Each customer/homeowner has different email configurations and sensitivity set. What people don’t realize is when they sign up for a bunch of newsletters, and start making them as spam rather than unsubscribing, Gmail/Yahoo will look at that and start automatically assigning things into spam/promotions folder. All of this happens automatically and under the covers and don’t realize what their actions do to the rest of the email box.
Your insurance guy your talking about probably has some crazy email restrictions set by their IT internally. There is nothing anyone (us/QBO etc) can do to get through if it’s that crazy.
the only problem with that is that your invoicing isnt robust enough for me to use it exclusively. and i can’t use a little of both qbo and hcp because of the syncing issues it will cause. so i’m currently sticking with my method of keeping them separate and relying on qbo to handle invoicing independent of hcp.
thanks @rolandal for replying to everyone’s comments!
that makes sense, and realistically it’s not that big of a deal to match the deposit up to the correct invoices in qbo during your deposit reconciliation. wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me at all.
I totally get what you’re saying. But using our own email servers would drastically reduce the chances of getting filtered in this way. I know that some other software platforms allow configuring it to go through the user’s email account.
Just to reiterate, though, I feel strongly that receipts shouldn’t be treated as a ‘notification’. I believe it should be handled in same manner as an invoice- it gets sent to the customer whether notifications are turned on or not.
Mind telling me in what circumstances you’ve found HCP’s invoices to be unworkable? Because if it’s something that doesn’t apply to me, or it’s something I can work around, it’d be useful to know
you can’t attach stuff to them. no before/after photos, no clickable links in the message fields. also, not much customization in the templates they have so the look is pretty dull compared to qbo.
and @rivet0r mentioned something that i also don’t like: there is no separation between item (service) and description of service. they are lumped into the same field. there needs to be a delineation between service rendered and description of service. qbo does it like that (and so does jobber if i recall). this is important for tracking purposes- ie., list total revenue over a given period for ::window cleaning:: or ::pressure washing:: etc
also, you can’t zero out a total in an estimate. so if you are sending pricing on different packages for the same service (ie., a line item for each of the following: basic, deluxe and premium), you can’t zero out the total at the bottom, and you can’t have a line item with a 0 qty to avoid adding the price to the total as a workaround either. so you’ll end up with all the package prices adding together into a large number in the total field at the bottom, which is going to confuse the customer.
the more i look at it, i doubt that HCP invoicing will ever be as functional as QBO so i’ll probably keep them separate forever and just deal with the little bit of double data entry that that entails. oh well, that’s what Office Girl is for
This is what I mean by customization… all the little things matter. I agree with what you’re saying, but what if you already provide someone with a paper invoice/receipt? I think making EVERYTHING optional, on a global AND per customer basis is what is needed. It fixes everything, for everyone.
Customization is huge, it helps tailor to every single business.
How does hcp push over invoices and job info? For example, if it sends over an invoice/job, and it’s a “Deluxe Package”, will this be sent to qbo just the same way, so qbo automatically categorizes this if you set it up this way? Kind of how mint.com works, if you’ve ever used it. Or do you have to manually categorize every single entry on qbo’s side after hcp pushes it?
I’ve been thinking about signing up to qbo, but these are some of the questions I’ve had in my mind.
i don’t remember how it works. tbh, i’ve never had ANY service sync seamlessly with QBO- they’ve all been a huge hassle. i’ll run a test invoice later and let you know.
I’ve mentioned before
For me? - The annual is almost insignificant…
Meaning, it will fall into place when it’s all said and done.
The Month is what counts. It makes me push harder, price more aggressive, etc…
I want to beat my goals (Previous yearmonth, 5 year high for that month, best ever for that month)
I want to be it baaaad… if I could double it I would.
If I’m over, I keep the push, I don’t hold it over to start ‘ahead’ for the next month.
(which is why I don’t like, as mentioned above, when partial jobs end up in the next month earned income)
Annual growth is fin, and it will happen.
But monthly goals are what truly matter.
This is what I love to see… discussion/acknowledgement of concerns.
I don’t expect real time, certain fixes… but I love to see @rolandal here
saying “hey, I see you guys and I’m seeing what I can do for you.”
We are a small group, but we’re smart, and we have big mouths when we feel good about something.
I can promise you that there are people watching and waiting for the ‘green light.’
[quote=“c_wininger, post:222, topic:32092”]thanks @rolandal for replying to everyone’s comments!
[/quote]
Absolutely!! Thanks for your time, @rolandal
no i get that, and i’m with you. i guess what i meant was, if you get shorted a little at the end of June, you get a bit of a bump early in July. but you may have got a bump at the beginning of June from may’s work that you didn’t bill out anyway. so over the course of months and months it all ends up evening out. and trying to control when a project wraps is out of your hands a lot of the time anyways. that’s how i look at it, so i don’t worry too much about it (unless it’s a REALLY big ticket job, and then i’ll just backdate the invoice so that it’s numbers show in the month the bulk of the work was done).
but i get it if that exact monthly benchmark is what you use to drive your efforts.
Ha. I was hoping you wouldn’t reply like you did.
But yes, ‘flaw exposed.’
One benefit is, carrying the finished product over (if I can see it coming) makes me push even harder,
because I can no longer count on that $ for Current month.
That’s why I was wondering what you meant by ‘multiple visits’
it was for selfish reasons, which I hope makes sense now.
I’m looking for a solution that will keep my monthly push
but also not give false ‘push’ to a New month, that may in fact be waay behind.
My goal is to avoid the bumps.
I’d rather start behind (or dead on, better yet) than ahead.
Incidentally, “thanks for playing” -this is the seemingly useless stuff I do in January.
I mean that.
Additionally, I’ve found the app tends to crash on the first one or two attempts at opening it. I’ve confirmed that this has nothing to do with any of the tweaks installed on my phone.
