Dont Forget to Upload Your Payment Receipt

Editor's note: This guide builds on the tips from our transactional email guide that covers both content and technical best practices that employ to all of your transactional emails. Information technology's a great primer for transactional email in full general and will assist make sure y'all get the most value from this guide too.

If you run whatever kind of online business organization, you're almost guaranteed to have e-mail receipts and invoices. Any healthy business concern will need to procedure payments and send receipts for those payments. As ubiquitous every bit they are, they're emails that are frequently overlooked in terms of value and client experience. A well-designed receipt or invoice tin make a great impression on your customers and even help generate boosted revenue.

Leap to

• What is the difference betwixt receipts and invoices?
• What are the goals of electronic mail receipts and invoices?
• What are some common mistakes with receipt emails?
• What information should be included in receipt and invoice emails?
• The checklist
• Postmark's receipt and invoice template

What is the deviation betwixt receipts and invoices? #

There's one elementary simply important distinction between invoices and receipts. In general, invoices are sent prior to receiving payment every bit a way to asking payment whereas receipts are sent equally proof of payment. Some services send multiple emails for each payment, and this can be peculiarly confusing if the emails are sent close enough in time that they essentially become redundant. Some applications fifty-fifty ship an invoice, a payment notification, and a receipt all within seconds of each other. Not but does this become disruptive, but it clutters inboxes.

So chances are that unless your business has extenuating circumstances, sending a unmarried email for the receipt is enough. This guide will focus on receipts, just we'll also bear on some places where invoices might be different.

What are the goals of email receipts and invoices? #

To help put yourself in the recipient'southward shoes, allow's think through the nigh important goals of this type of email. Thinking almost the electronic mail in terms of priorities tin aid you decide how to weight and emphasize the various pieces of information that demand to be included.

1. Allow the recipient know the payment was received or needs to exist fabricated #

The simplest and primary goal for receipt emails is to let the recipient know details about the payment. An invoice would focus on the request for payment while a receipt acknowledges payment. And then, ideally, this information should be communicated in the discipline or pre-header. If yous're using Gmail's Inbox Deportment, yous could also include a link to the primary action for a little more convenience.

2. Requite the recipient what they demand to process and file the expense #

For many businesses, the receipt needs to be processed past the accounting department, or they may need it for an expense report. Alternatively, invoices may require some paperwork or processing before the payment can be fabricated. Making certain to provide a useful and valid record of the expense for bookkeeping purposes is a shut second in terms of useful data on receipts and invoices. This virtually likely means that you'll need to attach a printable PDF of the invoice or receipt to the electronic mail as well.

3. Brand related actions convenient #

While receipts and invoices have their principal deportment, they can likewise trigger other actions for the recipient. For receipts, maybe they got a new credit carte du jour and demand to update their menu on file. Perhaps they need to add together someone else on their team to the receipt notifications. Perhaps they desire to upgrade or close their account. Or maybe they just have a question and demand to ask for help. For invoices, they may desire some additional context about the charges. Give some thought to your employ cases and try to include the relevant links and then they can quickly have any related actions on the receipt.

4. Insert relevant information about promotions or related purchases on receipts #

While a receipt is primarily about notifying someone subsequently a purchase was fabricated, they tin can also exist used as handy reminders or a fashion to strengthen a relationship with a customer. You lot tin can include promotions thanking them for their purchase and offer a discount on their next buy. Or, if you run a specialty shop for swimwear and they merely bought a new swimsuit, y'all might include links for them to likewise remember to purchase things like sunblock or sunglasses. The goal here isn't purely to increment sales but to recommend relevant and useful purchases at the right fourth dimension.

These goals may seem obvious once they're written downwards, but keeping these in mind when creating and evaluating your receipt emails can assistance provide a framework for deciding what to emphasize and what to downplay. Now let's talk about specific pieces of data to include in your receipt emails.

What are some common mistakes with receipt emails? #

Corking receipts and invoices make life easier on your customers and keep unnecessary support requests to a minimum. Bad ones, on the other hand, misfile your customers, increase support requests, and injure your brand. Fortunately, there are some simple things you can do to ensure happy customers and avoid unnecessary support requests.

