PDF Statements for E-Mailing

Last Revised: October 1, 2019

The instructions below describe how to generate .pdf versions of statements and send an e-mail to taxpayers who have registered on your tax office web site to receive statements by e-mail. The e-mail will contain a link that taxpayers should click to retrieve their statements. They may also contain a link allowing taxpayers to begin the payment process.

Statements are sent only to taxpayers who have verified their e-mail address after the initial registration (See Register for Electronic Statements for information about online registration). Statements can be emailed after supplements are processed if the Sequence No. field contains a sequence from the CAD tables. E-statements will not be created unless receivables exist for that account and year.

After the process below is run, the statement images will also be available on the ACT Statements screen and on the E-Statement screen. Statements will be e-mailed to owners even if they will also be mailed to their mortgage company. Statements will be sent to each e-mail address on an account unless the address is marked as a bad e-mail address or the request has been expired.

If your tax office wants to track which e-mails bounce back (i.e., fail to reach the recipient) in order to send printed statements instead, your office may need to work with your IT department. A valid e-mail address will need to be used in the client preference EMAIL_ADDR_OF_E-STMT_SUBMITTER, since the failure messages will be sent to that e-mail address. Each failure will need to be handled individually by checking the Bad Address box for that specific account/e-mail combination.

Note: Before creating the certified data file for the print vendor, you must run batch menu no. 1346, Create Fiduciary Requests for E-Statements. The fiduciary used must have an 'ES' type. This should be done before running batch menu no. 1305, Fido Request Report by Year.

Using ACT's statement wizard, accounts that will be receiving statements by e-mail can also be included in the data file being sent to the print vendor. To do this, you (or ACT personnel handling this for you) can indicate on the Bill Control Configuration screen that Group 5, for e-statements, should be sent statements. All accounts that have been registered to receive statements by e-mail will be placed in this group and handled as other groups are when the data file(s) are created. These accounts must have a status of A and not have an expired date in the E-Statement screen. They must also have a fiduciary request for a fiduciary with an ES Type. Do NOT check the Statement box this group if you do NOT want to send printed statements to the same accounts that are being e-mailed statements.

Client preferences:

JUR_ADDRESS1, JUR_ADDRESS2, JUR_ADDRESS3: Enter the tax office name (for ex., the name of the county or school district) and address. If JUR_ADDRESS1 is expired, the name used in ACT's client table will be substituted.

STMT_IMAGE_URL: This must be set to the directory path used for storing the statement pdf files for retrieval on the E-Statement screen. The default path is https://actweb.acttax.com/act_images/statements/[client]/, where 'client' is the name of the directory to be created if it does not already exist.

EMAIL_ADDR_OF_E-STMT_SUBMITTER: This must be set to [something]@[entityname].propertytaxoffice.org, for ex., taxoffice@brazoria.propertytaxoffice.org. Only the portion before the '@' can be changed. If anything else is changed, the email address may be blacklisted. Contact ACT for more information.

URL_LINK_FOR_ESTATEMENT_PAY: Enter the URL to use for a Pay Here link placed on e-statements created with BMI 1646. If expired, no link is put on these statements.

TAX_OFFICE_EMAIL: (Bexar County only) Enter the email office for the tax office to use for the "Contact the tax office at...".

COLLECTOR_CREDENTIALS: Credentials (for ex., RTA) for the tax collector (Dallas County only).

To generate these statements and e-mail them, follow the instructions below:

Each tax office using the process below must first create a that has a fiduciary type of 'ES'. This can be done on the Fiduciary Master screen.
From the Main Menu, click on Products, then Batch Products. The ACT Batch Menu will appear.
Click on the PDF Statements for E-Mailing line, batch menu no. 1646.
Press Enter. The parameter screen for this process will appear.
Enter your tax office's Client ID if it is not already there.
Enter the Tax Year for the statements. Statements will be created for account/e-mail combinations having requests for that year and earlier.
In the Fiduciary No. field, enter the fiduciary number for the fiduciary having a fiduciary type of 'ES'. A fiduciary request is created for each statement that is e-mailed that does not already have such a request (these may be been created using batch menu no. 1346). This allows the certified statement billing process to have the option of ignoring these accounts when selecting accounts for which statements will be generated.
Leave the default of I (In-house) in the Statement Source field or enter V if you have received a set of individual .pdf files from a printing vendor. These files must have been loaded into the ACT database prior to running the batch menu process. A nightly process is run to load these images or batch menu no. 1098 can be run instead.
Leave the Sequence No. field blank unless you want to send statements for a group of accounts in the CAD table, in which case enter the CAD Seq. No.or, if the Statement Source was set to V, you must enter the statement sequence number for the already loaded .pdfs. This number is in the act_statements table. Only one statement can be sent for each sequence number.
Leave the Names of Extra Files field blank or enter the names of files (separated by commas) that you want to include on the same e-mail that contains the pdf of the certified statement. These files must be uploaded using the File Upload button on the Batch Menu screen.
(optional) In the Sample Percentage field, enter a percentage of statements to create if you only want to send a few out first (for ex., enter 10 for 10%).
In the Sample Email Address field, enter an email address of one statement request if you want to include that request in the sample (see above step).
In the Print SB2 Message field, enter Y to print a message about SB2 ($100,000 HOM exemptions) on a separate page for each statement. Enter N to not include this page.
Leave the Table Type field blank unless the accounts to use are in the trigger table (enter T), statement accounts table (enter S) or statements table (enter R). For normal annual processing (except for Dallas County), leave this blank. If not left blank, you must enter a Request Seq. No. (see below).
Leave the Request Seq. No. blank unless you have entered a specific Table Type above, in which case enter the request sequence number of the group of accounts in the table indicated above.
Click Submit Job.
Click OK on the "OK to Submit Job" pop-up screen.
To see when the process is finished, see Previewing and Printing Reports. A log files lists the number of statements processed and any accounts for which statements were not sent.
An e-mail is sent to each account that contains a link to the .pdf version of the statement. If the account also has a fiduciary request for a mortgage company or agent, a statement to that effect is included in the e-mail. A fiduciary request for the fiduciary with the ES type is also added for each account. A note is inserted for each statement sent.