Reminders

Your own reminders about one record, and the automatic nudges: due invoices, lapsing estimates, ending contracts and tasks coming up.

Two different things share the name. A personal reminder is one person, one record, one date — the note somebody would otherwise write on a sticky and lose. The automatic reminders under Settings → Reminders are rules you turn on once, which then fire for every invoice or every task that matches.

Personal reminders

Setting one

Open a customer, lead, invoice, estimate, proposal, contract, project, task or ticket and press Remind me (on a lead or a customer it is also on the Reminders tab). Then:

Press Set reminder. You can set a reminder only against a record you can open; there is no separate permission for reminders.

When it comes due

An hourly job finds the reminders that have come due. Each one appears as a notice in the bell (and by text message when that is switched on under Notifications), is emailed if you asked for that, and is counted on the alarm-clock button in the top bar. A reminder is delivered once: the next hourly run does not send it again.

Your reminders

The alarm-clock button in the top bar opens Reminders: the ones set for you, soonest first, with what each is about and a link to the record. One that is due or past shows its time in red. Outstanding and Cleared switch between the two lists. On each row:

• Clear — done with it; it moves to Cleared.
• Put it off — An hour, Four hours, Tomorrow, In three days or Next week, counted from now. It is delivered again when that time comes.
• Remove — deletes it after you confirm.

Only the person being reminded can clear, put off or remove one — including whoever set it for them. A reminder in your list that a colleague can silently delete is worse than no reminder. The Reminders tab on a lead or a customer lists every reminder set against it, for whoever, with whether it has been sent yet.

Automatic reminders

Switching them on

Settings → Reminders, each with its own switch and timing:

Send task deadline reminders to followers as well applies to the three task reminders. It is off by default: a follower asked to be kept informed, not to be chased.

Billable time not yet invoiced

The second card sends a weekly list of work that was done, marked billable and never put on an invoice. Switch on Send the weekly unbilled-time note, tick the days under On these days, and choose who receives it: Each person, about their own time, or The people ticked below, about everybody's time. It goes out at the send hour above. Press Save to keep the whole page.

The wording

Each reminder has an entry under Settings → Email templates, in the Reminders group. Edit the subject and body freely; the placeholders each one understands are listed beside the editor.

The invoice reminders include {payment_url} — a link the customer can settle the bill at without an account. See Taking payments.

Switching a template off stops that one message without stopping the feature, and nothing is recorded as sent — so it starts working again the moment you switch it back on.

What time they go

Reminders to customers are sent from the hour chosen under Send customer reminders from — in the workspace's time — so nobody receives an invoice reminder at three in the morning. The check runs every hour and holds them until that hour each day.

By text message as well

With an SMS provider connected, the invoice due and overdue reminders can also go by text, and staff can be texted their own reminders. Switch each on under Settings → Notifications — see Notifications.

Sent once, not once an hour

The sweep runs hourly and meets the same overdue invoice each time. A record is kept of what has already gone out, so nobody receives the same notice twice.

The reminders with then again every N days are the exception, and only if you ask: set a number to chase repeatedly. Setting it to 0 sends one notice and no more.

When these are not enough

These cover the common cases with a switch and a number. Anything more specific — a different message above a certain balance, a task for the account manager as well, a tag on the customer after the third chase — is what the automation builder is for. It has the same triggers with conditions and a dozen actions behind them.

Addresses on this page

For reference and for anyone scripting against the panel. Everything here needs somebody signed in to the workspace whose role allows it; anybody else is refused.