BlogOffice

Emailing Invoices

Matt is the Best Contractor in the world. He's the handyguy I wished I'd found 10 years ago, when I lived in a 125-year-old farmhouse in the middle of a popcorn field in Indiana. :) But right now he's helping me fix up my Broad Ripple bungalow (wanna see a picture?) to get it ready to sell. Yesterday we were talking about his business and he complained that he hadn't been able to figure out how to email invoices because clients could simply change the amounts if they get an attached doc via email (not that his clients would do that, of course). This morning I thought I'd figure it out...so here you go:

You can protect, but not totally lock, a Word document. The best method for securing data and keeping people from changing information is to create your invoice with all the bells, whistles, and logos you want; then choose Tools > Protect Document. In the dialog box that appears, click Comments. This doesn't totally keep people from making changes but it does limit their changes to comments only. None of the existing data on the sheet can be changed.

And if you really want to clamp down, enter a password; then give the password only to those folks you want to be able to add comments to the invoice. (Of course, if you do that, you'll have to remember the password, which might be more hassle than it's worth, depending on how good you are at remembering things.) Happy weekend, everyone! :) k