Forgetting the required data for your customers to have a valid certificate for accounting purposes #

Many people and businesses rely on receipts for expense reports, accounting, and taxes. Invoices are frequently a central role of the purchasing procedure for many businesses. In all of these cases, they demand the document to include all of the relevant information to make it valid for the relevant processes. Unfortunately, laws and requirements vary from land to state and organization to organization. Accommodating all of the requirements can be hard. However, past including the business concern name and accost of both your organisation and that of the purchaser volition cover the vast majority of problems.

If a VAT or similar is relevant where you lot or your customers are, then make sure to include all of the relevant tax information as well. More often than non, the best way to handle this is to ensure that in that location is a location for customers to add together the necessary information to receipts and invoices to be valid in their locale. If yous're non already familiar with your customer's requirements, these can almost e'er be addressed past offering a unmarried text surface area input for your customers to populate. Then you can include that information for them automatically.

Treating receipts equally an afterthought instead of an opportunity #

It's pretty unlikely that someone would stop doing business with you over a receipt, but receipts are withal a great opportunity to offer a great experience for your customers. Dealing with paperwork is never any fun, so every extra small step that you lot tin accept to make their lives easier will become a long manner towards building goodwill. This can be as uncomplicated as taking the time to design an easy-to-read receipt, providing an hands printable version of the receipt for paperwork (PDF attachment), or giving them the ability to customize the receipt with additional information for their specific needs. By going a pace across, you'll save your customers time, build some goodwill, and decrease support costs from special requests. Take a picayune actress time to blueprint your receipts, and you'll be glad you did.

Making it hard to contact support or get answers #

If anything is quick to trigger a support request, it's defoliation near coin. With physical products, is information technology obvious how they would handle a return? What if they got the wrong item? What if they forgot to add their coupon code? What if the club was created by accident? Ideally, nil will go wrong, your receipts and invoices volition exist well designed and easy-to-read, and your customers will exist 100% satisfied every time. Of course, things don't ever get that way.

Receipts and invoices are some of the more important interactions y'all have with your customers, but if there's a problem, and they don't know the best form of activity for a resolution, information technology can become a really negative feel rapidly. Make sure the all-time contact methods are articulate for your customers. Should they log in and make a request nearly a specific order? Respond to the email receipt? Should they use Twitter? Should they call a phone number? Get in like shooting fish in a barrel for them to go answers, and make certain that you lot take keen intendance of them here.

Not clarifying how the charge will look on their credit card statement #

These days, with various payment processors and online billing solutions, credit card statements don't ever show nice and neat descriptions of the accuse. Instead, they may prove an abbreviation for your payment processor with a few characters for your production. Or they may use your company name rather than your DBA proper noun. To make matters worse, many of them utilize even so another description on pending charges.

Regardless, it'southward only a matter of time before a customer confused by a charge leads to a chargeback. While you can't finish this 100% of the fourth dimension, if y'all know that the charge volition show upwards in a style that could confuse your customers, brand sure to let them know what to wait. You'll mitigate chargebacks and salvage both you and your customers fourth dimension researching charges.

Not including a printer-friendly format #

Ideally, every receipt or invoice email will include a PDF or other printer-friendly document attached. This isn't fiddling to practise from a technical standpoint, but y'all tin always do something to help. While most emails won't exist printed, receipts and invoices frequently will due to their role in business and accounting processes. So if you take the time to include a printable option with the email, you'll help your customers be i pace ahead of their paperwork. And, if you practise have the time to include a printer-friendly version, brand sure to mention in the email where they can find a downloadable version.

Not including line particular data straight in the email #

This is less mutual, but in some cases, providers will include a wonderful PDF attachment of the receipt merely fail to include whatever information at all almost the purchase in the torso of the email. This makes it difficult for someone to browse the email and come across what the charge was for. Make sure to include some information about the purchase directly in the body of your e-mail. For customers, that quick scan can hateful the deviation between worrying about a transaction and relaxing because information technology looks skillful at a glance.

