Shell Programming and Scripting

you probably want to write a script that does the transfer and sends email, and then invoke the script from cron.

Your cron entry should look like:

Code:

00 23 * * 5  /path/to/script.sh 2> /path/to/Error.log

This sets the cron to invoke script at 11:00 pm, since you said you'd receive the files on Friday, you wanna make sure it runs after you receive the file.
And for the transfer itself, I'd suggest scp/ssh instead of ftp. You'll get the files there through a secure tunnel this way, plus you can speed up the transfer by compressing them on the way.
To use ssh, you need to setup the servers with keys, so that the sender can authenticate itself. This is not at all difficult, and there is extensive documentation on the subject.
E.g. here. I personally use RSA keys instead of DSA.

Once that is out of way, you can write the script:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

d=`date +%Y%d%m`
cnt=`ls /path/to/files/offshore*_${d}.zip 2>/dev/null | wc -l`  #how many files do we have?
if [ $cnt -gt 0 ] ; then 
  tar czf - /path/to/files/offshore*_${d}.zip | ssh user@remote.server tar xzf - -C "/path/where/to/dump/them/"
fi

result=$?
if [ $result -ne 0 ]  ; then
  echo "Error ocurred when sending the $cnt files over. SSH returned $result" | mail -s error me@mydomain
else
  echo "$cnt files with date $d successfully sent over" | mail -s transferOK me@mydomain
fi

The tarring is probably a little redundant, since your files are already zipped, but still, you have a more general way, in case you wanted to send over whole directories etc.
In your case, the sending could be simplified to

Code:

scp /path/to/files/offshore*_${d}.zip user@remoteHost:/path/to/targetDir

which wouldn't take much longer. Don't forget to make your script executable:

Code:

chmod 754 script.sh

and test it manually:

Code:

./script.sh