Email Setup

Dryad Receipting can email receipts to donors as PDF attachments. By default, emails are sent through Salesforce's own email system, which needs no extra setup beyond a sender address and email templates. For larger volumes and delivery tracking, you can switch on the optional Dryad Mailer. This article explains how each option works, its limits, how it handles bounced emails, and how to choose. It is written for Salesforce administrators.

How Receipt Emails Work

Whichever sending option you use, a receipt email is put together the same way:

• To: the receipt's Donor Email.
• From: the receipt's Sender Email, which comes from Receipt Settings or, if you use them, the gift's Receipting Account.
• Message: a Salesforce email template (English or French), chosen the same way as receipt templates. Sample templates are created when the app is installed.
• Attachment: the receipt's PDF.

Only receipts with a Delivery Status of "To be Emailed" are sent. That requires the donor to prefer email delivery, an email address on the receipt, and an email template. Once sent, the receipt is marked Email Sent.

Receipts can be emailed in three ways:

• Batch Receipts > Email receipts sends receipts waiting to be emailed. First choose which receipts with Select By: "All", "Issue Date" (a start and end date), or up to 20 specific donors by Primary Contact or Account. Then you pick them from a list, or, above the Table Record Limit, all the matching receipts are sent. The email step of the Create, email, and print receipts option works the same way for the receipts created in that run, without the Select By step. These are the only paths that use Dryad Mailer when it is switched on.
• The Email Receipt action on a single Receipt always sends through Salesforce.
• The scheduled daily email job, if you have scheduled it, sends receipts waiting to be emailed through Salesforce.

The Send Emails Using setting (Salesforce or Amazon SES) chooses the service for bulk emailing. The Receipt Settings article covers every email setting in detail.

Option 1: Salesforce Email (Default)

Out of the box, Send Emails Using is set to "Salesforce". Emails go out through your Salesforce org, like any other email Salesforce sends.

Setup Checklist

1. Add your sender address in Setup > Organization-Wide Addresses, verify it from the email Salesforce sends to that mailbox, and make it available to all profiles. Then enter the same address as the Sender Email Address in Receipt Settings (and on each Receipting Account, if you use them). If the addresses don't match, sending fails with "The sender email address is not specified."
2. Check deliverability. In Setup > Deliverability, Access level must be "All email". New sandboxes are set to "System email only", so no receipts leave a sandbox until you change this.
3. Review the email templates. Edit the sample English and French templates, or create your own, and select them on the Templates page of Settings.
4. Set the Daily Email Limit in Receipt Settings. See the limits below.
5. Improve deliverability (recommended). Ask your IT team to set up DKIM for your sending domain in Setup > DKIM Keys, and to include Salesforce in your domain's SPF record. Emails that are authenticated this way are less likely to land in spam.

Limits

Two limits apply, and whichever is reached first stops sending for the day:

Limit	How It Works
Salesforce's daily email allowance	Salesforce caps the number of emails an org can send to external addresses through automation. In Enterprise, Unlimited and Performance editions, this is 5,000 per day. Developer Edition and trial orgs have much lower limits. Salesforce counts its day in GMT. This allowance is shared with everything else in your org that sends single emails through code or automation, not just receipts.
Daily Email Limit (Receipt Settings)	Dryad Receipting's own cap on receipts emailed per day, 5,000 by default. Set it lower to leave room in Salesforce's allowance for your other emails, or to spread a large mailing over several days. The count resets each day.

Before each group of emails is sent, Dryad Receipting checks both limits. If a group would go over, it isn't sent, and the user sees: "You've reached the daily limit for sending emails. You can continue tomorrow without loss." Unsent receipts stay "To be Emailed", so you can run the email step again the next day and it picks up where it stopped.

Year-end planning. At 5,000 per day, emailing 12,000 annual receipts takes three days through Salesforce. If that is too slow, consider Dryad Mailer.

How Bounces Are Handled

With Salesforce email, a receipt is marked Email Sent as soon as Salesforce accepts the email. Salesforce doesn't report back whether it was actually delivered.

• Problems caught straight away, such as an address that isn't a valid email format, stop that email. The receipt is not marked Email Sent, and the error is shown in the results.
• Bounces that happen later, such as a mailbox that no longer exists or is full, are not recorded on the Receipt or the Contact. The bounce notice goes back to your sender address.

So someone needs to monitor the sender mailbox after each mailing, correct the donor's email address in Salesforce, and resend the receipt. An official receipt that was already emailed can't simply be emailed again: void it and issue a replacement, or print and mail it.

If Bounce Management is turned on in Setup > Deliverability, also tick Return bounced emails to sender, so that bounce notices still reach your mailbox.

Option 2: Dryad Mailer (Optional)

Dryad Mailer sends receipt emails through Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), a high-volume email service, instead of Salesforce. It is switched on by setting Send Emails Using to "Amazon SES", once the connection to Amazon has been set up.

