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How Aiwyn invoice emails work

Maggie Shipley
Updated

Applies to Aiwyn Payments.

You create, post and email invoices from your practice management system, and Aiwyn delivers them to your client as the Aiwyn invoice email.

On Aiwyn Practice, you send invoices from Aiwyn itself. See How an invoice is issued and delivered.

How does an invoice you email from your practice management system reach your client as an Aiwyn invoice email, and what decides what your client receives?

Your practice management system sends the invoice, and Aiwyn wraps it

Nothing changes about how you bill. You create the invoice, post it and email it from your practice management system as you always have. What changes is where that email goes.

Instead of reaching your client directly, the email reaches Aiwyn in one of two ways:

  • A mail rule your IT team set up during implementation redirects it to your Aiwyn inbound email address. The rule matches on the email's subject line, typically Invoice_Aiwyn. Most firms use this route.
  • Your system, or you, sends it straight to your Aiwyn inbound email address. Firms on CCH Axcess use this route and don't use a mail rule.

Aiwyn picks up the email, wraps it in the Aiwyn 1-click invoice email and sends that to your client. Your client receives one consistent email, whichever system your firm uses, with a Pay invoice button that takes them to the client portal to pay.

Because the email is only intercepted on its way out, an invoice email that doesn't match your mail rule isn't caught. Your system sends it to your client as a regular email, without the Aiwyn invoice email, and Aiwyn never sees it. For the two routes side by side, see Invoice Email routing options.

Aiwyn matches the email to a posted invoice before it sends anything

Aiwyn doesn't forward your email as it arrives. It first works out which invoice the email is about, and checks that the invoice is ready to send.

Aiwyn reads the invoice number from the file name of the attached PDF. The file name must contain your firm's delimiter, the fixed text set during implementation, followed by the real invoice number, for example Invoice_12345. Aiwyn then looks for that invoice in the data it receives from your practice management system.

The invoice email is sent only when all of these are true:

  • The invoice exists in your practice management system and has reached Aiwyn.
  • The invoice is posted.
  • The amount due is more than $0.
  • An invoice PDF is attached.
  • The email has recipients Aiwyn can use.

If the invoice hasn't been posted yet, Aiwyn doesn't reject the email. It holds the email indefinitely and sends it automatically once the posted invoice reaches Aiwyn. So you can post before or after you send, as long as you do both. On CCH Axcess, a posted invoice reaches Aiwyn with the next data load, usually within about 4 hours. See Get a held invoice email sent after you post the invoice.

Zero-dollar invoices are never sent. They show only in the Firm Portal, with paid invoices, and your clients never see them. For every condition, with what happens when each isn't met, see Requirements for an invoice to send.

Who receives the email depends on your firm's recipient setting

Aiwyn decides who gets the invoice email in one of two ways, set for your firm during implementation:

  • Aiwyn keeps the recipients from your original email. The Aiwyn invoice email goes to the addresses you put in the To field when you sent the invoice from your practice management system or your email system. Most firms use this setting.
  • Aiwyn uses the billing contacts on file. The Aiwyn invoice email goes to the billing contacts held for the client in your practice management system, whatever addresses were on your original email. Firms on CCH Axcess use this setting.

Your firm also chooses, during implementation, whether the email comes from the same sender address your practice management system used or from one fixed address for the whole firm, and whether the CC recipients from your original email are kept or replaced by fixed CC and BCC addresses. The From address is one of the few parts of the email your firm controls. See Invoice Email routing options.

If Aiwyn ends up with no usable recipient, it doesn't send the email, and your daily bounced email report lists it with the reason No recipient.

The email is standardized, so every client receives the same layout

The Aiwyn invoice email is a fixed template. Its subject line, wording, layout, fonts, sizing and button colours are the same for every firm and every client. Your client's name appears in bold, and the subject line follows the form Invoice [number] for [client name]. This is deliberate. Every client who pays a firm through Aiwyn learns to recognize the same email and the same Pay invoice button, whichever firm sent it. See Why every firm's invoice email looks the same.

What your firm can set is the branding and a few details:

  • The From email address, either the sender from your practice management system or one fixed address.
  • Your firm's horizontal banner logo.
  • Whether the email shows the due date or Due Upon Receipt.
  • The sample invoice graphic.
  • The AutoPay prompt box, if AutoPay is enabled for your firm.
  • Two footer lines: your address or locations, and your firm name.

For each element, where its value comes from and whether you can change it, see Anatomy of the 1-click invoice email.

The PDF your client opens is the file you attached

Aiwyn takes the invoice PDF from your email, saves it and links it to the invoice in the Firm Portal and the client portal. That file is what your client previews and downloads. Aiwyn doesn't read the PDF, and it doesn't change it. The invoice your client sees is in your firm's own template, exactly as your practice management system produced it.

Any other files you attached to the original email go out with the Aiwyn invoice email too, but only the invoice PDF is available to download in the portals.

The invoice's details, such as the amount due and the due date, reach Aiwyn separately, through your practice management system's connection. So an invoice is visible and payable in the client portal whether or not its email was ever sent, including invoices from before your firm started using Aiwyn. Only the PDF depends on the email. If you send an invoice email with no PDF attached, Aiwyn doesn't send it, and there's no PDF for that invoice in either portal. The email is also the only way to get a PDF into Aiwyn, which is why loading past invoice PDFs means emailing them to Aiwyn. See Why the PDF you send is the PDF your clients see.

Aiwyn sends one email per invoice, and blocks repeats for 20 minutes

If Aiwyn receives a second email for the same invoice within 20 minutes of the first, it doesn't send it. This applies to any recipients, so a second email to a different address is blocked too, and it applies whether the email arrived through a mail rule or directly at your inbound address. The blocked email is discarded entirely. Your client doesn't receive it, and it doesn't appear in the Email Delivery Hub.

This protects your clients from receiving the same invoice twice when your email system delivers duplicate copies to Aiwyn within seconds of each other. It also means that if you correct an invoice and send it again within 20 minutes, the corrected email is lost. Send the invoice email again more than 20 minutes after the first. See Aiwyn invoice emails using the mail rule and Resend an invoice after correcting the PDF.

The same mechanism lets you send several invoices to one billing contact in a single email. Aiwyn matches each attached PDF to its invoice and sends one Aiwyn invoice email covering all of them, with a single button to pay them. See Send multiple invoices to one billing contact in a single email.

When an email can't be sent or bounces, your firm hears about it the next day

Two things can go wrong after you send an invoice email, and Aiwyn reports both.

  • Aiwyn couldn't send it. The email failed one of the checks above. The most common reasons are an invoice Aiwyn can't find, listed as Ingested Invoice Does Not Exist, and No recipient. An email held for an invoice that hasn't been posted yet stays listed until the invoice arrives.
  • Aiwyn sent it and it bounced. Your client's mail server rejected the email, usually because the address on file is wrong.

Both appear on the daily bounced email report that Aiwyn emails to your firm's payment notification recipients. [SME to confirm: the name of this setting and where the recipients are managed.] See Bounced and undelivered email reports. Emails Aiwyn did send are also recorded in the Email Delivery Hub in the Firm Portal, with their delivery status. Some firms also have Pending and Failed tabs there for emails that were never sent. See Email Delivery Hub reference.

An invoice email that bounced or was never sent doesn't change the invoice. It's still on the Invoices tab, still unpaid and still payable in the client portal. Fix the cause, then send the invoice again. To email the invoice with the PDF Aiwyn already has, see Resend invoices from Firm Portal.

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