What are cadences?

If you’re like most companies you’ve been managing Accounts Receivable with a combination of aging reports, spreadsheets, and a lot of manual labor. While accounting systems show you what’s past due, all the effort of determining what needs your attention and what needs to happen is left to you.

Our cadence system lets you automate all or some of these steps with fully customizable workflows and communication rules. You can use multiple communication channels (including email, SMS, letters, phone calls), copy other team members, and even control which communication is sent automatically and which require approval. Cadences maximize collections effectiveness and efficiency by ensuring every customer and invoice receives the optimal level of attention while your team is empowered to do more impactful work.

Each cadence is a set of rules that can be assigned at the customer and invoice level. This lets you create specific communication rules to manage different customer types, products, teams, and relationships. You can create an unlimited number of cadences, giving you specific workflows to manage any billing scenario or customer relationship. After a cadence is assigned, all cadence steps are scheduled and can be viewed in the To-Do List. After an invoice is fully paid, it is automatically removed from the cadence and all unsent steps are canceled.

Create a Cadence

1. In the Settings screen, click Cadences.
   All existing cadences (including default cadences) are available from this screen.

2. In the Cadences screen, click New Cadence in the top-right of the screen.

3. Enter the Name and Description of the cadence.

4. Click the name of the cadence you just created.

5. In the New Step screen, enter the Condition, which is the trigger for the rule.
   Conditions can be based on customer, invoice, payment statuses, or a point in time. Some of the most frequently used conditions trigger communication when an invoice is created, when an invoice is past due, when a payment is made/declined, and sending statements on a specific day of the month.

6. Select the type of communication to be created. Communication options are:

• Email — Sends an email to the customer. Emails are sent from the connected email accounts, based on the Billing Team Email settings.

• SMS — Sends an SMS message to the phone number listed for the customer. Depending on your AR Automation plan, the phone number can be customized and a set number of SMS messages may be included each month. Additional SMS message charges are deducted from your balance. You can choose your plan and view/reload your balance under Account > Billing.

• Letter — The system can print, stamp, and mail documents including collection notices and invoices statements. All letters are printed double-sided and include a return envelope with a tear-off return slip. The cost of printing letters is deducted from your balance.

• Phone call — In a cadence, a Phone call is a reminder (displayed in the To-Do List) to call the customer.

• Internal reminder — This option lets you send an email to any email address. This is especially useful for sending inter-company notifications regarding the status of a customer or invoice.

7. Click Add to save the step.

8. On the right side of the screen, complete the cadence step settings. The availability of settings depends on the type of condition and communication channel.

• Send a copy to others — For Email or Internal Reminder steps, you can copy other team members or email accounts on the communication. Selecting the option to Copy to company email will CC the email address listed as the Accounting Email under Company Profile. Selecting the option to copy the Owner, Sales Rep, or Account Manager will send an email to the user listed for the respective role for the customer the step was triggered for.

• Send automatically — Every step has the option to be sent automatically.

  • If you select Send automatically, as soon as the condition is met that step in the cadence is sent in the next delivery window. (Delivery windows are configured in the email settings.)
  • If you do not select this option, this step must be approved manually. Steps that require approval appear as Pending in the To-Do list.

• Attachments — For Email and Letter steps, there is an option to Attach invoice PDF. If you select this option, a PDF of the invoice is attached to the email or, for letters, the invoice PDF is printed on the back of the first page.

• Attach invoice attachments — (This is only available for email steps.) If a file is attached to an invoice, the attached file is sent as an attachment to the email. To attach a file to an invoice, click the invoice number and scroll down to the Document section of the invoice, and select Attach New Document.

• Include one-off invoices and Include recurring invoices — Recurring Invoices are invoices in the accounting system or invoices created by the Subscription Module. All other invoices are considered One-off Invoices. Typically, you want to keep both of these options selected. If you do not select both, you create steps that only occur for subscription invoices or only occur for non-subscription invoices.

• Timing — Most conditions have the option to choose the number of days before or after an event to trigger the step. For example, you can create a step to send a past due notice 5, 15, and 45 days after an invoice is past due. You can enter up to three digits in this field.

• Statements — Statements have some unique settings because they are generated at the account level. When you create a statement you can choose to Not send if the customer's balance is cleared, which does not send a statement to customers assigned to the cadence if the customer does not have a balance. You can also limit the invoices included on the statement to only include invoices created in the last __ days. This option excludes invoices created outside the number of days selected. Statements can be sent by email (as an attachment) or as a letter.

• Cadence Step Content — Below the settings on the right side of the page, you create the content for each step.

