Device SMS is going away

The team here at Squeegee have kept the beta device SMS option alive for legacy users for 3 years since we stopped supporting it and we were no longer able to offer it as a feature on the app from 2019.

With only a small handful of active users with this option still enabled on android devices after it was finally blocked by Apple last year, it is time to look at the alternative options with many more features ahead of the release of 'Squeegee Send' our new marketing and advanced communications module that will be released in the coming months. The way SMS messages are handled in the app will be completely different from this release which is when this option will become unavailable.

Squeegee SMS and Squeegee Two Way SMS

Squeegee SMS is available on all plans, and allows outward bound messages only and can either use a mobile number in the 'from' field where replies can be delivered to, or a business name up to 11 characters which does not support replies.

Squeegee Two Way SMS is available on the Advanced and Ultimate plans enabling customers to send replies that you and your workers with permissions see in the app and get notified of in the alerts section and via enabled push notifications.

The messages themselves require credits costing 3.6p per message segment (1st segment is 160 characters, then 153 credits each after this up to 8 credits in total.)

To set up either, go to: Settings > Notifications and Messages > SMS Settings where you'll find this view:

Here you can set up auto-top-up once card details are added so you don't have to worry about running out of credits, and if you choose, you can enable a private number if you're on Advanced or Ultimate which opens up another great feature allowing you to redirect calls directly within the app.

Once you've done this, you can move onto the templates which are found in Settings > Notifications and Messages

Here you'll find SMS and Email templates for:

• Appointment reminders;
• Payment Requests;
• Invoice Messages;
• Automatic Payment Invites and
• SMS messages (general)

At the top of each of these templates, there are a list of tokens which can be used to pull through information stored on the customer or job making the messages personal without having to spend the time personalising them!

Simply compose the message that you want to send under each of the templates inserting tokens wherever appropriate and press save.

Once this step is completed, you'll want to ensure customers have their default notification method set. The simplest way to do this when starting a new account is to go to the top option in the Notifications and Messages settings. Here you can set all new customers to email, SMS or both. This affects how all newly added customers are set.

To set an individual's default, this can be done by going to the customer > three dots menu to the top right > edit, then a little way down you'll see the default notification method setting.

Notification Method Options

None

Customer will not appear in appointment reminder list for SMS or email and will not receive automatic invoices

Email

Customer will appear in the "Email reminders" option from the work planner and will receive invoices by email if you set them to receive invoices automatically.

SMS Using Phone

Customer will appear in the "SMS reminders" option from the work planner and will receive invoices by SMS if you set them to receive invoices automatically.

SMS Alternative Phone

Customer will appear in the "SMS reminders" option from the work planner and will receive invoices by SMS if you set them to receive invoices automatically.

SMS (Phone) and Email

Customer will appear in the "SMS and Email reminders" option from the work planner and will receive invoices by SMS and Email if you set them to receive invoices automatically.

SMS (Phone2) and Email

Customer will appear in the "SMS and Email reminders" option from the work planner and will receive invoices by SMS and Email if you set them to receive invoices automatically.

Automating invoice notifications

One final part of the setup, is deciding whether you wish customers to be sent their invoices automatically. Again, this can be done as a global setting for all customers and individually on each customer.

For the global setting go to Settings > Invoicing & Payments > enable automatic invoice generation

Once you have configured the notification settings on your customers, you can the send appointment reminders for specific days e.g. tomorrow.

To do this, navigate to the work planner and go to the day you wish to remind your customers for by clicking on that day from the graph. Swipe the graph from right to left if the day you need is in the next week.

Once you are viewing the day in question, the pink menu at the bottom will have options for each of the notification methods that you have customers set up for. In the screen shot below you can see we have customers set up for "Email", "SMS and Email" and "Log Phone".

Sending Payment reminders

Payment reminders can be sent from the customer, any invoice or the easiest place is the owing screen.

They can be sent in bulk to all owing customers by going to the green icon to the top right of this view: Alternatively, they can be sent individually from the same view by pressing onto the customer, then the 'request payment' option from the pink button. This same option is available from the customer screen or invoice view.

Sending Invoices Manually

For customers who don't have automatic invoice notification switched to 'on' invoices can be sent from the invoice summary from the send options on the pink button menu.

The invoice summary can be found on the job, on the finance tab of the customer or from the invoices view in the menu.

Sending Automatic Payment Invitations

If you would like to invite a customer to set up automatic payments by adding card details for recurring card payments (using Stripe) or by setting up a Direct Debit mandate (using GoCardless) then you can send an invitation from Squeegee with a unique sign=up link so there's no syncing required once they sign up.

To do this, go to the customer view, then just underneath the location map, you'll see the Automatic Payment section. Once you've pressed here, you can choose which method you'd like to take payments automatically from, then send the invitation to set this up. You can see a preview of the message by scrolling down a little to see the preview sign-up page too.

Viewing Messages on the customer and in alerts

For all users with the required permissions set to view messages, alerts will come through (and push notifications if enabled on the device) for each new message. Within the alerts view, there are tabs across the top to filter down by specific type. If you go to 'sms' you can see all inbound sms messages ordered from the newest first.

If you press on any of these, this will take you to the messages tab on the customer where you can also send a quick reply.

Finally, we recommend setting yourself up as a test customer and sending some invoices on job completion, payment reminders from the owing screen, and appointment reminders from the work planner and taking a look at the Module on Messaging for further guidance: https://squeeg.ee/academy/messaging