Email is where invoices go to get buried. A text gets read in a couple of minutes, and ChargeOver puts a pay link right in it, so a past-due invoice can be settled from a phone in about the time it takes to read this sentence.
Schedule a demoStart a free trial
Four kinds of messages, all from the same place your email notices already come from.
The text carries your company name, the invoice number, the amount owed, and a shortened link to pay. It also says it is an automated message from an unmonitored number, so nobody replies into the void.
A text placed a few days after a missed payment date is the one that moves money. Not the first notice, and not a collections call. The reminder that lands while the invoice is still just forgotten.
In your dunning and reminder settings, each step can send an email, a text, or both. Five days after the scheduled payment date, send the invoice due notice by text. Keep the rest of the sequence as it is. The customers who tell us texting changed their collections are almost always describing that one step.
See how dunning works in ChargeOver
Texting a customer is legally different from emailing one. It takes their explicit, prior consent, and the rules are enforced per message. So ChargeOver only texts contacts who have opted themselves in.
Three places a customer can do that: the payment page when they pay an invoice, the customer portal under My Info (including when you have embedded the portal in your own site), and your hosted signup pages at the point they sign up.
When someone replies STOP, we opt them out immediately. To start again, they opt back in themselves.
Two things people ask for that we will not build, because they are not compliant: a pre-checked consent box, and a rule that opts customers in automatically. Consent has to come from the customer.
The rules for texting customers about late invoices
New customers opt in on their way through signup or the payment page, and that takes care of itself.
Your existing customers are the real job. They have to visit the portal and check a box, which means you have to email them and ask, and the email has to be about what they get (payment updates, notice before a charge) rather than about you wanting to text them when they are late. Expect that to take a couple of rounds.
If you already collect texting consent somewhere else, you do not have to start over. Send us what you have and we will import the consent records and the phone numbers, with the dates and sources intact. Same for phone numbers living in another system.
Talk to support about importing consent
$25 a month to turn on, which includes a dedicated number for your business, plus 10 cents per text.
DECISION NEEDED: Chris gave these numbers live on the September Drilldown, so customers already have them, but he also said they may change. Publishing them here makes them a listed price. Alternative wording: Usage-based pricing, including a dedicated number for your business. Talk to us about volume.
Yes, with their prior consent. Texting is governed by the TCPA and FCC rules rather than the looser standards email lives under, consent has to be specific to text messages, and opt-outs have to be honored. ChargeOver records where and when each contact opted in.
No. Consent has to be an action the customer takes. A pre-checked box is not consent, and neither is an automated rule that opts people in.
They are opted out right away and stop receiving texts. If they want messages again, they opt back in from the portal or the payment page.
Yes. Text this invoice lives under Invoice Actions on any invoice.
It is included. Turning SMS on gives your business its own dedicated number.
Yes. Support can import consent records and phone numbers for you.
New invoices, invoice due notices, and past-due reminders inside your dunning sequences. Each dunning step can be email, text, or both.
Already a customer? SMS can be turned on for your account. Setup steps are in the Help Center, or email support@chargeover.com and we will walk through it.
Not a customer yet? If you are chasing invoices by email and the emails are not working, that is the part of ChargeOver worth seeing first.
Schedule a demoStart a free trial