White label for emailing a record

Before you put the PDF back into Airtable, have you considered just using the Google platform to take the final invoicing step - emailing the invoice straightaway?

The instant you move this document back into Airtable you eliminate the ability to complete the process in a “white-labeled” opportunity to separate the Airtable brand from your process.

Thanks for the suggestion @Bill.French. Yes, I had thought of that.

The real problem right now is that I’m still struggling with whether I should be using Airtable to do this project at all. There are several problems that have gotten me kind of bummed out about this. I can’t generate my invoices directly from Airtable because it can’t generate attractive output. (The Page Designer is okay, but does not seem to work if I’m creating a five page report with lots and lots of variable-length line items.) So I have to copy records from Airtable manually and paste them into the right areas in a Google Sheets template that I designed. With Google Sheets, I can generate very nice output–and I can email directly from there, as you say–but the process of copying and pasting two or three or in some cases four or five different chunks of data out of Airtable and into Google Sheets introduces a very real possibility for error.

Still thinking about it. Anyway, thanks for the response.

William

This is true and why I never recommend an approach like this. Process automation (using the API) is how to best approach this challenge because humans may get it right most of the time, but they won’t some of the time. It needs to be a “lights out” operation - these steps must all happen even when you’re asleep or having a beer watching the sun set.

Indeed, there are other alternatives, but most tend to fail when it comes to precision branding and seamless process automaton.

How are you copying and pasting into Google Sheets?

• copying and pasting individual cells into non-consecutive parts of the sheet
• copying and pasting everything in a single action that places all the info into a single table, preserving columns and rows?

If you are doing the first, I agree that the the possibility for user error is great. However, if you are doing the second, there shouldn’t be much user error.

When I need something with more formatting than Airtable is capable of handling, I copy/paste into a spreadsheet (Excel) as a single action, and uses references or mail merge (into MS Word) after that to reduce the chance of user error.

@kuovonne,

Yes, I’m doing the first approach: copying and pasting different subsets of data from Airtable into non-consecutive sheets in Google Sheets.

I might be working on multiple projects for any given client, so I might have to copy records for the Applebaum project into the Applebaum sheet in Google, then go back, get records for the Bernstein project from Airtable, paste into Google, then back to Airtable to get records for the Caruthers project, etc. The fact that I can easily filter all the client’s current uninvoiced records and group them by project makes the copying and pasting reasonably straightforward. And I don’t have that many projects or clients to invoice that this is something I’d be spending a huge amount of time doing every day. If I was creating 16 invoices daily or even weekly, this would be unthinkable. But I don’t.

And this entire project is, for me at the moment, mainly a test or proof-of-concept experience. I’m generating real invoices that will prompt clients to send me real checks, but I’m trying to do this in Airtable in order to force myself to work in Airtable seriously. This base is replacing the FileMaker system that I’ve been using very successfully for many years. In the FileMaker app, everything is scripted, and very efficient. But I have my own personal reasons for wanting to see if I can’t move clients to Airtable, at least in some cases. And I can’t do that until I’ve persuaded myself that I can actually make Airtable work for myself.

Thanks for all your help responding to my questions!

William

p.s. I am still hoping somebody responds to my post about “keeping someone out of Airtable” in the collaborator forum. Lots of views but no replies. I’m hoping somebody will tell me I’m missing something big… :frowning: