Send Invoices to Several Email Addresses

In Short

A customer carries a single email address, and invoices are sent to that address only: no second recipient and no copy (Cc or Bcc) can be configured. For an invoice to reach several people at the customer, that address has to be an alias, a shared mailbox or a distribution list, or the mailbox receiving it has to forward the invoice. For the merchant to receive every issued invoice as well, the copy is sent by an automation built on webhooks, with Zapier, Make or n8n for instance.

How It Works

Invoices, like the other automatic emails, are addressed to the email registered on the customer. That email is edited in two places: in the customer portal, by the customer, and in the back office, by the merchant. An edit replaces the existing address; it never adds a second one.

Two needs come up, and they are not met the same way:

• Several recipients at the customer. The person who subscribed wants the invoice to reach the accounts department as well, or other people who use the service. The registered address then has to reach all of them, or pass the invoice on to them: the answer lies in the customer’s mailbox.
• A copy for the merchant. The merchant wants every invoice issued to its customers, at an address of its choosing. No copy setting exists, but each invoice issuance can be notified by a webhook — an HTTP call sent to a URL. An automation tool creates that webhook in ProAbono itself, receives its calls and then sends the email.

Electronic Invoicing

With electronic invoicing, invoices between companies reach the invoicing and accounting tools directly, on the customer’s side and on the merchant’s alike. Email delivery then becomes secondary: it remains useful for checking that an invoice contains no error and nothing to revisit.

Steps

Use an alias, a shared mailbox or a distribution list

1. Create, on the customer’s mail server, an address that reaches every recipient — an alias, a shared mailbox or a distribution list, for instance billing@customer.example.
2. Register that address as the customer’s email.

Forward invoices from the customer’s mailbox

1. Keep the address already registered on the customer, for instance that of the person who subscribed.
2. Add, in the mailbox receiving that address, a rule that automatically forwards invoice emails to the other recipients.

Nothing changes in ProAbono, and the merchant has no visibility on that rule.

Send a copy of every invoice to the merchant

1. Create, in the automation tool — Zapier, Make or n8n — a scenario triggered when a ProAbono invoice is issued: events InvoiceDebitIssuedPaymentAuto (automatic payment) and InvoiceDebitIssuedPaymentOffline (offline payment), plus InvoiceCreditIssued to receive credit notes as well. The webhook is created in ProAbono by the tool itself.
2. Add to the scenario an action that sends an email to the address the merchant chose.
3. Turn the scenario on.
4. With a self-hosted n8n instance, validate the webhook: since its domain name is not recognized, the webhook stays inactive until that validation is done. With Zapier and Make, validation is automatic.

See Also

• Customer Email Notifications
• Send invoices to customers automatically
• Customer Portal
• List of Events Notified by the Webhooks
• Sending invoices to your approved platform
• E-invoicing in France: legal timeline and the role of accredited platforms