What information should be included in receipt and invoice emails? #

Receipt and invoice emails are some of the most information-dense transactional emails yous can design. There's a lot of data to communicate, and it's all of fairly like importance. And, dissimilar almost other emails, recipients will demand to print and use receipt emails offline for accounting and tax purposes. So they cover a unique but extensive set of use cases. Let'southward swoop in and look through the key components to include in your receipt emails.

A unique and human-readable subject #

The subject of any email is especially important because it'south displayed more prominently. Equally nosotros discussed in our transactional e-mail best practices, too often, the subject field is used for information that is redundant with the from address or engagement of the electronic mail. For example, if the from address is "{Product/Company} Billing" information technology doesn't assist to include the product or company name in the field of study. Instead, that data can be used for other things.

Similarly, including the order number in the subject is rarely useful considering it's not human-readable. Including it in the body of the email is normally enough. Save that space in the subject field for more meaningful information, or, if it must be in the subject, place it at the terminate.

Let'due south expect at some examples where nosotros'll assuming information that is probable redundant or not helpful to include in the subject:

• Purchase Receipt for Society {Order Number}
• {Visitor} payment receipt
• Your receipt from {Company}
• Receipt for your payment to {Visitor}
• New Payment for {Company}
• Software license and invoice for club {Order Number}
• {Visitor} Payment Receipt - INVOICE #{Invoice Number}
• Your Receipt and License Data
• {Company} Order Receipt
• Your {Company} Receipt [#{Social club Number}]

These subjects aren't terrible. They just exit room for improvement. Assuming that you're using a great "From" address to communicate the company name, what'southward the almost useful information to include in the subject field?

• Price. Oft, the amount paid is going to be one of the more unique and identifying pieces of information in the email. On one hand, if a customer makes multiple purchases from you, the price may be the most consistently unique but nonetheless human being-readable piece of data about the receipt. Example: "Your buy for $19.99".
• Production. If the purchase and company name are different, so including production information may be useful. For instance, a purchase from Amazon is likely unique enough to mention in the subject. Case: "Your purchase of rechargeable batteries".
• Month and year. Even though emails accept a month and year implicitly through fourth dimension stamps, including an explicit month and year of the buy can help private emails stand out from each other for recurring expenses. Instance: "Your May 2016 receipt for $19.99".

Past keeping your subjects different from each other, human-readable, and conveying unique data not found in the "From" address, y'all tin help your customers more hands search, scan, and locate relevant emails with a little bit of thought into the formatting of your receipt subjects.

Download or license central information #

If the buy is a digital download or license key for previously downloaded software, that data should be obvious and easily accessible. Since that's what your customer just purchased, information technology's best to make that as hands attainable as possible. If information technology'due south not piece of cake to find, or the link is hands cleaved when the line wraps, you can count on receiving support requests that could have otherwise been easily avoidable.

Plasso.co receipts display prominent links to download and view the receipt.

Another subtle improvement for download links is to ensure that there'due south clear and actionable information for the customer if the link expires. Who practise they contact? What information do they need to provide? So if that download link has an expiration date, brand certain to include a link on renewing the expiration date in example someone needs it.

Shipping information (if relevant) #

If you're selling physical objects that need to be shipped, include as much data nigh shipping as you can. That could be as simple as including a link to the shipping service website, estimates about the aircraft engagement or arrival date, and the name of the aircraft provider and tracking number. Sometimes, you won't have all of this information at the time the receipt or invoice is generated, so it may be necessary to handle information technology separately with shipping notifications, but either way, this is the physical equivalent of that download link. Letting people know when and where to await shipments helps them coordinate and plan, so making it readily accessible is a great way to go far easier for recipients.

Line items and links for related actions #

With whatever receipt or invoices, the most important information is the line items and their costs. Along with displaying the nuts of this information, provide relevant links to view additional details online or manage the gild or payment. It's unlikely you'd forget to include the itemized details on a receipt, just you may not have thought nearly adding user-friendly links to those line items. For instance, Apple knows that people occasionally run into problems with digital downloads, so they include a "Written report a Problem" link side by side to each line item on their receipt. This makes it easy for customers to reach out and get help when something goes incorrect.

On Apple'south iTunes receipts, they include links to review the product, or, more than importantly, report whatsoever bug so they can nip them in the bud.

