Latest updates from the Dubsado team
Originally posted: December 8th, 2021
Your clients can now enroll in automatic payments for payment plan installments, as long as the invoice is eligible. Once enrolled in autopay, your client will be automatically charged on each installment due date!
Our goal for this feature is to help our business owners collect more payments on time with less involvement from their clients. Even with payment reminders, business owners have told us that their clients would like to "set it and forget it" when it comes to payments, and if this feature works for your business, you can now set it and forget it.
This feature is perfect for anyone who has a predictable, standardized invoicing process. After they send an invoice to a client, they will not be changing that invoice. So whether you're a photographer and have a payment plan on an invoice, clients can set up autopay leading up to their big day. Or say you're a coach wanting to set up a 6 month coaching package on an invoice, or you are a web designer and payments are due at specific points. This feature can work for many types of businesses.
About this feature
When autopay is available (see criteria below), the option to enroll will appear below the credit card field during the payment process. Clients can start this process by clicking Pay Now on an installment.
Payment plans must meet a few criteria in order to be eligible for autopay. If a payment plan is not eligible for autopay, your client will not see an option to enroll.
The requirements for payment plans are:
There are also a few payment requirements:
👋 Here's a tip... if the invoice is eligible, autopay for payment plans will work on invoices you create from scratch, as well as invoices created by proposals or workflows.
After your client enrolls in autopay on a payment plan, they can return to that invoice at any time to update their payment method or cancel autopay.
You'll be able to see whether autopay is turned on for a payment plan by opening the invoice in the client's project:
Automatic email notifications will send whenever there's a change to automatic payments for a payment plan.
There are three client notification emails for autopay:
These emails send automatically and cannot be turned off because they communicate important information to your clients. However, they can be customized under Templates >> Canned Emails >> Edit Templates.
👋 Here's a tip... we recommend customizing the client notification emails to fit your brand voice. As you customize the emails, try to keep the content roughly the same so that your clients receive the correct information.
We have two system notification emails for autopay. You can adjust your preferences for these notifications under Settings >> Notifications.
Once your client enrolls in autopay, we restrict certain invoice and project changes to protect your client from any surprise charges.
Autopay will be turned off for the invoice if you change:
If you have payment plan installments watching a project date or contract, autopay will also be turned off if you:
Don't worry, we'll warn you so you can decide whether you'd like to proceed with one of these changes. If you do, autopay for that invoice will be turned off and your client will be notified via email that their autopay was cancelled. Your client will be able to re-enroll in autopay if the invoice still meets the eligibility criteria.
👋 Here's a tip... if you'd like your clients to take advantage of autopay on payment plans, we recommend having an invoicing process that doesn't involve making changing the invoice after it's been sent to the client.
The payment processor (Stripe or Square) connected to your account will securely save the credit card details needed to process the automatic payments.
Your client will be able to enroll in autopay on a future payment if there is more than one unpaid installment remaining.
No, your client must turn on autopay after entering their own payment information.
Yes. Your client can turn off autopay or update their credit card from the invoice.
Your client will receive an email with a link to the invoice so that they can manually pay and update their credit card information. You can edit this automatic email under Templates >> Canned Emails >> Edit Templates >> Autopay Failed.
As long as there is no more than one overdue payment, your client will be able to re-enroll in autopay by paying their missed payment on the invoice.
Recurring invoices already have an autopay option for that invoice as a whole. You can read more about autopay on recurring invoices here.
Originally posted: December 1st, 2021
Earlier this year, we launched our Microsoft email integration and made it easier for you to connect your Microsoft email to send outgoing messages.
Today, we're happy to share that our Microsoft email integration now makes it easy to receive incoming emails from clients, too! No need to bother with email forwarding settings.
This update also improves the reliability of receiving client emails in Dubsado if you have a Microsoft email connected. We strongly recommend following the steps below to update your connection if you previously connected a Microsoft email!
To update to the latest version of the Microsoft email integration:
If you'd like to learn more about how emails work in Dubsado, or more about connecting your Microsoft email, check out the articles below:
Learn Dubsado email integration basics
Connect your email with Microsoft
👋 Here's a tip... if you don't use a Microsoft email account with Dubsado, there's no need to make any changes.
Originally posted: November 5th, 2021
Feature
Originally posted: October 1st, 2021
Update
Bugfix
Originally posted: October 1st, 2021
We have added a new option for the “Bill-to” section on invoices. This new option now allows you to include both the Client Name AND Company Name in that section. The option is available as both a brand setting and as a per project setting accessible in the Invoice Options tab within a project.
When used, the information will be formatted in the following way:
To make this a global setting, head to settings, then receive money. Next click the invoices tab and you can make the adjustments there.
