How Do I Email Payslips and Reports from Lightning Payroll?

Lightning Payroll offers two ways to email payslips, reports and payment summaries from the program. Both are set up under Company >> Email.

If you would like Lightning Payroll to send emails for you, tick the box at the top of the Company >> Email page labelled Have Lightning Payroll send emails for you, instead of using your own email provider? and the program will handle sending for you.

If you prefer to use your own email server, leave that box unticked and fill out the SMTP Server Settings section instead. Lightning Payroll then acts as a basic email client that logs in to your email account to send emails. Each email provider (Bigpond, Optus, Google, Yahoo and so on) has its own SMTP server settings, which may change from time to time. The Lightning Payroll support team cannot provide these email server settings. Likewise, Lightning Payroll cannot troubleshoot error responses from your email provider, because the error comes from your email account and provider, not from Lightning Payroll. The settings for your provider are usually easy to find by searching the internet for terms like "(provider name) outgoing email settings" or "(provider name) smtp settings" — for example, "Telstra Bigpond smtp settings" or "iiNet outgoing email settings".

You can also look up commonly used settings under Company >> Email >> Search for Settings, which uses a third-party email-settings provider to gather the server settings for you.

Once you have entered your SMTP settings, click Send a test email to confirm they are correct.

If you cannot find working SMTP settings for your account, consider using an alternative provider, or tick Have Lightning Payroll send emails for you, instead of using your own email provider? under Company >> Email to use our email server instead.

Gmail Complexities

If you choose Gmail as your provider, be aware it can be tricky to set up, because Google offers a high level of security configurability. The best way to use Gmail for SMTP in Lightning Payroll is to go to https://myaccount.google.com/security and turn on 2-Step Verification. You can then create a Google App Password specifically for Lightning Payroll (choose "Other - Custom Name"). For more information on managing App Passwords, see Google's App Passwords help page.

Microsoft Complexities

As of September 2024, Microsoft has fully deprecated Basic Authentication across most of its services, which includes removing "App Passwords" for email accounts. Because Lightning Payroll relies on Basic Authentication for SMTP, you can no longer use App Passwords to authenticate a Microsoft account for sending emails from Lightning Payroll. For more information, refer to this Microsoft Community post.

To continue sending emails, you now have two options:

• Let Lightning Payroll send emails on your behalf: tick Have Lightning Payroll send emails for you, instead of using your own email provider? under Company >> Email.
• Use an alternative email provider: choose one that still supports Basic Authentication, as Microsoft no longer does.

Lightning Payroll does not support Microsoft's newer authentication methods, so using Microsoft accounts directly for SMTP is no longer possible. We pass this on as a courtesy, and our support team is unable to assist with email troubleshooting, as explained here.