How It Works

1. When you email receipts from Batch Receipts > Email receipts (or the email step of the Create, email, and print receipts option), Dryad Receipting creates an Email record for the mailing, with one Email Recipient record per receipt, and starts sending. The receipts are marked Email Sent.
2. Each email is sent through Amazon SES, and its Email Recipient's Status becomes "Sent" or "Failed" (with an error message). An activity is logged on the donor's Contact.
3. Amazon then reports what happened to each email: delivered, opened, bounced, or marked as spam. Each report is saved as an Email Event and updates the Email Recipient's Delivered, Opened, Soft Bounce and Hard Bounce checkboxes.
4. When all recipients have been processed, the Email record's Status becomes "Complete" (or "Complete with Errors").

Advantages

Advantage	What It Means for You
Higher volume	Not limited by Salesforce's 5,000-per-day allowance or the Daily Email Limit setting, and it doesn't use up the allowance your other Salesforce emails need. Year-end receipts can go out in one run. Amazon applies its own sending quota to your SES account, which is normally far higher.
Delivery tracking	For every receipt you can see whether the email was sent, delivered and opened, on the Email Recipient record. You can report on it, for example to find donors who never opened their receipt.
Bounces recorded in Salesforce	Hard bounce: the address is permanently undeliverable, for example the mailbox doesn't exist. Soft bounce: a temporary problem, such as a full mailbox, that may succeed later. Spam complaint: the donor marked the email as spam. It is treated as a hard bounce, so the donor isn't emailed again by a retry. No more searching a mailbox for bounce notices: build a report or list view of Email Recipients with Hard Bounce checked and follow up with those donors.
Safe retries	The Reset Recipients button on an Email record puts failed and soft-bounced recipients back to "Ready", skipping hard bounces. Then use the Send Email button to try them again.
Email validation	The Validate Email button on a Contact, and on Contact list views, asks Amazon how likely an address is to be valid and saves the answer in Email Validation Status (High, Medium or Low Confidence). Checking addresses before year-end reduces bounces and protects your sending reputation.
Sender reputation	Mail is sent from your own verified domain through Amazon's dedicated email infrastructure, which helps receipts reach inboxes rather than spam folders.

What Setup Involves

Dryad Mailer is an optional feature. Contact Dryad to enable it. Setup includes:

• an Amazon SES account with your sender address or domain verified
• a Named Credential in Salesforce that connects to Amazon
• a Configuration Set in Amazon that sends delivery events back to Salesforce through a secure endpoint on a Salesforce Site
• switching Send Emails Using to "Amazon SES" in Receipt Settings

The Receipt Settings article describes the related settings: Sender Email Address, Configuration Set and Named Credential.

Things to know.

• Each email's attachment must be under 5 MB. Larger PDFs fail with an error on the Email Recipient.
• Delivery and open tracking need the Configuration Set. Without it, emails are still sent, but the tracking checkboxes stay blank.
• Opens are detected when the donor's email program loads images. Some programs block or pre-load images, so treat open tracking as a guide, not a guarantee.
• The single Email Receipt button and the scheduled daily email job still send through Salesforce, and count toward its limits.

Choosing an Option

	Salesforce Email	Dryad Mailer
Setup	Org-wide address and email templates	Amazon SES account and connection, set up with Dryad
Daily volume	Up to 5,000 per day, shared with your other Salesforce emails	Your Amazon SES quota, normally much higher
Delivered and opened	Not tracked	Tracked per receipt
Bounces	Notices arrive in the sender mailbox and must be handled by hand	Recorded in Salesforce as hard or soft bounces, ready for reports
Retrying failures	Void and reissue, or print	Reset Recipients, then Send Email
Email validation	Not available	Validate Email actions on Contacts

Salesforce email is a good fit if you email fewer than a few thousand receipts at a time and can check a mailbox for bounces. Dryad Mailer is worth it if you email large numbers of receipts at year end, need to know which receipts were actually delivered, or want bounces handled inside Salesforce.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Check
"The sender email address is not specified."	The receipt's Sender Email doesn't match a verified Organization-Wide Address available to all profiles. Check Receipt Settings and the Receipting Account.
"You've reached the daily limit for sending emails."	Salesforce's daily allowance or the Daily Email Limit was reached. Run the email step again tomorrow; unsent receipts are still waiting. Check whether other automation in your org is using the Salesforce allowance.
Receipts show Email Sent but donors didn't get them	With Salesforce email, check the sender mailbox for bounce notices and ask donors to check their spam folder. In a sandbox, check Deliverability. With Dryad Mailer, check the Email Recipient's Status and bounce checkboxes.
A receipt isn't offered for emailing	Its Delivery Status isn't "To be Emailed". Check the donor's delivery preference, the email address on the receipt, and that an email template is assigned. Also check the Select By choice in Email receipts: the receipt's Issue Date, Contact or Account must match the filter. Use "All" to see every receipt waiting to be emailed.
Dryad Mailer recipients are "Failed"	Read the Error Message on the Email Recipient. Common causes: missing email address, attachment over 5 MB, or a connection problem with Amazon. Fix the cause, then use Reset Recipients and Send Email.
Dryad Mailer tracking checkboxes never change	The Configuration Set is missing or not sending events to Salesforce. Contact Dryad to check the connection.