How To Batch Process Letters And Emails

Once letter contacts have been scheduled for your accounts, you can print the queued letters in your daily batch using Scheduled Batch Letters or Letter Service. Letter batches may be printed for Debtors, Clients, or Cosigners.

For large volumes, we recommend outsourcing to a Letter Vendor. Please refer to the Help topic How To Use Letter Service for more information.

Letter Printing may be accessed in two ways:

1. From the Main Menu, select Daily Administration to display the Daily Administration menu. Select Daily Batch Processes to display the Daily Batch Processing menu. Then select Scheduled Batch Letters.
   • Or, select Print from the top menu bar and then select Daily Reports from the drop-down choices. This will display a sub-menu. Select Scheduled Batch Letters.
2. Either way, you will be prompted to print Letters or Labels. Select LETTERS to display the Batch Letter Options form where you may set options, for instance, a Date Range to include in the batch, or an Operator ID. By default, the last 30 days are populated in the Start and End Dates in case letters were missed due to holidays.
3. Press F1 for help on the Batch Letter Options form. Set the options as you wish and then select the PRINT button.
4. Select either Printer or Email. Printer will look for any pending Letter Contacts that have a Report Definition with Email selected on the Report Options and email them, then print the remaining letters. Email will only process the email versions. Click the PRINT button to proceed.
5. If printer was selected, you will get a prompt about printing to the local printer. This is to ensure that you wanted to print them locally, rather than send them to a letter vendor. This is also an opportunity to check your printer to make sure that there is enough paper and toner.
6. When the batch is complete, you will be prompted to mark the Contacts as done. Select the applicable option.
7. Review the summary screen for the quantity of letters printed and skipped. Skipped letters are written to the Application Log.

Debtor Letters

Debtor notices are letters scheduled to be printed in a batch. When you are on a Debtor, you can print a letter immediately or schedule a Letter Contact to put a letter in the print queue. Notices will be sent to a Debtor only if there is a check mark in the check box labeled Address OK in the Debtor form and are not set to Closed in the Mode field.

On the Batch Letter Options form, you can override this by selecting Print to Unverified Addresses and Print to Closed Accounts. Print to Unverified Addresses is useful for Letter Service if your provider offer address checking against the National Change of Address list.

Print To Email

You can print a letter batch to "Email" if you have an email address on the Debtor and email is setup properly as per How To Setup Sending Email In Collect!. Please refer to the Help topic How To Send Email for more information.

On the Batch Letters form, if you select Email as the Destination, you will have more options.

Skip Empty Email Addresses will skip accounts that do not have the Email field filled in.

CC Cosigners will send copies of the email to Cosigners. This option is not dependent on the Print to Cosigners box on the Batch Letter Options screen.

When a letter is printed to email, Collect! will save the Contact as a Email contact, not a Letter contact. The Description field will contain the name of the Letter that was emailed. It is set to type Email for tracking purposes.

Contact Controls

If you have created Contact Controls for Letter or Email types, then Collect! will evaluate the control before printing. If the account violates the control, then the letter will be skipped.