Email Notifications from Orders
Email Notifications from Orders
BarSight sends a handful of emails to your wholesale customers as an order moves through its life: when you email them the order, when it ships, when it is signed for, when a card on file is charged, and when a refund is issued. This guide lists every one of those emails, exactly what triggers it, who is copied, and what never sends an email at all.
Before You Start
- Every customer email goes to the Company Email on the customer form. If that field is empty, BarSight quietly sends nothing. See The Customer Form Explained.
- Emailing, shipping, signing and charging orders all need edit access to Brewery Orders (Access Level 50).
- Card-on-file charges need a connected payment processor. QuickBooks and Square send their own emails, which are covered near the end of this guide.
The Five Order Emails
| When it goes out | Subject and contents | |
|---|---|---|
| Order email | Only when a staff member clicks Email Order on the order form, or Email Order to Customer in the app. Never automatic. | Your order (PO number) from Your Brewery with the order PDF attached. If the order is already paid in full, the subject is Payment Received - Your order ... and the message says payment was received. |
| Order Shipped | Automatically, the moment an order is shipped. See What counts as shipping below. | Order Shipped - (PO number) from Your Brewery with the order PDF attached. |
| Order Signed | Automatically, the first time a signature is captured on the order, on the web or in the app. Re-signing does not send it again. | Order Signed - (PO number) from Your Brewery with the PDF regenerated so it carries the signature and the name of the person who signed. |
| Payment Received | Automatically after a successful Charge Card on File through Moneris, Chase, Elavon, Paychex or Clover, including the nightly auto-pay run. | Same as the order email. The subject says Payment Received if the charge paid the order in full, otherwise it is the plain order email with the updated PDF. |
| Refund Issued | Automatically when a refund is processed with Refund Items. For card refunds it waits until the processor approves the refund. Manual refunds send straight away. | Refund Issued - Order (PO number) from Your Brewery with the refund amount and the updated invoice PDF. |
If the order has no PO number, the subject uses the BarSight order number instead, for example Order #1234 Signed - Your Brewery.
What Never Sends an Email
These actions change the order but do not contact the customer:
- Creating or saving an order. Nothing goes out until you click Email Order.
- Closing an order. Close Order, bulk closing, and a close triggered by a payment all skip the shipped email, even when the order was never shipped first. If the customer should hear that their order left, ship it rather than close it.
- Marking an order paid or recording a payment by hand. Adding a cash, cheque or e-transfer payment, bulk payments, and payments pulled in from QuickBooks are all silent. Only a card charge through a connected processor emails the customer.
- Re-signing an order. Only the first signature emails the customer.
- Legacy orders. Orders recorded as Legacy Orders never send a shipped email.
- Online portal orders. The customer gets no confirmation when they order through the portal. The staff address in Order Notification Email under Brewery Settings is notified instead.
- Auto Ship on an old order. See the next section.
What Counts as Shipping
The shipped email fires from every path that ships an order:
- Ship Order on the order form, including the copy in the Add Payment button's menu.
- Bulk shipping from the orders list, and shipping from the delivery and route screens.
- Ship Order in the BarSight app.
- Sync to QBO. Sending an order to QuickBooks also ships it in BarSight, so the customer receives the shipped email at that point.
- Auto Ship Orders on a facility. Orders are shipped automatically the day after their fulfillment date. The customer receives the shipped email as long as the fulfillment date is less than two days old. Older backlog orders are shipped silently so a stale pile of orders does not send a burst of emails.
Signing and shipping together. The signature form has a Mark Order as Shipped option. When you set it to Yes on a first signature and the customer has an email, BarSight ships the order and sends only the signed email, which already shows the order as shipped. The customer does not get two emails. The app's signature screen tells you up front whether a signed copy will be emailed.
[SCREENSHOT: Capture Signature form showing the Signed By field, the signature pad and the Mark Order as Shipped dropdown]
Who Receives Each Email
Every email in the table above uses the same recipient rules:
- To: the customer's Company Email. If that field holds several addresses separated by commas, the first one is the To address and the rest are copied.
- Copied: every person listed in the customer's Contacts box who has an email address.
- Copied: any address in the facility's Email CC setting.
