Overview
A customer says they never got the proposal. Before you resend it, it is worth knowing that there are only a handful of reasons this happens, and most of them are fixable in under a minute.
This article walks through them in the order worth checking.
Which Emails Send Automatically and Which Don't
This trips people up constantly. MotionOps does not email every document on its own.
Sent automatically when enabled:
Appointment published
Appointment reminders, 24 hours and 1 hour before
Appointment cancellation and rescheduling
Proposal follow-up reminder on the proposal due date
Invoice follow-up reminder on the invoice due date
Sent by you, manually:
The proposal itself, for approval
The change order, for approval
The invoice, for payment
So if a customer never received a proposal, the first thing to rule out is that nobody sent it. Creating a proposal does not email it.
What to Check, in Order
Confirm it was actually sent. Open the proposal, change order, or invoice and check its status. A document still sitting in draft was never emailed.
Check who you selected as the recipient. When you send a document, the send window lists the account's contacts and you pick who receives it. If you sent to the wrong contact, or unselected the one who needed it, the right person got nothing.
Check the contact's email address. Open the account and look at the contact record. A typo or an old work address is the single most common cause. See Contacts on an Account.
Ask them to check spam and junk. Automated email from an unfamiliar sender lands there routinely, especially at commercial accounts with strict filtering.
Check the notification is turned on. For automatic emails only. Go to Business Settings then Notifications then Customer, find the notification, and check whether it is enabled where a Configure link is available.
Check the timing is what you assumed. Proposal and invoice follow-up reminders fire on the due date, not on a schedule you set per document. If the due date has not arrived, no reminder has gone out.
Checking Whether an Email Was Delivered
For text messages, there is a log. Go to Business Settings then SMS Logs to see every text sent and whether it was delivered or failed. See SMS Message Logs.
Checking What the Email Actually Says
Sometimes the email arrived and the customer did not recognise it as yours.
Go to Business Settings then Notifications then Customer, and click View Message on any notification to preview exactly what your customer receives.
Check your company name, your email logo, and your contact details are all present. Your email logo is a separate upload from your main company logo, under Settings then Visual Identity - if you only uploaded the main one, your emails may be going out unbranded.
Getting the Document to Them Another Way
When email is not working, you have options that do not depend on it:
Text it. If you have SMS set up, you can send proposals, change orders, and invoices by text. See SMS Templates & Notifications.
Point them at the Customer Portal. Customers can see their proposals, invoices, and appointments there without waiting for an email. See Customer Portal.
Send to a different address from the Mobile App. The mobile send screens let you type an email address directly rather than picking from the account's contacts.
Tips & Best Practices
Add both homeowners as contacts. Two addresses means one bad email does not stop the approval.
Read the email address back on the phone. Ten seconds of confirmation beats three days of a customer wondering where their quote is.
Send a test to yourself before your first real send. Check the branding, the reply address, and where it lands in your own inbox.
Tell commercial customers to whitelist you. Office email filters are far more aggressive than residential ones, and property managers often never see a first send.
Turn on SMS for time-sensitive documents. Texts are read; emails are triaged.
Things to Know
Creating a proposal, change order, or invoice does not email it. Those sends are manual.
Proposal and invoice follow-up reminders send on the document's due date.
Emails only go to the contacts you select on the send window, not to every contact on the account.
Contacts also determine who receives replies to emails MotionOps sends on your behalf.
Notifications without a Configure link use fixed timing and cannot be rescheduled.
The email company logo is a separate upload from the main company logo.
Only admins can change notification settings.
Troubleshooting
My customer never got the proposal.
Check the proposal's status first. If it is still a draft, it was never sent. If it was sent, check which contact you selected and whether their email address is correct.
One contact got it and the other didn't.
Recipients are selected per send. Open the send window again and select both contacts.
Appointment reminders aren't going out.
Check that the reminder notification is enabled under Business Settings then Notifications then Customer then Appointments. Reminders fire 24 hours and 1 hour before the appointment, so nothing sends for a job booked for this afternoon.
The invoice reminder never sent.
Invoice follow-up reminders fire on the invoice due date. Check the due date on the invoice and your default payment due period under Business Configuration.
Emails are arriving without my logo.
Upload an email company logo under Settings then Visual Identity. It is separate from the main company logo used on proposals and invoices.
My customer replied to the email and I never saw it.
Replies go to the contacts configured on the account. Check the contact record for the address replies are routed to.
I need to send to someone who isn't a contact on the account.
Add them as a contact, or use the Mobile App send screen, which lets you type an email address directly.
Nothing I send reaches this one customer.
Their mail server is likely blocking you. Ask them to whitelist your sending address, and use SMS or the Customer Portal in the meantime.
Have questions? Reach out via the support chat or email support@motionops.com.