Workflow Automation for Magento

The Automatic Invoice Extension for Magento enables shop owners to do repetitive tasks like generation of shipment documents or sending the PDF invoice to the customer automatically - without any interaction in the Magento backend.

The Automatic Invoice Extension is a workflow tool that is - in general - able to execute one or a series of arbitrary actions based on several filters.

The actions are executed asynchronously by a queue so they do not interrupt e.g. the order workflow in the frontend.

Installation

For installation and requirements of the Automatic Invoice Extension for Magento please have a look at the file README.md that ships with the module setup package.

Important: The extension makes use of the Magento cron so please assure that the cron is enabled correctly as described in the Magento documentation.

Usage

With the Automatic Invoice Extension you can for example perform any of the following workflows:

  • Create Magento invoice and shipment documents based on several conditions like
    • order status and payment method
    • order grand total
    • inventory status
    • product type
  • Send PDF invoice or shipment to the customer and/or the merchant (see also my Advanced Invoice Layout Extension for Magento for beautiful PDF layouts)
  • Send PDF shipment to fulfiller
  • Save PDF invoice or shipment in filesystem
  • Fully automatically process Amazon/eBay orders in combination with M2EPro
  • .. and many more features

Configuration

The main configuration of the Automatic Invoice Extension can be found at System › Configuration › Automatic Invoice.
After the installation the extension does nothing if you do not explicitly enable the available features through the configuration.

Please find as follows the most important configuration settings:
Setting name Description
Activated for Product TypesAll product types that the Automatic Invoice Extension is activated for. If an order contains any other product type than configured the Automatic Invoice Extension won't do anything for that specific order.
Enable LoggingThis enables logging of all relevant Automatic Invoice actions to the file var/log/Vianetz_AutomaticInvoice.log. It is meant for helping developers in finding the cause for problems and it is definitely recommended to disable this flag in production.
Generate InvoiceIf activated Magento invoice documents will be generated based on the conditions configured below.
Trigger on Payment Methods and Order StatusThe table configures the different combinations of order status and payment method that triggers the Automatic Invoice invoice generation. Therewith you can e.g. configure that payment method "invoice" and order status "pending" generates the invoice.
New Order StatusSet this status as new order status after generating the invoice
Only create if Grand Total = 0Only generate the invoice if the order grand total is zero.
Use Order Comment as Invoice CommentCopy all order comments to the Magento invoice document.
Capture CaseIf set to "Capture Online" the invoice will be sent to your payment provider. Otherwise if you choose "Capture Offline" it will be a regular Magento offline invoice or in case "Not Capture" it will be marked as Pending.
Invoice only items that are in stockIf enabled only items that are currently in stock will be invoiced otherwise all items will be invoiced. This setting is e.g. useful if you use the option Allow Backorders for product inventory but only want to invoice the currently in stock items.
Notify CustomerIf set to yes the invoice transactional email will be send to the customer.
Note: This can be set to "Yes" although you set "Generate Invoice" to "No". Then the invoice email will be sent as soon as the invoice is generated (e.g. by your payment module or yourself in the backend).
For additional information see our FAQ.
Save Invoice PDFThe invoice PDF document will be stored in media/invoices folder of your Magento installation.

Extensibility

The Automatic Invoice Extension can easily be extended by your own actions or filters, like e.g. pushing orders to your dropshipper, calling other 3rd party extensions and so on.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I run the unit tests for your Magento Extension?
See here.
How can I send Magento invoice/shipment emails to store owner only?

With my Automatic Invoice Extension for Magento you can send invoice emails to store owner exclusively (i.e. not to the customer). Therefore you have to set the following configurations:

  • System › Configuration › AutomaticInvoice › Invoice › Notify Customer: No
  • System › Configuration › Sales Emails › Invoice › Send Order Copy Method: Separate Email

The same applies to shipment emails as well:

  • System › Configuration › AutomaticInvoice › Shipment › Notify Customer: No
  • System› Configuration › Sales Emails › Shipment › Send Order Copy Method: Separate Email

What can I do if Magento invoice emails are not sent anymore?
See here.