- Copied: the staff member who triggered the email, as long as their employee profile has an email address. They are also set as the Reply-To, so a customer who hits reply reaches them.
Automated sends behave differently. When the nightly auto-pay or Auto Ship routine sends an email, nobody was logged in, so no staff copy is sent and there is no Reply-To. The customer sees the email come from hello@barsight.ca, and the default footer tells them the address is not monitored and to contact your brewery directly.
When you use Email Order on the web, you can type a different address in the popup for a one-off send. The contacts, Email CC and your own copy are still added as normal.
Checking What Was Sent
The Send History box at the bottom of every order form lists each customer email for that order.
- Sent By: the staff member, or System (Auto-Ship) for anything sent by an automated routine, including auto-pay.
- Date/Time: when it went out.
- Type:
Send,Ship,SignedorRefund. - Order Amount: the order total at the time it was sent.
- Sent To: the address it went to.
Emails sent by QuickBooks or Square do not appear here, because those services send them rather than BarSight.
[SCREENSHOT: Send History box on an order form with a Ship row and a Send row]
Changing the Recipient or the Wording
- To fix the address on an order you are looking at, click Update Customer Details in the order's Customer box. This changes the Company Email on the customer record, so it applies to every future email for that customer.
- To add the right people at the customer, open their customer form and add them under Contacts with an email. They are copied on every order email from then on.
- To have a staff mailbox copied on every customer email, open Brewery Settings, edit the facility and fill in Email CC. Separate several addresses with commas.
- To replace the default "this address is not monitored" footer, fill in Email Message on the same facility screen. Whatever you type appears at the bottom of every customer email for that facility.
- To have emails come from the facility's name instead of your company name, tick Use Facility Name for Customer Orders on the facility. See Brewery Facilities Explained.
Emails Sent by QuickBooks and Square
Two integrations email customers themselves. These are separate from the BarSight emails above, are not logged in Send History, and do not copy your staff.
- QuickBooks Online. With Auto Send Customer Orders via Email ticked in the QuickBooks options, each order synced to QuickBooks is emailed to the customer by QuickBooks as an invoice. The Request Payment via QuickBooks button in the Add Payment form sends that invoice email on demand. Both need a Company Email on the customer.
- Square Invoices. Creating a Square invoice for an order emails the customer through Square when Send Invoice Immediately is on. See Connecting Square Invoices.
With QuickBooks auto-send on, a customer can receive both the QuickBooks invoice and the BarSight shipped email for the same order, because syncing also ships the order.
Tips and Best Practices
- If you want customers told when their order is on its way, ship orders instead of closing them. Closing is silent.
- Keep your own employee email filled in under your profile. Without it you get no copy of the emails you trigger, and customer replies go to an unmonitored address.
- Use Email Message to give customers a real phone number or email to reply to, especially if you rely on Auto Ship or auto-pay, since those sends have no Reply-To.
- Put accounts payable contacts under the customer's Contacts rather than cramming several addresses into Company Email. Contacts are easier to maintain and show up on the customer form.
Troubleshooting
Problem: The customer never got a shipped email.
Solution: Check Send History on the order. If there is no Ship row, the usual causes are an empty Company Email, the order being closed rather than shipped, a legacy order, or Auto Ship picking it up more than two days after its fulfillment date. Fix the email and use Email Order to send them the order now.
Problem: Email Order says "No email found for customer", or the app says there is no email on file.
Solution: Click Update Customer Details on the order, or open the customer form, and fill in Company Email. Then send again.
Problem: I shipped an order but did not get a copy of the email.
Solution: Your employee profile has no email address, or the order was shipped by Auto Ship rather than by you. Add an email to your profile, or add a shared mailbox to the facility's Email CC so it is copied regardless of who or what sent the email.
Problem: The customer replied to an order email and nobody saw it.
Solution: Replies go to the staff member who triggered the email. Automated emails have no Reply-To, so the reply lands at the unmonitored BarSight address. Use Email Message to tell customers how to reach you, and Email CC so a monitored mailbox is on every send.
Problem: The customer was emailed twice when I signed and shipped.
Solution: Ship from the signature form by setting Mark Order as Shipped to Yes. Shipping first and signing afterwards sends the shipped email and then the signed email.