  • For emails, enter the Subject of the email then the content below. You can use the editor to customize the appearance of the communication or you can switch to HTML mode by selecting the </> icon from the editor menu at the top.
  • For information specific to the customer, balance, invoice, and so on, use a Placeholder. To access the placeholder list, select the + icon in the editor menu. Placeholders pull in specific information, letting you personalize the content as a call to action. The availability of specific placeholders depends on the condition.

• Call-to-Action options — A call-to-action lets you direct your customers to take a specific action (such as "Pay your invoice", "Pay your balance" or "update the payment method on file") directly from the communication. To add a call to action, click the + icon to access the placeholder menu, and then select the call to action.

• Invoice Button — Directs customers to an online version of the invoice that triggered the reminder. Integrated payment options are available to accept payment for this invoice. Payment options are configured in Account > Payments.

• Pay Balance Button — Directs customers to a summary of open invoices with the ability to make a payment for all invoices at once or individually.

• Update Billing Info Button — Directs customers to update the payment method they have on file. This can be especially useful for failed automatic payments.

• Customer Portal Button — Directs customers to log in to their customer portal. Customers who have previously been invited to the portal can log in with the password they created. Customers who have not been previously invited need to Request Access and enter the email address on file.

9. Click Save in the top-right of the screen.

Create a Cadence Assignment rule

Cadence Assignment rules allow you to automatically assign cadences to invoices or customers meeting a set of conditions that you define. Follow these steps to create a Cadence Assignment rule.

1. Click the Assignment Rules tab and click Add Rule.

2. Choose whether the rule should apply to an invoice or customer, and click Next.

3. Click Add Field.

4. Select a field from the list of options, such as Date, Type, or Status.

5. Set the condition for the chosen field.

6. Add additional fields by repeating steps 3 through 5. When you've finished adding the fields and conditions, click Next.

7. Select a cadence and click Next.

8. Preview your rule and click Create.

Now that your rule has been created, any customers or invoices that trigger your rule will have the cadence automatically assigned to them.

Manually Assign a Cadence

You can also manually assign cadences to specific customers or invoices that should receive those rules. For more information, refer to Assign Candences.

QR Code Placeholders

For users who opt for physical letters for communication, an easy way to navigate to AR Automation Payment Links and our Customer Portal login page is by using our QR Code Placeholders. For each physical letter, we generate a unique QR code for each customer’s Payment Link/Pay Balance Link/Payment Method Link and Customer Portal Link.

When your customer receives a letter with a QR code, they just need to scan the QR Code on the letter using their smartphone and they will be redirected to the corresponding linked page.

You can find a complete list of QR codes and what they are linked to below:

• Placeholder Pay Balance QR Code is linked to the customer's Pay Balance Link.
• Placeholder Customer Portal QR Code is linked to the Customer Portal login page.
• Placeholder Payment Link QR Code is linked to the customer's Payment Link.
• Placeholder Update Billing Info QR Code is linked to the customer's Payment Method Link.

Find more detailed information about ways to accept payments and descriptions of each payment link here.

Cadence Conditions

Cadence conditions are categorized by object. Below you can find th list of cadence conditions related to each object and cadence step condition.

Customer Level Cadence Conditions

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Invoice Level Cadence Conditions

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Cadence conditions that trigger statements

In order to trigger a statement to be sent out to a specific customer, you need to select at least one of the following Statement Cadence Conditions as the cadence applied to your customers.

You can set the number of invoices on the cadence condition settings for the Invoices are due and Invoices are created steps. These conditions trigger communication once a day, as long as the customer account meets cadence condition rules.

Payment Cadence Conditions

In order to trigger communications related to payment, you need to select at least one of the following Payment Cadence Conditions as the cadence applied to your customers. If the payment cadence condition is applied to the invoice only, communication will not be triggered.

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Payment Plan Cadence Conditions

In order to trigger communications related to Payment Plan payments, you need to add a Payment Plan cadence condition to the Payment Plan. If the Payment Plan cadence condition is only applied to the customer/invoice, communication will not be triggered.

Subscription Cadence Conditions

In order to trigger communications related to subscriptions, you need to add at least one of the following Subscription Cadence Conditions to the cadence applied to your customers.

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Quotes Cadence Conditions

In order to trigger communications related to quotes, you need to add at least one of the following Quotes Cadence Conditions to the cadence applied to your customers.

Prospect Cadence Conditions

In order to trigger communications related to Prospects, you need to add the following Prospect Cadence Conditions to the Cadence applied to your prospects.

Other Cadence Conditions

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