Introduction

Credit Hound ships with a set of default letters, with corresponding Spindle Document Distribution (formerly known as Spindle Professional*) automations installed when you select Credit Hound as your primary application. There are four kinds of letter in Credit Hound: Chase Letters, Follow Up Letters, Dispute Notifications and Dispute Reports. You cannot change a letter from one type to another.

  • Chase Letters are created as a result of the Write Letter Action in Credit Hounds Rules
    • Pre-emptive Letter
    • Chasing Letter 1
    • Chasing Letter 2
  • Follow Up Letters are generated by chasing an account manually and adding a promise or Call Back to one or more transactions on an account
    • Follow up letter (1)
    • Follow up letter (2)
    • Follow up letter (3)
    • Nobody Available Letter
  • Dispute Notifications are generated by chasing and account manually and adding a dispute reason to one or more transactions, these go to the customer
    • Dispute Notification (contact details)
    • Dispute Notification (no contact details)    
  • Dispute Reports are also generated by chasing and account manually and adding a dispute reason to one or more transactions, but are sent to an internal contact
    • Dispute Report (1)
    • Dispute Report (2)

To create a new letter of a given type, you simply select an existing letter, edit it and then use Save As… to create a copy


Each letter supplied with Credit Hound features a number of expressions holding Spindle Document Distribution ## commands, set in white text, which tell Spindle Document Distribution how to distribute the document, the key one of these commands is the ##CFG…## command, which needs to match the Document Type in Spindle Document Distribution Tools, such as in the example below where the Spindle Document Distribution commands have been set in red text for the purpose of illustration:

The command ##CFG Dispute notification (contact details)## matches the Document Type in Spindle Document Distribution Tools :



Looking at the letter in the Credit Hound Report designer we see that the ##CFG...## command is populated using the field [Letter Name]




Worked Example - Add an additional letter in French

One reason you may need to add additional letters would be to support multi-lingual sites. Here we will add a dispute letter in French, first we need to edit the English letter, saving it with a new name. Let’s call it Lettre de Contestation (with all apologies to native French speakers)



Now if we preview this letter we see that the CFG command has been updated (if it does not update, close and re-open the letter):



We now add the letter body text in French as required and/or make any other changes required :



Then we need to create the Document Automation in Spindle Document Distribution Tools. Again we can copy the existing (English) automation and modify it to our needs:

First we copy the Document Type by right clicking and selecting Copy:



Then select the copy and rename it to the same name we gave the letter in Credit Hound:



We then translate the texts required in the Spindle Document Distribution Automation, including:

  • The email body text:

  • The email subject line:

  • The attachment name:



Depending on the forms used, we may need to change the form backgrounds to ones in French.

We can test this by starting a manual chase in Credit Hound, adding a dispute against a transaction and stopping the chase



Printing this will send the document through Spindle Document Distribution.


Note

*Note: While this document refers to Spindle Document Distribution throughout, the above applies equally to Spindle Professional v6 and earlier.