Help CenterYou can now schedule changes to Recurring Invoices and also have RECUR360 automatically notify and/or request customer approval for the changes you make. You can set up any kind of change to a recurring invoice, schedule a date for those changes or have them happen after x occurrences of the original recurring invoice, choose if the customer should be sent an email showing those changes, optionally including a link for them to click to approve the changes.
To acess this feature it first needs to be activated on your account. Please contact us to acitivate the feature (additional fees will be charged for the feature). Once activated you can edit a recurring invoice and an additional button will display at the top right of the screen to Schedule Recurrring Invoice Changes.
Clicking that will take you to a setup screen to configure the changes. Depending on the options you choose additional choices will show.
The first choice is when the change will take effect, you can set it to either be effective on a specific date,
or after a number of occurrences of the recurring invoice.
Choice 2 allows you to set if customer approval is required for the change. If you choose yes additional options will show asking how the approval will function.
2A determines what happens if the customer does not approve the change prior to when it is scheduled to take effect. You can either let the original recurring invoice continue, have it stop running, or have the change without the approval. If you choose for it to stop running and the customer does not approve the change it will move to the Completed tab in the Recurring Invoices screen.
To make the recurring invoice active again either the customer would need to approve the change, or you would need to change the setting to not require customer approval.
2B allows you to let the customer approve the change even after the effective date has passed. If set to No the scheduled changes are discarded if not approved before the effective date. Setting it to yes opens option 2C to set what happens if the customer does approve the change after the effective date. The recurring invoice can either advance the start date to the next schedule, or it can run multiple times to catch up from the last processed date to current.
Setting 3 - Should an email be sent to the customer notifying them of the change? If you have selected that customer approval is required for the change then this is automatically set to yes and cannot be changed to No. Note that if a customer has multiple email address on their customer file each email will receive a copy of the notice.
If set to Yes then 3A determines when the email will be sent to the customer. It can be sent immediately or scheduled for a specific date.
3B will add additional text to the body of the email sent to the customer. This text will appear below the information included in the template setup in Settings->Email.
Here is a sample of the email sent to the customer.
You can also set reminder emails to be send after the initial email if the customer has not approved the change.
The bottom half of the screen allows you to set what the changes will be to the recurring invoice. You can edit any of the options including change prices, descriptions and quantities on items already on the recurring invoice. You can also add new line items. Note the Start date and frequency can not be modified in the scheduled changes screen.
After you Submit the changes to the schedule anytime you open the recurring invoice prior to the change becoming effective the top of the screen will show details of the scheduled change.
To make revisions to the changes click the Edit Scheduled Changes button after you open the recurring invoice.
If email notifications were selected an email is sent to each email address on the customer account.
For Dukes Basketball Camp 3 notification emails would be sent. This allows the system to track which email address approved the change. The Email History and Customer screens will both show the emails that have been sent and their status (Sent, Opened, Clicked).
When the customer clicks the Acknowledgement link they are taken to this screen to approve the changes.
Also if that customer goes to their pay online link there will be a notification at the top of the screen to tell them there are upcoming changes waiting for their approval
If they click the "Changes Starting" link it will allow them to resend the notification email to all email addresses on the customer.
Once a customer approves the scheduled changes an email is set to any user login who has notifications for that option set to yes in the Settings->Notifications screen.
Here is a sample of what the notification email shows.
The Recurring invoice screen will show that the customer approved the change.
These scheduled can be modified anytime prior to their start date. If you edit a scheduled change after a customer has approved it you can reset the approval to be able to email another notice.
The main Recurring Invoice edit screen will show a history of changes to the scheduled invoice.
There is also a Scheduled Recurring Invoice Changes report to allow you to see the status of Scheduled Recurring invoice changes.
Scheduled Changes can also be updated using the Export/Import tool. If you have any recurring invoices with scheduled changes and you click the Download Importer CSV template button a new screen will appear asking what types of recurring invoices you want to dowload.
Selecting the Include Changed Recurring invoices will allow you to bulk update/edit the scheduled changes in Excel and then import them. If a recurring invoice contains scheduled changes there are new columns in the beginning of the CSV file for all the scheduled change options. This example file shows 2 different recurring invoices for Dukes Basketball. One of them (top 2 lines) has scheduled changes, the bottom 3 lines do not.
You can update the 4th column from False to True to have the second recurring invoice also have scheduled changes. You would need to complete the other Scheduled change columns also. Those changes could be imported back using the Import Recurring Invoice feature.