One more important facet of including itemized details is to ensure that there's too a printer-friendly version available. You lot can include this as a PDF or generate it on the fly if information technology'south requested. Having a printer-friendly format included directly in the email can really make things easier for your customers who demand information technology for handling paperwork. With a PDF included correct in the email, they can even automate the process to a caste, making things even easier for them.

Invoice ID, Account ID, and/or Order ID. #

In addition to the line detail breakup, occasionally people need to contact back up with bigger questions about a receipt. In that case, they'll need to be able to communicate effectively with the support agent. This usually means providing information about the specific society in question. In most cases, this can be a hyperlink directly to an authenticated folio with details and additional actions the recipient can take. If that'south not possible, though, simply make sure to include information technology in a prominent location.

Include an explanation and corporate information #

For most receipts with a line item, it's pretty straightforward to sympathize the charges and the visitor that billed them. However, with third-political party billing systems, company DBA names, and the business name on credit card statements, the correlation isn't always groovy and tidy. Past including information on a receipt virtually the company, the reason for the charge, and a detailed description of the product purchased, you tin can save a lot of stress for your customers.

This is too a great identify to add a bold argument about how the charge may appear on their credit bill of fare. If the company proper noun and production proper noun are different, include a statement for customers explicitly connecting the corporation name with the product that they're being billed for.

Payment and billing data #

While the itemized receipt should include the full payment amount, it can sometimes be even more convenient to include a simple sentence near the top of the electronic mail. These summaries can make great pre-headers also.

• $29.00 was billed to your Visa ending in 1234 past Acme Inc. for your purchase of Anvils.

While a bold summary at the top of the e-mail is a good showtime step, also include more explicit details about the card billed, engagement, and the name they should expect to meet on their credit card statement. One last tiny but important slice is the proper noun of the person who fabricated the purchase. Oft, the emails are forwarded, or someone in a different department is CC'd on an e-mail. If they don't recognize the charge and don't know who to ask, it's not uncommon for them to upshot a chargeback. The more than information they have to recognize the charge, the better.

When it comes to taxes and bookkeeping, many governments and companies have very specific requirements for valid invoices and receipts. These include the billing accost of the purchaser, the address of the billing company, and VAT IDs. Your requirements will vary past location, of course, then you should explicitly look into the rules where your business organisation operates. The key hither is to only be aware of the requirements and provide this information to customers when a receipt shows up.

Enabling the addition of this information is a little more complex, merely in most cases, a text area where your users can add additional information to be displayed on the receipt volition suffice. If you practise this, just make sure to include a link in close proximity that enables people to quickly jump in and edit the data when it becomes outdated.

Follow-on requests #

At the end of whatsoever receipt e-mail, there's a lot of opportunity to both help your customers and increase sales. Showtime and foremost, provide a articulate course of action for them to written report a problem or concern. If there's a genuine fault, make it as easy as possible for them to let you lot know almost it. This could be as unproblematic as an electronic mail address or more advanced similar a contact class that you pre-populate with information from the email. Of course, if you're not using a no-respond address, customers should know that they can just reply to the electronic mail with questions.

If they don't have any problems to study, you could enquire for comments or feedback. How was the gild process? Were you able to detect everything you lot were looking for? How can we amend? If somebody has fabricated a purchase with you, information technology's a safe bet they're more invested in helping yous succeed. Asking for feedback ever depends on context, though. Make sure y'all're doing and so judiciously.

Related information and products #

With any buy, there's ever room to aid the customer beyond the buy. I of the easiest ways is to offering related content. For instance, if you sell camping equipment, you might provide links to articles about planning a camping ground trip or camping safety. This is a great way to get in a higher place and across and help customers become even more out of their purchase.

Another pick with your receipt emails is to offering coupons or discounts. These could exist a simple coupon for a per centum off their side by side society or a reminder about an upcoming auction or special consequence. You could also offer a coupon for the recipient to both use and share with a friend. These are great ways to give your customer something tangible and valuable and build some echo business organization.

