How do I send a receipt?

Self-Hosted | v5
1

I’m sure I’m doing something silly because this has worked in the past, but I can’t for the life of me work out how to send a customer a receipt for a payment.

Here’s what I did to the best of my recollection:

  1. Entered a new client into the system using Clients > Create in the Windows 11 desktop application v5.8.57-W160 (self hosted). Everything seemed normal.

  2. Emailed a PDF invoice to the customer, which she has paid by bank transfer.

  3. Imported the latest bank statement from a CSV using Settings > Import | Export > Transactions > Select File. Everything seems normal and the transaction showed as “Unmatched” in Transactions.

  4. Clicked the transaction in question, selected the invoice and clicked Create payment (or perhaps I clicked Link payment? I’m not sure I understand the difference.) I expected to see an “Email” button but there was none.

  5. Confirmed that the transaction status is now “Converted” and the invoice status is now “Paid” as I expected. If I click the invoice I do now see a “Send Email” button at the bottom right. But when I click it, the email it’s about to send is a reminder message, not a thank you message. I definitely don’t want to send a reminder so I clicked Back.

  6. I thought I must have inadvertently changed the template for the “Payment” message, but if I go to Templates & Reminders > Template > Payment I see the expected “Thank you for your payment of $amount.” message.

Any idea what’s going on?

2

Hi,

@david does converting a transaction to a payment cause a payment email to be sent?

3

Hmm, this is weird. If I find the payment in question in the Payments menu and click the Completed button, then select the “kebab” menu at the top right, there is a Send Email option. Clicking that immediately sends a receipt email (with no opportunity to edit it, unlike the others). So my customer has her receipt now.

But the invoice itself (and any other paid invoice) still has only various reminder options available. So it seems the source of my misunderstanding is that payments can be receipted but not invoices. There’s a sort of logic there.

4

If manual payment emails are enabled, then creating a payment from a transaction will fire an email.

@philmck that is correct, you don’t get a preview window prior to sending for payment emails, the default template is used.