Set up an automatic reminder for my client

A client who has not answered is the normal case, not the exception. Kalepio can chase them for you, or let you do it with one button when you would rather pick the moment.

Studio settings → Notifications, at the bottom of the page.

Two ways, and they do not cost the same

• By hand, from the order, on every formula. One button, one e-mail, you decide when.
• On its own, on the paid formula. You say how many days without news should pass, and you stop thinking about it.

Reminding by hand is never held back by a formula. Stopping you from asking your own client for an answer would be stopping you from working.

What a client can be reminded about

Two things, and nothing else:

• a request that was sent to them and that they have not answered;
• a payment they were asked for and have not made.

If neither is outstanding, nobody is reminded. An order where every round has been answered and every payment is settled is a quiet order, however long it has been sitting there for other reasons.

Setting the pace

Two fields:

• Remind my clients automatically, the switch.
• Remind after N days without news, between 1 and 30 days. Three by default.

One day at the least, because same-day is not a reminder, it is a second copy of the first message. Thirty at the most, because past a month the job is not waiting, it has been abandoned.

When the days start counting

From the last thing you asked this client for, not from the day the order was opened.

That is what avoids the reminder that lands badly. Take a job whose brief has been open for a month and who was sent a deposit yesterday: your client has just heard from you, so they are not chased today. The count starts again from yesterday.

A client is never reminded forever

Three reminders at most without an answer from them. This ceiling is not a setting, deliberately: you do not experience the reminders you schedule, your client does.

And it starts over as soon as your client does anything, whether they answer a request or write to you. So it is three reminders since they last showed up, not three for the whole life of the job. A three-month job that needed a brief, then a mock-up signed off, then a balance is not out of reminders at the second silence.

Reminding by hand

The Remind the client button is in an order's toolbar, next to the tracking link.

It can be used once an hour per order. The rest of the time it stays visible but greyed out, with the reason written beside it. There are four:

• nothing is waiting on this client;
• their record carries no e-mail address;
• they have just been reminded, and you will be able to do it again in an hour;
• the maximum number of reminders has been reached, and the count starts over when they answer.

Greyed rather than hidden: this is not a feature you have lost, it is a reason to wait.

What your client receives

An e-mail in your name, saying what is left to do and leading to their tracking page. No account to create: it is the link they already have.

It does not read like the first message they got, and that is on purpose: the same sentence sent twice reads as a duplicate, and a sender who repeats themselves ends up ignored. The mail never says how many times they have been chased. They have done nothing wrong.

What is never chased

• An order whose client record has no address. Nothing can be sent, and the screen says so rather than failing quietly.
• A request already answered, a payment cancelled or already settled.
• A payment your client may have just paid: after they come back from the payment page, they are not chased while the confirmation is on its way.
• A deleted order.

Finding what was sent

Every reminder is written in the studio's activity journal, with the date, who triggered it, and what was outstanding at the time. A reminder that went out automatically has nobody as its author: it was the application, and the journal says so.

Depending on your formula

Automatic reminders depend on your formula. If yours does not include them, both fields stay on screen and disabled, with the sentence and the link to your subscription beside them. Reminding by hand stays available.