Plenty of customers still get a paper invoice and mail back a check, because nobody ever had their email address. This feature turns the check run into a way to collect those addresses. The invoice's tear-off payment stub asks the customer to print their email, and when the stub comes back with the check, you photograph it. PortaPro reads the printed invoice number to find the customer and reads the email they wrote. You confirm each one with a couple of taps.
Nothing is saved until a person confirms it. The reading only fills in the card. You check the email against the photo and press Save.
---
Turning It On
Where: Settings → Finance → Invoices, in the Invoice PDF card.
From then on, every invoice for a customer nobody can email invoices to has an extra block at the bottom of the stub:
"Nobody can email invoices to" means the customer's own email is empty (or its billing switch is off) and no contact is set to receive billing emails. Customers who already get invoices by email never see the line. It's also left off a copy you email to someone by hand, because that copy is already going to an email address.
The stub moves up a little to make room. If the invoice is long, the stub goes on its own page, the same way it already does.
---
Scanning Returned Stubs
Where: Customers, then Handwritten Emails at the top of the page (on a phone it's in the ⋮ menu). The button shows a count of stubs waiting for review. It appears once Payment remittance stub and Ask for an email on the stub are both on, or whenever stubs are waiting. Owners, admins and dispatchers can use it.
- On a phone, tap Take photos to use the camera. You can take several in a row.
- Anywhere, tap Upload stubs to pick photos or PDF scans. On a computer you can also drag them onto the box.
- Up to 25 files at a time. One file can hold several stubs, for example a scanner PDF of a whole stack, and each stub gets its own card.
Tips for a good photo: lay the stub flat, fill the frame, and avoid shadows. The printed invoice number has to be readable, because that's how the customer is found.
---
Reviewing a Card
Each card shows the stub photo on the left (tap Open original to zoom) and the fields on the right.
| Field | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Customer | Found from the printed invoice number: "Matched from invoice INV-001480". If the number couldn't be read, PortaPro tries the printed customer name and says "Matched by the name on the stub. Check it's the right customer." Otherwise pick the customer yourself; the search covers name, email and phone. |
| Already gets invoices at… | Shown when the customer already has a billing email. A new address is then added as a billing contact rather than replacing it. |
| What the customer wrote, cleaned up: lowercase, no spaces, "(at)" turned into "@", and common slips like "gmial.com" fixed to "gmail.com". If anything was changed you'll see "Read as …" with the corrections. | |
| Warnings | "Hard to read. Check every letter against the photo." when the handwriting was unclear, and "Mail can't be delivered to … Check the spelling." when that email's domain doesn't accept mail. |
| Email only (don't mail paper invoices) | Ticked when the customer ticked the box on the stub (you'll see Ticked on the stub). Untick it if they didn't mean it. |
| Send a confirmation email | On by default. Sends "You're set up for email invoices from {your company}". It tells the customer the request was heard, and a misread address bounces now instead of on the next invoice. |
Then press Save & next (or Save on the last one), or Skip to set the stub aside without changing anything.
If a stub couldn't be read, the card says why. You can tap Read again, or just pick the customer and type the email yourself.
---
Where the Email Goes
PortaPro never overwrites an address that's already on file.
| The customer… | What Save does |
|---|---|
| has no email | The new address becomes the customer's email, with billing emails turned on |
| already has this exact email | Turns billing emails back on for it, if they were off |
| has a different email | Adds the address as a billing contact named "Billing" (title "Added from a payment stub"), or switches on billing emails for a contact that already has it |
Every save adds a line to the customer's Activity: "Billing email added from a payment stub", with the address and whether they asked for email only.
Email only turns on the customer's Email only (don't mail paper invoices) switch (Edit Customer → Billing). Print Invoices then leaves their invoices out of the batch, as long as someone at the customer still gets billing email. See Printing and Mailing Invoices.
---
Troubleshooting
The "print your email" line isn't on an invoice. Check that both switches are on in Settings → Finance → Invoices, and that the customer really has nobody receiving billing email. A customer with an email on file never gets the line.
The confirmation email bounced. If your company sends invoice email from its own Gmail or Outlook, the bounce lands in that inbox, not in PortaPro. Fix the address on the customer.
The wrong customer was matched. Tap the customer field and pick the right one before saving. Name matches are always flagged so you check them.
"Reading stubs isn't set up on this server yet." Automatic reading isn't available, but you can still pick each customer and type each email.
I skipped one by mistake. Skipped stubs don't come back. Add the email on the customer directly (Edit Customer), or scan the stub again.
---