The Google Apps team announced about a new feature for the Google Apps for Business and Google Apps for Government versions of Gmail: read receipts. If enabled by Google Apps admin, user can now monitor the read status of sent e-mails, ReadWriteWeb reports.

This brings Google Apps a little closer to feature parity with Microsoft Outlook, which offers a similar feature.

Google Software Engineer Carl Haverl explained “Read receipts allow senders to monitor the status of the messages they send and allow recipients to acknowledge receipt of mail. Gmail can send a receipt to the sender when recipient opens the message. Read receipts work both internally within users’ organization and externally, so they can help improve communications with customers and partners.”

Automatic receipts will only be available within the same domain. Admins can choose to enable manual receipts but leave automatic receipts disabled.