Managing Corporate Gifting Inquiries: Submission to Invoice
The complete workflow for turning inquiry form submissions into Sends. Review submissions, refine recipient data, generate invoices, and collect payment.
When a customer submits your inquiry form, your team gets notified and the inquiry appears in Send To Many ready for action. This article covers the full workflow your sales or customer service team follows to turn an inquiry into a completed Send with generated orders and an invoice.
Getting Notified
Every email address you configured in your inquiry form notification settings receives an email as soon as the form is submitted. The notification includes the customer's name, email, and company so you can identify the inquiry at a glance.
If multiple team members are set up for notifications, everyone receives the same email. Whoever picks it up first can assign it to themselves in the app.
Opening the Inquiry
Open the Send To Many app and go to the Manage Sends page. Inquiries appear in the list alongside other Sends, marked with their source so you can tell them apart.
Click the inquiry to open it. You'll see everything the customer submitted:
- Contact information: Name, email, phone, and company.
- Form responses: Every field from your form: product interest, quantity, date needed, special instructions, and any other custom fields you configured.
- Uploaded files: If the customer attached a recipient address spreadsheet or company logo, the files are listed and ready to use.
What Happens Automatically
Before you take any action, Send To Many has already done some setup:
- Customer created in Shopify: If no Shopify customer exists with the submitter's email address, we create one automatically. If a customer already exists, we associate the inquiry with their existing account. Either way, the customer is pre-linked to the inquiry, so you don't need to search for or assign them.
- Address file queued: If the customer uploaded a recipient spreadsheet, it's attached to the inquiry and queued for import. You don't need to download and re-upload it. When you proceed to the upload step, the file is already there.
Step 1: Review Details and Configure the Send
On step 1 of the Send wizard, review and update the Send details:
- Send preset: Select the appropriate send preset for this order (e.g., Corporate Gifting, Influencer Seeding). The send preset controls settings like order generation, notification behavior, and payment collection. See Send Presets for details.
- Assigned user: Assign the Send to a specific team member if you want to track who's handling it.
- Title: Give the Send a descriptive name (e.g., "Acme Corp Holiday Gifts 2026").
- Notes: Add any internal notes for your team. These are visible only in the admin, not to the customer.
All changes on step 1 save automatically as you make them. You don't need to click a save button.
If the customer uploaded an address file, it imports here. Review the column mapping and confirm it. If you have a saved Import Format that matches the file's headers, the mapping applies automatically.
Steps 2–4: Products, Validation, and Shipping
From here, the workflow is the same as any other Send:
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Products (Step 2): Match or assign products to recipients. If the customer mentioned specific products in their inquiry, use that context to guide your selections. See Creating a Corporate Gifting Order for the detailed step-by-step.
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Validate addresses (Step 3): Send To Many validates every recipient address. Review any flagged addresses and accept suggestions or edit manually.
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Shipping and review (Step 4): Select shipping rates for recipients, review calculated totals per recipient including tax and shipping, and confirm everything looks right.
Step 5: Generate Invoice and Collect Payment
Once everything is verified, click Generate Invoice. Send To Many creates an aggregate draft order in Shopify that serves as the customer's invoice. You can send the invoice directly from the Shopify draft order page for the customer to review, approve, and submit payment.
If your send preset is configured to auto-generate orders on payment, recipient orders are created automatically as soon as the invoice is marked paid. If auto-generation is turned off, you'll receive a notification that the Send has been paid and needs orders generated. You can then review and generate manually when ready. See Send Presets for details on configuring this option.
The Complete Flow
Here's the full sequence from submission to fulfillment:
- Customer submits inquiry on your storefront.
- Your team is notified via email.
- Open the inquiry in the Manage Sends page. Customer and files are already set up.
- Configure the Send: Choose send preset, assign to a team member, add a title and notes.
- Import recipients: The customer's address file (if uploaded) is already queued. Confirm the column mapping.
- Select products, validate addresses, choose shipping: Walk through steps 2–4 as you would for any Send.
- Generate invoice: Create the aggregate draft order and send it to the customer.
- Customer pays: Payment is collected through Shopify's draft order invoice flow.
- Orders generate: Recipient orders are created (automatically or manually, depending on your send preset settings).
- Fulfill orders: Ship products to recipients through your normal fulfillment workflow.
Next Steps
- How the Inquiry Form Works: Overview of the inquiry form feature.
- Configuring the Inquiry Form: Adjust form fields, templates, and notifications.
- Creating a Corporate Gifting Order: Detailed walkthrough of the Send workflow (steps 2–5).
- Saved Import Formats: How column mappings work with inquiry file uploads.