Payment notification email problems

[AndyK]

Payment notification emails don’t work as documented in the Knowledgebase.

There also seems to be no way to know whether an acknowledgement has already been sent, and if so, when it was sent.

Details:

(1) A payment appears in my bank current account (open banking feed). I tick “Tag me”, choose “Payment from a customer”, tick the box to “send an email notification” then select the relevant invoice.

The payment is tagged but there is no indication that an email has been sent; nor do I get to check or amend the email before sending.

According to the knowledgebase (Payment Notification Emails), I should have been presented with a dialog showing me the recipient, email title and email contents (based on the template) giving me the chance to amend these if required for the specific email. (Essentially this is the same functionality as the “Send an invoice” function and it’s an important feature.)

But that’s not what happens. Once you’ve ticked the box and allocated the payment, that’s it. Gone. No chance to check, amend or add anything.

Also there is no indication that an acknowledgement email was sent - not on this screen, not on the customer record and not on the payment record itself.

(2) Payments made via the online “pay this invoice” button (via Stripe in my case) are automatically tagged to the correct invoice when they appear in the Stripe holding account.

That’s great, but I have no idea whether a payment acknowledgement was also automatically sent when this happened. Was it? Or do I have to go into each payment record and manually generate the acknowledgement?

I don’t mind either way (ideally there should be an option to switch automatic acknowledgement on or off) but it should be clear whether an acknowledgement has been sent or not.

Which brings me to…

(3) The only way I can be sure to send an acknowledgement email is to go to the payment record details and hit the “Send payment received email” button. Here there are two problems:

• Again, there is nothing on this screen to tell me whether an acknowledgement has already been sent.

• When I do hit the button, I get a dialog that shows me the email recipient but nothing else. I can’t amend the email title or contents - I’m not even shown them.

[QFSteve]

Hello Andy

I don’t believe the Support article is wrong , but could be improved.

On your first point

The instructions follow the process of opening and invoice and clicking "Log Payment as shown below

When this process is followed you get the option to edit the draft email which is sent

When you send a payment confirmation when tagging a payment you are not given this option
Tagging an invoice is supposed to be a quick process, rather than dragging you down with customisations etc.

If you have a Power User subscription you can view all emails sent via
Account Settings > All Settings > Sent Email Log

On your second point

The payment is automatically saved against the invoice(s) they paid. They would see a payment confirmation message. In the case of Stripe, yes an email is sent to the logged in user. A copy of which can be seen in their Stripe account - QuickFile doesn’t do this, Stripe does.

Similarly with GC, they send confirmation of the Direct Debit being setup and charged etc. as part of the Direct Debit guarantee.

Chances are, all payment processors send confirmation of some sort.
But it’s best to check with them directly

On your last point

If you have a Power User subscription you can view all emails sent via
Account Settings > All Settings > Sent Email Log

[rhc]

Hi,
I know it is not ideal but for now there are global email template settings under https://YOURCOMPANY.quickfile.co.uk/account/emails. Maybe this is helpful for now.

Also, under Account Settings, there is an Email Log which should give you some details about sent emails.

[QFSteve]

As a side note

You may wish to log a feature request for these points so other users can vote on them as they may be useful.

• Again, there is nothing on this screen to tell me whether an acknowledgement has already been sent.
• When I do hit the button, I get a dialog that shows me the email recipient but nothing else. I can’t amend the email title or contents - I’m not even shown them.

[AndyK]

@QFSteve Thanks for the replies. In order…

The support article specifically starts, “When marking an invoice as paid or tagging a client payment from the bank…” then goes on to explain what you’ll see. So I expect to see the same in both cases. I think the support article describes correct behaviour, and the failure to show that dialogue in latter case is a bug.

It’s no good to me that is does happen if you use “Log a payment” from the invoice screen isn’t relevant, because the support docs advise against using that when processing a payment in a live bank feed - for the very good reason that it will lead to duplicate records in the feed.

Showing the dialog would make the tagging process exactly one click slower than without it. On the other hand it serves the very important function of reminding you that you are about to send an email, and that this is what it will say. That’s obviously why it’s done that way when creating an invoice or logging a payment from the invoice screen.

Thanks for pointing out the sent email log. At least it lets me work out what happened, but I think you’ll agree it’s hardly an efficient audit trail. (“Did I send her an acknowledgement for both those payments? I can’t remember. I know, I’ll just trawl through the past few days’ email logs looking for her email address…”)

So, I’ll put in a feature request for showing acknowledgement status, though it’s really something that should have been thought of right back when the acknowledgement option was added.

As for the dialog showing the email details for approval/amendment, all I’m asking for there is for the system to do what the documentation says it does. That’s not a feature request, that’s a bug report.

@rhc Thanks for the comment. I already customised the global email template, but this is about the individual responses. It’s important to be able to add a personal note or amend the subject line when required (and it reduces the chances of the email getting spam-trapped or ignored).

[QFSteve]

Hello Andy

Thank you for your feedback regarding this

I will pass your comments on to our Development team.

As it stands the differences between the two screens are by design as tagging an invoice is supposed to be a quick process, rather editing emails (which can be customised by default as per @rhc’ comment ).

If you are using a live bank feed, you are correct you would want to avoid duplication

I will get the article adjusted to make this clearer