Reduce the number of emails and optimize per payment method
I'm hoping someone can help me with the new Version 4.3. I'm glad "manual" is gone and saw that there's a way to give general payment instructions. I've got that all set up.
My question is in regards to the event e-mails. Perhaps I'm screwed with the simplification of event e-mails, but humor me:
People Paying Online: Should only get 2 e-mails. A receipt from PayPal and a Confirmation from our website (will get these around the same time).
People Paying Manually (On-Site): Should also only get 2 e-mails. The first will be a Confirmation from our website. The second will be the payment receipt once we receive their payment.
Is this even possible with the new version? I don't think so.
- If I enable invoices, receipts, and confirmations, people paying online will get 4 e-mails at the same time (An invoice, a receipt, a registration confirmation, then another PayPal receipt) and on-site people will get only 1 e-mail immediately (an invoice) then 2 more e-mails when I get payment (receipt and registration confirmation).
- If I enable confirmations and receipts, people paying online will get 3 e-mails at the same time (confirmation, receipt, and PayPal receipt), and people paying on-site will get nothing when they register (!) and then 2 e-mails (confirmation, receipt) when I get their payment.
- If I enable invoices only, people paying online will get 2 e-mails (invoice and PayPal). People paying on-site will only get 1 e-mail (the invoice) and I suppose I could manually send them a receipt (boo).
The scenarios go on and on but I can't seem to find a good compromise. I get complaints all the time about too many e-mails with event registrations. The new version has actually made this more difficult for me? How is this possible?
Any other suggestions?
SWEAtlanta
shared this idea
Released in version 5.7, see http://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Release+5.7
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Kerrie-Anne commented
I agree and I'm all for this concept - I nearly died when I saw the flurry of emails with the new release, that and it took me a while to get my head around exactly what was sent when and how to best customise emails to take this into account.
There is some informat ion I only make available when people register so I had to make sure peoeple were getting all the information they need and only when they need it - its been driving me crazy (altho I think I finally may have got it right)
Definitely need the ability to customise what registration emails are sent when on a more granular level so we don't bombard people unnecessarily!
Cheers
Kerrie-Anne
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SWEAtlanta
commented
I think you're probably right, but this just means that I need to re-do the invoice e-mail to make it look like an event confirmation, but instead of it being custom to the event, it will just have to say something like "You are now confirmed for the following events:". Basically it just makes things less pretty- a fine fix for now but would definitely prefer something nicer.
Of course the eventual nice solution would be to have admin-defined payment options (for me, I would only need Pay Online and Pay On-Site) and then admin-defined e-mails for each registration workflow. I know you guys just eliminated all this to simplify e-mails but I'm not sure that anything was really fixed with doing that.
What I would love (!) would be to have under the "registration e-mails" column would be to have a list of all combinations of registration types / payment types with rows of check boxes as to which e-mails they receive. So for example, Students that come to our events are free registrations, so they don't need invoices, they just need an event confirmation. People paying online also don't need invoices, only event confirmations. People paying on-site need both invoice and event confirmation.
I don't like that invoices and receipts are all or nothing- everyone gets them or no one gets them.
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Dmitry Buterin commented
One other note - I do think that only sending the invoice is the best option for now. You can easily send receipts when you are recording manual payments, just a couple of clicks.
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I reviewed your notes and I think your scenarios are correct. The thing is that at the time of registration system can't know if the person would pay online (right away or later) or manually. Thus, it is not currently possible to send/not send registration initiation and invoice depending on the selected payment method.
I understand your point about reducing the number of emails and I would appreciate suggestions you might have on how this might be changed in the future. I will move this thread to the wishlist forum.
