Let’s talk about your client’s experience with the quick-close invoicing process in Releventful! In this tutorial, we will review what the client sees when you send them an invoice or proposal and what the invoicing steps look like on their side when they proceed to make package selections, sign the contract, and make their first payment in the system.

After you have configured your proposal and invoice settings appropriately, you are ready to proceed and send the necessary booking steps to your client. There are two ways that this can be done, the first option is you can send these items to your client manually.

This can be done via the quick-close invoice screen for a given event. There is a “send to client” button in the upper right-hand corner of the quick-close invoice screen that can be selected when you have set your invoicing items in place and are ready to send them over to your client. When this button is selected, you can add a welcome note to the email to greet them to the process and provide them with instructions on how to proceed.

The second option to send these items to your client is through a more automated process. Utilize the automation settings available to you via the portal templates menu to have these steps sent to your clients automatically as they meet specific requirements that you have configured in the system. For example, you can have a proposal, contract, payment schedule, and final invoice all sent to your client automatically as soon as you drag the lead into the “proposal sent” sales stage. For more information on portal templates and the available automation settings, please refer to our “Portal Templates & Automations” tutorials at help.releventful.com.

Whether you choose the automated workflow, or the manual option, your client will receive an email inviting them to the first step of the process. In today’s example, we will review an event that has all four steps in the invoicing process. This client has been sent a proposal template to make their package and add on selections, the contract template to sign, an outlined payment schedule and the final invoice. The final invoice will be generated based on their selections in the proposal template.

This is the email the client received to access the proposal and make their package and add on selections. When the client selects the “Review Proposal” button in the email, they will be automatically logged into their event portal. They will not need to login with a username and password. The email grants them immediate access to the portal to proceed with next steps.

At the top of the page, you will see a tab for each step in the process – proposal, contract, and final invoice. The first payment will be listed on the invoice tab with a button to proceed and make the initial deposit.

The client will review your proposal here and make their selections with the available selection buttons. As they select offerings in the proposal template, their running total at the bottom of the proposal will reflect their invoice total as they add additional selections for purchase via the proposal. When they have made their selections and are ready to proceed, they will select the “Submit and Continue” button at the bottom of the page.

Next, Releventful will automatically proceed the client to the contract and open that tab for them. Here they can read over your contract details and initial in any spots that require their initials. They will proceed to sign the contract and enter their name and email address at the bottom of the page.

When they have completed this step, they will select the “Submit and Continue” button at the bottom of the contract to proceed to the invoice tab.

On the invoice tab, the client can select the “View Invoice Details” button to review the selections they made as they appear on the final invoice from the proposal selection process. They can select the “close invoice details & view payments” button to return to the original invoice view.

At the bottom of the invoice, they will see a button outlining their first payment amount and the due date for that payment. When selected, if customer tips have been enabled, they have the option here to add a tip. If you have configured your payment schedule to allow for ACH or CC for your client, once the client selects the “pay” button here, they will be prompted to choose credit card or ACH to proceed and make their initial deposit. For more information on payment schedules, please refer to our payment schedules tutorial at help.releventful.com

At any time, they can review their proposal selections and signed contract by selecting those tabs at the top of the page.

On your side, you can see these submissions via the quick-close invoice screen for their event. When opening the proposal, you will see a green bar at the top stating that the proposal has been accepted. In a similar way, the contract will say “contract signed” at the top of the page when the client has completed this step. You will also receive email notifications as your client completes these steps if you have enabled these notifications via the communication preference settings under the settings gear in Releventful.

As a best practice, we suggest at this point that you instruct your client to download the Releventful mobile app to participate in the remainder of the planning process through the app. By default, if the client has not downloaded the mobile app, Releventful will direct them to a web browser any time they launch the event portal or click on a prompt from an email notification. Once the mobile app is downloaded, the buttons provided to the client via the email notifications will automatically launch the mobile app if they are viewing the email from their phone or launch a browser window if they are viewing the email from a desktop.

The mobile app provides in-app notifications to your client and is very user friendly for the completion of planning forms and other to-dos that are assigned to them to complete.

We hope that this walkthrough has been helpful in explaining the proposal and invoicing experience from the client’s viewpoint. For more information on what the client experience is like for to-do items assigned to them after booking, and what they can access via the event portal, please refer to our “Event Portal Client Experience” tutorial at help.releventful.com.