Email Aliases and client logins for bookkeeping

  • 21 October 2021
  • 18 replies
  • 438 views

Userlevel 7
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  • Sr. Karbon Community Guide
  • 1112 replies

We do a fair amount of bookkeeping and are looking to expand that part of our business.

We discovered that if we create a distribution list, the email comes through to Karbon as one email on two people’s triage lists. We use this for department-level email management. If one person clears the email, it still stays on all other triage lists until cleared, so it’s a little cumbersome in that regard, however, any notes, comments, and assignments are visible to all when made by one.

Next what we did is we created aliases in our system for that distribution list.

Example: bookkeeping@ourcompany.com is a distribution list that gets sent to three of our staff.

acme_stores_llc@onmicrosoft.ourcompany.com is an alias of bookkeeping@ourcompany.com so all emails sent to the first come through the second.

We use this alias email when setting up online logins to that client’s online banking and vendor portals.

What is really cool is that when we list this email address as one of the client’s email addresses, incoming email to that address automatically get added to that client’s timeline. It still comes through Triage, but we no longer need to manually add it to the client’s timeline.

This saves us a step and makes it easier to make sure that every email is on the proper timeline somewhere.

I’m looking forward to Karbon’s shared mailbox feature which seems like it will make this system work even a little better.

What do you think? Are there other things that your firm is doing to automate and take advantage of Karbon’s unique approach to email?


18 replies

Userlevel 7
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@max This is great, I love the idea of not having to assign incoming email to a timeline. We have been hesitant with aliases, we found that ownership of the email and any responses needed would get muddy.  I think we need to revisit,

How do you deal with who ‘owns’ the email?

I am also looking forward to the shared mailbox as a solution.

Another feature I appreciate with Karbon’s approach to email is that using the comment feature and @ we can include a team member in the correspondence without having to forward the email to that team member.  There can be a downside if the email stream take a turn or gets long...

Userlevel 7
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How do you deal with who ‘owns’ the email?

Our team is a manager and two staff, so they all get the email and can take action on it. The cool thing with Karbon is that it’s truly one email object that three people get to see in their triage, so whomever gets to their triage first will assign it to the owner and attach to work as necessary. We are all pretty good with zero inbox, so the emails get delegated out pretty quickly.

Another feature I appreciate with Karbon’s approach to email is that using the comment feature and @ we can include a team member in the correspondence without having to forward the email to that team member.  There can be a downside if the email stream take a turn or gets a long…

For sure, lol. I uncheck myself from notifications quite regularly, lol.

 

Userlevel 2
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Guys.. I’m curious.. what’s the new ‘shared mailbox’ feature?!

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

Guys.. I’m curious.. what’s the new ‘shared mailbox’ feature?!

It’s a feature currently under development or on the development calendar (cannot remember which) where Karbon will work with shared mailboxes in O365 (not sure how they will make it work in gSuite as it doesn’t support shared mailboxes). A team will have access to a standalone mailbox. It’ll be another triage under your personal triage.

Once one person delegates/schedules a triage item, and clears it, it’s cleared for anyone else in the team.

you can respond from the mailbox instead of your own email, and you’ll be able to have signatures based on your different sending email addresses.

We use one shared mailbox now for all of our incoming bookkeeping stuff and for our incoming customer service stuff. Our bookkeeping and admin teams can see incoming emails from clients or their vendors and will be able to deal with it as a group in a first come, first serve, kind of way.

There’s a video somewhere. Perhaps someone will link it.

 

Userlevel 2
Badge +2

@max Wow - mind blown!! If anyone has it, that would be amazing!

 

Thank you

@Emily Wilson where you able to find he video explaining this in a bit more detail? I am looking for a solution as well.thanks!

Userlevel 3
Badge +8

How this development is going since it has been 6 months? I am interested to have a “shared box” in Kabon for all, say bookkeeping team, or payroll team, to use the shared box to communication with client, ie, receiving email with clients, and replying email to client.

Userlevel 7
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It works great for us. We only use two shared inboxes, one for admin which does most of the client communication, and one for bookkeeping. We had our admin manager go out for a few days and it was great. We could manage the incoming email without her while she was gone. Clients never knew the difference.

We made the bookkeeping email a catch-all email address so we can make instant ad hoc email aliases for each client, which we use when setting up portal and app access. Since the alias is attached to the client’s profile, the email gets routed to the proper client automatically.

Userlevel 3
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@max   Great to know.

The issue I am having is that Karbon doesn’t allow to use alias email to sign in. So when the team reply client in triage, the client get an email from their own email address rather than alias email address. How this is solved? Is it because you use client APP to make all the communication and  that client APP support to use an alias to receive as well as SENDING emails back to client using the same alias email? 

 

Thanks

Mike

Userlevel 7
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@MikeLiang I told Karbon what we were doing, and they added “Send From” addresses for us so that we can choose a default and alternative send-from email addresses:

 

Userlevel 3
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That’s great. I didn’t know that, I will ask for that as well. Thanks.

Userlevel 3
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So I assume above screenshot is from a user’s “Triage”? Is anyone in the team can choose the which alias to use in “send from”? 

 

Mike

Userlevel 7
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There are three people in our office who use the same send-from email address. We had to set them each up individually with Karbon.

Userlevel 3
Badge +8

Exiting to hear that, that is exact what we need. My last round today:

  • Is karbon able to set up alias email as the default email in sent from?
  • Do I need to talk to karbon success manager, or anyone in the support chatbox? 

Mike

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

Exiting to hear that, that is exact what we need. My last round today:

  • Is karbon able to set up alias email as the default email in sent from?

I think the selection is modal meaning it sticks to the last selected option.

  • Do I need to talk to karbon success manager, or anyone in the support chatbox? 

We use the support chat and they were able to get it done pretty quickly.

I’m glad other people are going to start using something like this. 😀 We have found great benefit from it.

Karbon is coming out with a better shared triage concept, which I really like, but I haven’t heard much about the progress of its development.

Userlevel 3
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So once this setup, say, if my main email with MS365 is mike@wis.com, and the alias to my main email is bookkeeping@wis.com (the alias is attached to mike@wis.com in ms 365). In Karbon, I get not just me, everyone else assigned (say jack@wis.com,  Tina@wis.com) can use MY alias email bookkeeping@wis.com to send emails to outside parties in Karbon?

 

Really last one, Australia deep night now, thanks.

Thanks,

Mike

Userlevel 7
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I set it up like this:

bookkeeping@accountingfirm.com as a group inbox. Each member of the group can select to add the group emails to their personal inbox, thus adding the emails to their triage.

I told Karbon to add bookkeeping@accountingfirm.com as a send from email address for each of the members.

Does that make sense?

Userlevel 3
Badge +8

Yes, it does:)

Thanks!

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