Finally, receipts are a great way to advise additional related products. For example, if they bought something that needs batteries, y'all might include a reminder to buy batteries. Or, if they bought something bigger similar a wheel, you could include suggestions to consider a helmet. The goal with whatever of these kinds of recommendations is to ensure that they're incredibly relevant. If someone just purchased a bicycle and the recommendations are for other bicycles, and then they're not much employ to the customer.

Contact Data #

Information technology may seem obvious, simply when yous're sifting through all of the higher up elements to include in your emails, it's easy to forget about including the virtually basic contact information. Including a website URL gives the recipient an easy style to refresh their memory about a buy downward the route.

Additionally, it can be useful to include back up contact information like an electronic mail address or contact form. If you lot get with a course, it would as well ideally use URLs with query string values to pre-populate the grade with the recipient'due south club information. Or, amend yet, just brand sure that customers can answer to order emails and they'll go into the support queue.

Thanks #

The Buffer team includes current squad photos in their receipt e-mail.

Ane final chip of data to add is a simple thank yous. At a physical point-of-sale, you're able to interact directly with customers. A unproblematic grinning and give thanks you go a long way. Don't call back that's true? Picture your final purchase where the person behind the cash register was grumpy or less than friendly.

It's difficult to send human emotions over emails, but there are other ways to make transactions more meaningful and homo. Depending on your company's size and culture, your approach may vary, but one way or another, information technology'southward worth information technology to say cheers. Buffer does a overnice task with this past including a photo of the team and a short note of appreciation. They fifty-fifty update this picture from time-to-time so information technology's electric current.

The checklist #

Here's a quick summary checklist to help remind you lot of the private points once you kickoff designing and building your template.

Order information #

• Download link (and information on renewing a download link if it expires)
• Line items with plan and/or production proper noun and prices, taxes, and a total
• Invoice/Order ID and link to view details or manage the order/purchase
• Your corporate data (i.eastward. You lot are receiving this considering yous use…)
• Text and PDF version of receipt

Payment and billing data #

• Purchaser proper name
• Payment amount
• Card billed/Payment method information
• Billing address
• VAT ID
• Link to update billing information

Follow-on requests #

• Requite them a articulate path to written report a problem or business
• Inquire for comments or feedback

Related data and products #

• Share related content
• Coupons/promotions/discounts
• Ask for a referral (potentially with a coupon)
• Cantankerous-sell relevant products (They must be relevant.)

Contact information #

• Website URL
• Support contact data
• A support-backed reply-to address
• Phone number

Thanks #

• Thanks for your support
• Team data

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Postmark'southward receipt and invoice template #

Everything you've read in this guide will assist yous transport incredibly useful receipt and invoice emails. These tips are all great theory, simply nosotros wanted to make it simple for yous to move right through theory to bang-up practice. Which is why we created a fix of open up-source receipt and invoice templates you tin can use with any email service provider.

Postmark'southward receipt template uses all the best practices covered in this guide.

Our templates include a receipt and an invoice email to assist y'all get started sending with all the tips we've covered here. Yous can as well take hold of a nicely formatted plain text equivalent for each of these emails with each template besides.

You can grab the receipt and invoice templates and learn more than almost the rest of our template drove on Transactional Email Templates website.

If yous like Postmark's templates you should cheque out MailMason. It'south a tool nosotros've built to streamline every aspect of creating and maintaining your transactional email messages. Every Postmark template is included out of the box with MailMason. On height of those templates MailMason gives yous the power of a Grunt-based electronic mail blueprint workflow and makes information technology elementary to maintain all of your transactional emails. You can use Mustachio to tightly integrate with Postmark's template engine, or adapt MailMason to your workflow for some other e-mail service provider.

Nosotros want to assist you send incredible transactional email messages, fifty-fifty if yous choose to use a different email service provider. If you have whatever thoughts on how we can improve MailMason, we'd love for yous to share them in the MailMason repository on Github.

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Read all of our transactional electronic mail best do guides #

Nosotros've assembled a series of guides on all-time practices for multiple types of transactional email.

• Transactional email best practices
• Welcome email best practices
• Password reset e-mail best practices
• User invitation best practices
• Trial expiration email best practices
• Annotate notification email all-time practices

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Source: https://postmarkapp.com/guides/receipt-and-invoice-email-best-practices

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