Email Flow
How emailing an invoice works, what gets attached, and why emailing marks the invoice as sent.
Open the invoice detail popup and click the email button. Work Planner opens the Message Customers Popup, titled Email invoice, for the invoice's customer, with the invoice attached and your Invoice email ready to check.
What Is Filled In Automatically
- Recipient: The invoice's customer. Invoices are only sent by email.
- Subject and message: From your Invoice email template, which starts as Your invoice [reference] with a short message. Change them in the popup for this send, or change the template in Settings, Document Templates.
- Invoice attachment: The invoice PDF is attached automatically.
Choosing the Address
If the customer has more than one saved email address, choose which one to use under Send to. To send to an address the customer does not have yet, add it to the customer first.
Paying Online by Card
When your business ticks Add a Pay now link to invoices on the Payment Providers screen, the attached invoice carries the invoice's own card payment link, as a printed one does. It shows wherever your invoice template places the Pay now link or Pay now QR code. If the template uses neither, a Pay online box with a QR code and the link is added at the end of the invoice instead. Invoices that are paid, settled, written off or cancelled, or have nothing left to pay, have no link.
Each invoice gets one link, so emailing the same invoice again sends the same link. It asks for whatever is left to pay on the invoice when the customer opens it, so a part payment made in the meantime is never charged twice, and the payment is recorded against the invoice automatically.
To put the link in the email itself, add the Pay now link variable to your Invoice email template. The preview shows an example link, and the invoice's real one is filled in as the email is sent. What the customer sees when they open the link is covered in Card Payment Page.
Preview
The popup shows the email as the customer will get it, with the details filled in and the address it is going to, before anything is sent.
Important Side Effect
Once the email is on its way, the invoice shows as Sending, then Sent once the email has gone, or Failed to Send if it could not be delivered. That means emailing can change the invoice status and sent date even though you never opened the edit popup.
Emailing Invoices Automatically
To have new invoices emailed for you, such as the ones a worksheet makes when it is submitted, set up the Send each new invoice to the customer automation in Settings > Automations. It emails each one with the invoice attached, the same way, and marks it Sending then Sent. An invoice you have already emailed is not sent again.
Who Can Email Invoices
Admins and owners. The invoice is printed to attach it, which needs the same access as printing an invoice.
What Emailing Does Not Change
- Invoice totals: Sending the email does not alter the amount due.
- Payments and write-offs: These remain as they were.
- Invoice items: The line items are unchanged; the email flow is only about communication and attachment generation.
Related articles
- Invoice Detail View: Shows where the email button sits.
- Message Customers Popup: The popup the invoice is emailed from.
- Creating an Automation: Emailing each new invoice automatically.
- Print Flow: Useful when the customer needs a printed or downloadable copy instead.
- Communication Actions: Helpful when you want the wider customer communication context around email and follow-up.
- Sending a Card Payment Link: How Pay now links on invoices work, and sending a card payment link from Debts.
- Card Payment Page: What the customer sees when they open the link in the email.
- Drag and Drop Editor: Placing the Pay now link or QR code on your invoice template.