To adjust per project (great if you want to show for some clients and not the others), head into the desired project. Click that project's invoice tab. Then click invoice options and override the settings there under the invoice options section.
Originally posted: September 29th, 2021
With bulk tags you can now quickly apply project tags to multiple projects from the projects page (how many times did I say projects in that sentence 😅)
Here's how to apply your bulk tags:
Step 1: Go to the projects page
Step 2: Check all projects or multiple projects you'd like to apply the same tags to.
Step 3: Select one or multiple tags and then click "add tags".
And there you have it. They are now on all the projects you selected.
For more info on project tags and how to use them for your business, read here.
Originally posted: September 16th, 2021
We are so excited to share some big updates to our payment schedules feature with you today. In fact, the updates are so exciting that we gave payment schedules a brand new name: payment plans.
In addition to a brand new look, we've also added some of your most-requested features to payment plans, like installment amounts that auto divide equally, new due date options, and the ability to choose a send time for payment reminders.
NOTE: This is a rolling release and will be releasing to a certain percentage of users over a period of a few weeks. If you do not have this feature yet, check back every few days.
You'll still find all your payment plan templates under Templates >> Payment Plans. The new design of this page gives you more information about each plan at a glance and lets you make edits quickly. Just click on any installment in a plan to expand its options and click on the installment again when you're done. Oh, and your changes will autosave as you go 🙌
We also added the ability to duplicate both individual installments and entire payment plans to help you speed things up.
Our new divide equally option automatically calculates the amount due based on the number of installments set to divide equally.
For example, if you have a payment plan with three installments, each set to divide equally, Dubsado will automatically divide the invoice total into three equal payments. No math required!
Click here to learn more about how divide equally interacts with percentage and fixed amounts.
We added three new options for due dates:
You now have the ability to choose the time for payment reminders to send 🎉
We also added a new default canned email to make setting up reminders quick and easy. You can edit this default email under Templates >> Canned Emails >> Edit Templates >> Payment Plan Reminder. And of course, you can still create and select your own custom canned emails to use as reminders.
And finally, we have an update to how payment plans behave when your client makes a payment. Now, each installment will lock on the invoice as it is paid in full.
This will prevent paid installment amounts from changing if you update the invoice or your client adds a gratuity. Locked installments cannot be edited, but don't worry, they can still be deleted.
We hope you enjoy these updates and find building your next payment plan faster and easier than before! Want to learn more? Check out these articles on payment plans in our help center.
Originally posted: August 27th, 2021
We have assembled a new development team at Dubsado and they are focusing the next little bit on some "quick wins" as we like to call them. Quick wins are updates that our users have requested that are smaller time wise on the development side, but have a huge impact to you, our users! We are excited to share some quick wins we have ready for you all today.
1. Hyperlinked fields - Within a client or project view the fields that have a URL detected will now automatically become clickable.
2. Clickable invoices card on the dashboard - On the dashboard you can now click the open invoices section and be taken to the list view invoices page showing your list of open invoices.
3. Lead capture PDF download - With this update, we added the ability to download a PDF version of your completed lead capture forms.
4. New smart field for invoices, "invoice item name + description" - This new smart field will only show the invoice's item name and the description of it when you use that smart field. You can reference all smart fields for the invoice and how they look here.
In addition to those quick wins, working on our new form builder and updated schedule, we also did loooots of other things in the past month:
Update
Bugfix
Originally posted: August 6th, 2021
For anyone with a custom domain email address connected to Dubsado via SMTP, we have an important update for you! We've added new tools to your email settings to make it easier to set up DKIM and SPF records with your domain host.
These records will help you improve the security of the emails you send through Dubsado. That means less emails going to your client's spam!
If you connected your email to Dubsado through Google or Microsoft, or you don't use a custom domain name for your email, you're all set! These updates do not impact your account.
To set up and verify your DKIM and SPF records, get started by heading to Settings >> Emails in your Dubsado account. We have an in-depth help article here to help you step by step.
Internet spammers will sometimes send emails through a domain that does not belong to them in order to fool the recipient. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) are security protocols that help authenticate outgoing emails.
Setting up DKIM and SPF records in your domain helps your email provider recognize emails that you send through Dubsado as legitimate. This in turn will help your clients' email providers verify that emails you sent through Dubsado should be allowed through.
These records can also help protect you against spammers abusing your domain for sending emails. All in all, it's a good thing to have set up if you're using an email with a custom domain!
DKIM and SPF work to authenticate emails in slightly different ways. We recommend setting up both for best results!
Originally posted: July 30th, 2021
Features are fun but bug fixes are just as important. Here is a few key things we fixed in the last month!
Bugfix