you give me more details on how this happens and where the currency is changed?
The more information you can give us, the better we'll be able to resolve or explain what might be happening.
I have two data sets within one login. One is in PHP and the other is in GBP. The PHP set has no problem with all transactions being in PHP. The GBP receipts randomly get recorded as PHP. I watch out for this before posting but have missed it on odd occasions in which case the value of the transaction appears to be converted to GBP. The problem seems to arise when the scanned document is being interpreted within Wave..
The next time you encounter one of those receipts, @Mike_C1, can you take screenshots of the receipt itself, and the receipt as it appears in Wave with the wrong currency?
This will help us report your issue to our engineers to better investigate, as I can't seem to replicate the issue from here.
Ok no problem.
TOTALLY AGREE WITH THIS!!
A facility to print Statements would be a great help
The receipt is accessible from the transaction. This is good. This only works for payments. There is a need to link documents to Bills and Income items which are not invoiced.
I was just trying out Wave with a view to switching to it for my 2019 business books. The fact that I cannot print statements is the deciding factor. I will have to remain with QuickBooks. I deal with a lot of small garages that expect their statements via mail. I tried the incognito method suggested by an administrator. The statement printed with a Chrome header and the link informaton on the bottom of the page. This does not look professional.
Iam723 is absolutely right. Running a sales ledger on an invoice basis is Ok for very small operations but where customers have multiple invoices in a month a statement is essential and like invoices needs to be sent by email or printed.
Hello @Mike_C1 , @emerhally65_ and @lam723 ! I have spoken to the Product Manager on the invoicing product about your request. The team is currently in the process of rebuilding a lot of the backend functionality powering the invoicing side of Wave. Given that Customer Statements are generated with invoices that get created, they too will be getting a rewrite in the near future. Printing functionality will definitely be included in this upgrade. I know this doesn't help you now but know that this is coming in the future.
In the meantime, by printing Customer Statements, is this purely for your clients' record keeping? Would you be sending the statements after all invoices have been paid or while some are still unpaid? I know that the reasoning behind being digital-only now is to allow for customers to link to all unpaid invoices, which can't be done when printed. I would love to know how these would play into you and your business' day to day.
Statements are a means whereby customers can see what they owe. This can be reconciled with their purchase ledger and form the basis of settling accounts on a monthly basis. In a business processing multiple invoices for some suppliers it isn't practical to pay on an individual invoice basis. In the past I insisted on having a statement from each supplier in order to be sure that I had all their invoices and they had allocated all my payments correctly. A supplier's statement is as important as a bank statement. We can now access our bank statements online and there may come a time when I can access supplier's statements online but until that happens I need their confirmation that I owe what I think I owe.
@zuza - Most of our customers are cash payers. Those who have credit accounts are mostly small automotive shops who pay their bills by check. Most of them would not be willing to pay the service fee for paying online, and I'm sure there are some who don't even do anything online. The Statements are just showing them their unpaid balance at the end of the month.
I really need the ability to print a statement as well. Unfortunately a lot of my payment reminder emails seem to go into spam, or my clients aren't checking their email or are avoiding my payment request emails! Many of my invoices show "Never" for the date when the client opened it, so I have to resort to snail mail and printed copies. I tried to print a statement for a client the other day and there was no way to do it without some kind of print header on it. I finally printed the screen and used scissors to cut off the header -- kind of ridiculous.
Hey @Barbara @Iam723 and @Mike_C1, thank you all for your feedback on this, and for giving us some context! This information is so beneficial to our product team. We are listening and we fully understand that this feature would be a game changer for each of you. I can't give you an ETA on when something like this will be available but I can say that we will update this thread as soon as we have any new information! Thanks.
I also need to be able to print statements.
Most of my customers are Horse Stables. Delivering a Invoice, and Statement, is important to both me and my customers. I do not like to deliver a product and say 'Please check your email'
Thank you,
Stephen
Hey Stephen @Smooooth. This is something that we're currently exploring (the ability to print customer statements in Wave). Our Sales Service team is looking at improving a number of different features in Wave, and a lot of the forum activity regarding these posts are playing a fairly big factor in determining what we can/cannot do at the current moment. Stay tuned.
