Reminder presets are incredibly useful when you would like to have reminders for customers and service techs automatically set for your estimates and jobs! These will act as a sort of template for your reminders that you will be able to set without having to create new reminders for every single job or estimate.
Please Note: You'll need to make sure your customer's account has been configured to receive reminders! Click here to skip down to configuring these settings on the customer account.
In order to create a Reminder Preset you will need to hover over My Office and select the Reminder Presets option in the second column.
You will then be presented with a blank looking screen with a couple options to the left of the screen. These are the different categories that you can set your reminders to be associated with. The estimates section will be for reminders that you would like to set for your estimates while the job/site visits section will be for ones that you would like to set for jobs and site visits!
Please click the above image to enlarge
Once you have added a preset and saved it in to the Service Fusion system, they will appear in the drop down of each section. When you want to create a new preset you will select the blue “New” next to the section names!
Once you have input the name of your preset and selected to save, you will be presented with the page shown below. There are a couple of toggles here that will have different effects on your preset.
Please click the above image to enlarge
The “Use As Default” toggle will apply the preset you have marked as the default to all estimates/jobs/site visits upon creation. You can have one marked as default for a Job, one marked as default for a Site Visit, and one marked as default for an Estimate. The “Active” toggle will just let Service Fusion know if you are actively using the preset. If you have it marked as Inactive then you will not be able to select it from the preset drop down on an estimate/job/site visit, although you can still find it here to edit or make Active again. Before you are able to add the individual reminders to your preset, you'll need to give the preset a name and click Save Preset at the bottom of the page. Once the page has refreshed after the save you can begin adding your preferred reminders! There is no limit to how many reminders you can have in a preset.
Here in my example, I am clicking the Add New for a job/site visit reminder! You will be presented with a dialogue box that will allow you to customize your reminder.
The dialogue presents you with two options at the top which are Job/Work Order or Site Visit. Distinguishing between these two terms is very important to make sure that your reminders function correctly.
Please Note: Reminders are associated with the start date listed on the job. The time frame chosen for these reminders will be in comparison with this date and not Job Statuses.
Please click the above image to enlarge
- Job/Work Order is going to be the type of reminder you need if you just want to have a reminder set for a job. This will create reminders to be sent based on the standard job you have within Service Fusion.
- Site Visit is referring to Additional Site Visits for a job. This is the option you’ll want to select if you would like the system to send reminders based on Additional Site Visits of a job.
Please click the above image to enlarge
- Who is what will determine the recipient for this particular reminder. The options are external to your customer, or an internal reminder for your service technicians.
- When is what will determine when this reminder will be sent out. "Evening Before Scheduled Visit Time" will send the reminder the evening before the date and time set on the job. "Morning Of Scheduled Visit" will send the reminder the morning of the day that the job is scheduled for. Please Note: These times are set within My Office > Company Preferences. "Days/Hours Before" and "Days/Hours After" allow you to set a specific number of days or hours before or after the job start time that you'd like for the reminder to be sent.
- What determines how the reminder will be sent. Do you want the reminder to be an email, text, or an automated voice message? This must be set before you'll have the option to choose the Communication Template you'd like to associate with the reminder because the system needs to know from where it needs to pull the templates.
When you are ready to apply your preset to a job, you will find the Insert Preset option located in the Reminders section of the View Job screen and it will present a drop down for you to select your preset!
Please click the above image to enlarge
Once you have selected your preset, your reminders will be visible in that Reminders section!
If you selected a preset as a default, then choose to create a job, you will not see the preset applied until after you save your job.
I have this preset set as default:
Please click the above image to enlarge
When I go to create a new job you will see the reminder section is blank:
Please click the above image to enlarge
Once I've saved the job, the presets will appear in the reminders section:
Please click the above image to enlarge
NEW: Released Wednesday, September 30th
Please take note of the Updated Communication Preferences necessary for this update.
Reminders can now be applied to Invoices which will help cut down on time spent manually sending payment reminder emails to your customers! This new option will be found under the familiar heading in My Office > Reminder Presets where an Invoices section has been added.
Please click the above image to enlarge
This Invoice Reminder will apply to any unpaid invoices in your system based on the preferences set up within this section. To set up the preset, click the blue "Edit" button which will enable you to set up the reminder to your specifications!
Please click the above image to enlarge
Unlike the other reminder preset sections, the Invoices section will allow for only one preset instead of multiple to choose from. However! You can still add multiple reminders to this preset to cover any needs you may have in communicating with your customers. Creating an invoice reminder has a notable difference when being created from the other preset sections as well. Above the Reminders section is a series of boxes to be checked to fine tune which customers, based on invoice and customer tag information, will receive these reminders.
Please click the above image to enlarge
- Only apply reminders for unpaid invoices from this date forward (e.g. Invoice Date)
The check box will allow for you to indicate the invoice date you'd like these reminders to start sending on. For example, at the time of setting up your Invoice Reminder, you may have some older unpaid invoices that the customer does not need an email regarding. With this feature, you can ensure that those older customers will not receive an email regarding their unpaid invoices. Per the example above, the date is set as 9/1/2020 which means any invoice dated prior to 9/1/2020 will not receive a reminder email.
- Don't send reminders for amounts owing on an invoice under
This check box will allow for you to disable reminders from being sent to invoices under a certain dollar amount. For example, in the screen shot above, the amount is set to $100. This means that any invoice under $100 will be exempt from receiving your reminder emails.
- Don't send reminders to customers who are tagged
This box will disable the reminder email from reaching any customer account with the tag specified here applied to their account.
- Don't send reminders to customers whose jobs are tagged
This box will disable the reminder email from sending when the associated job is tagged with the specified tag.
Once these settings are set up to your specifications, you can then add the specific reminders you'd like to be sent out by clicking the Add Reminder button.
Please click the above image to enlarge
A dialogue box will overlay the preset prompting to create the specific reminder. Here is where you'll determine when the reminder will be sent and what the reminder will say.
When: The drop down associated with this row will allow for you to choose if you'd like to send this specific message based on if the invoice is overdue by or due in a specified amount of days. For example, you can set up a reminder to send out if the invoice is overdue by 10 days.
Email Template: Here is where you determine which of your templates created in Communication Templates will be utilized for this reminder. The template options come from the Invoice section of Communication Templates. Selecting the Email Template will populate the What and Message section of the reminder.
PLEASE NOTE: You MUST select a template that exists from your Communication Templates. You cannot free-write the message from this page as the system will consider that incomplete. You can, as a way to circumvent this if necessary, pull in a template then erase the template wording with your own.
Once the reminder is completed, click save and you'll see it reflected within the preset under the Reminders section.
Please click the above image to enlarge
You are able to have multiple reminders set up within the preset. You are NOT limited to just one.
To the right of the created reminder is the ability to edit that specific reminder, or to completely delete that one reminder.
Please click the above image to enlarge
If at any point you'd like for these invoice reminders to stop being sent to your customers, you can make the entire preset inactive by toggling the Active switch in the top right to No.
Please click the above image to enlarge
Receiving Reminders: Customer Permissions
To ensure that your customers receive their invoice reminder, we must enable the permission on the Customer Account.
You can enable this on a customer by customer basis by navigating to the customer account and selecting to Configure Personal Communication Preferences, then making sure the box next to Send Invoice Reminders is checked.
Please click the above image to enlarge
You can create this as a default so that all new customers created after this has been selected will be enabled for this permission by default. You will do so by navigating to My Office > Company Preferences and making sure the box is selected for this permission.
Please click the above image to enlarge
And finally, you can batch update your customers for this permission by using the new Batch Edit & Delete Customers feature!