I would also say this is a very important feature. We own a small mobile home park in Washington state and most of our tenants are older people that don't own computers or have email addresses. When they come to pay their rent each month, they come to our office and give us a check or cash. We want to be able to print their receipt for them right there and the process of hitting send receipt, then copying the link to a browser, and then printing from there is cumbersome and seems totally unnecessary. We also want to be able to provide them with a statement at times if they are behind in their rent or something, but we have to go through the same process to get a hard copy statement when it could easily be put into the software.
I'm trying really hard to like Wave, but there are just so many senseless omissions.
I've been using it for the last several months.
I keep coming up against things that Wave can't do.
Things that should have been included from day one.
I need to print a statement for a customer. Or save it as a PDF. Nope, no way to print or save a statement.
Why? It's not as if saving to PDF is a thing that Wave can't do at all. Other documents, like invoices, can be printed or saved as a PDF. Why not statements?
It just doesn't make any sense to me.
And I have to mention again how crazy it is that there's no facility to create credit notes!
I really want to like Wave but when I keep coming up against one silly limitation after another it's very hard to keep on using it and to justify the headaches involved.
On the face of it Wave seems brilliant, and for the most part it's been done well, but why all of the inconsistencies and omission of the most basic features?
TJ
Hey @TJ_in_ZA
Thanks for this honest opinion. You're not wrong when you state that creating a downloadable PDF for a customer statement seems like an easy ask. As someone who doesn't know much about coding, what I can tell you is that our team has been working hard on a few other services coming soon. One was the account reconciliation tool (which as most of you may notice has quite a new and improved look and functionality). Our invoices back end is being revamped so that we can finally roll out some new changes to the invoicing front end. So the team's priorities are shifting constantly. But I will let you know that this is something I will bring up to a member on the Sales team.
As far as it goes in the community, most of us are support reps reaching out to you, not always developers, and we trust and believe that our team is working hard on listening to users and creating what they believe is going to bring a great user experience. We are a cloud based platform and have operated under the assumption that most things would remain paperless.
That being said, a workaround for me would be to click Send > Copy the link into a new chrome browser > Select File > Print > then export a PDF from your printer settings.
Thanks again for reaching out about this.
Hi BarsinA
You mention the new Reconciliation facility. I tried the old one a couple of years back and didn't like it so I didn't use it. My bank is reconciled daily but the legacy data in the new rec precludes me from using it. Is there any way to start from scratch in the new rec? I don't want to try and clear two years of transactions with a fundamentally wrong start point. I can live without it but it would be nice to have it correct.
Regarding statements, you say you want to avoid generating paper. If they can be printed a PDF is perfectly acceptable, this is what I would use. From time to time we have customers who don't have computer facilities when a paper statement would be a necessity.
Hi BarsinA,
That idea was the first thing that came to mind when I initially had the problem of not being able to save statements as PDFs.
However, there is then a large banner at the top of the page saying: "You are previewing your customer's copy of their statement. Go back to Wave or Send"
Obviously I don't want that appearing at the top a statement I send to my customer.
I noticed in your post (above) that you mentioned opening the link in a new browser window and, when I do that, the banner isn't there, which is great.
So, thank you for that advice.
If anyone else has this same problem with wanting to print or save a statement, then be sure to open the link to the statement in a new browser window.
From there you can print the statement to paper or print it to a PDF.
TJ
why can't I send a statement as a PDF? IF I use the command + Print it prints on TWO pages. why can't this be simplified ASAP?
Hey @vansp and Welcome to the Wave Community Forum!
The Customer statement in Wave is currently not able to be printed because the statement contains links to each of the unpaid invoices that the customer owes. The aim is for your customer to be able to open each of the invoices and providing a PDF would not allow for this functionality. While we definitely acknowledge that not all of your customers may use a computer, currently, the software is set up to support businesses who function online, as we also provide options for getting your invoices paid online to shorten the time that you wait to get paid. In saying that, the invoices can be saved as PDFs, should your customers not want to pay online.