David Mineer's Blog

This isn't something new to me but I am ashamed I don't use it more. Infusionsoft has what they call "Note Templates". That's kind of a funny name and doesn't really do justice to what you can do with note templates. It's actually like a macro, or just a way to kick of a whole bunch of repetitive tasks. There are lots of different uses for such great functionality but the other day I just wanted to do one thing.

I was monitoring our support forums because we had made a change in the delivery of our product which required our customers to login to retreive their newsletter. We had many requests for their account information. I set up a note template that emailed them their account information and added a note to their account. This isn't very difficult, but it does take several minutes to select the email template and create a note.

So I created a note template that did both of those things. Now I just click on the note template box and start typing the first few letters in the note template name, which shortly pops up. Tabbing out of the field selects the top one and another tab puts focus on the add note button. Press enter and poof email sent and note created. However long it took before it only takes seconds now.

You can attach any number of actions to a note template. I shouldn't procrastinate creating note templates and I should review the work flow of my staff and save them oodles of time by creating key note templates for them. Not only saves them time but reduces entry errors.

This entry was posted on March 7, 2012 at 9:27 AM and has received 349 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Final Solution:

I used a combination of the 2 solutions I was working on in this post: http://www.davemineer.com/index.cfm/2011/12/16/Sending-Invoices-before-actual-due-date-in-Infusionsoft.

I create my own tables with the information that I want, but I also create an infusionsoft invoice and record that infusionsoft invoice number in my tables. Then when I send a copy of the invoice via my own mail server the invoice number matches that from infusionsoft. And since an invoice in infusionsoft is created we can easily accept payments against that invoice or our customers can use customerhub to pay those invoices by themselves.

One small note is that the invoice looks a little different, especially the line items but the totals match up and there is a line item for each item on each invoice, just the description in the infusionsoft invoice is truncated and therefore slightly different.

I think I explained this in the previous post, but when I create the infusionsoft invoice I bump forward the next bill date for the corresponding subscription. The new invoice helps us keep track of who owes and we will see the past due invoice, but the subscription will be active until the bill date which was advanced. So, of course care must be taken to deactivate the subscription if payment is not made on the related invoice which is now just a one time invoice.

This entry was posted on January 9, 2012 at 2:13 PM and has received 472 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Working on the project that I talk about here: Sending Invoices before actual due date in Infusionsoft. Now playing with setting the nextbill date out so when a customer pays from the one time invoice it adjusts their subscription accordingly. Noticed when I tested one that it turned that date red inside infusionsoft on the subscription page. Tech Support told me that the red is an indicator of the date being further out than the length of the subscription. So if you change that date to 2 months from now, but the subscription is a 1 month subscription, it will be red.

This entry was posted on December 16, 2011 at 1:06 PM and has received 329 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Our old system allowed us to generate invoices X number of days in advance. So each day we would process all invoices due in the next 60 days. This is good, right? Our customers have some notice that their subscriptions are coming up for renewal. This system ignored auto credit card accounts and processed those on the due date, but for all others it generated invoices that we were able to send to our customers. And our customers like it. Gives em time to submit payment, especially in the cases where they have to submit it up the food chain to corporate accounting or whatever cause that can take time.

With infusionsoft, we can't do that any more. Bummer. So we are giving up 60 days of income this year. That sucks! Which won't work for us and besides the model of notifying your customers in advance seems to be pretty universal anyway. Anyone that pays by check or you need permission to charge a credit card needs time to submit payment. And isn't it better to give them that time before they are past due? This is an important piece of missing functionality and one we don't feel we can live without.

So after complaining and pressing for a built-in solution (none found) I tackled this with the API. It took a few days but I was able to create my own invoices. They look nice too. The include start and end dates for the renewal period which is something we don't get from regular infusionsoft invoices. I was also able to include the discount if they have one. We also feel it is important to let your customers know they are receiving a discount if they are receiving one. Infusionsoft doesn't provide a way to do that on their invoices. So perfect, right? I am creating beautiful invoices and emailing them out 60 days in advance. Our customers are happy and several pay rather quickly. They want it to go on this years budget. Check payments, no problem. WE apply the payment as a credit to their account. When infusionsoft creates the invoice it will use the credit instead of charging their card. Some reports will probably be messed up, especially until the credit is applied and maybe even when that happens, but we are able to take the payment and move on.

Not so with Credit cards. You cant process a real time credit card payment without a "due" invoice to apply it to. So close and still no dice. Crap! So I am on a webinar with the genius that is Brad Martineau and I ask a question around all this and even though he isn't really a developer (that's what he says) he mentions something that get's me moving on. From inside infusionsoft you can't move the next bill dates of subscription more than 30 days. I'm not exactly sure what the limitation is but I know we can't change the bill date on these subscriptions we want to charge early to today, and then just move the next bill date back out accordingly. Won't work, although I did have tech support tell me a workaround was to move it 30 days at a time. Anyway, back to Brad. He mentioned that he didn't think the API had that restriction and I may be able to move that nextbilldate all over theplace via the api. So he said I could do that and maybe create a one-time order or something. That got the wheels spinning and I dove right in to creating a one time invoice thingy in infusionsoft.

It didn't take long. As part of creating the invoices as mentioned above I stored the information from those invoices into local tables in my database. So it was easy to get the information and using the invoiceservice API create a one time order with all the necessary orderitems. Man was I stoked! During all this time I had been pretty vocal about my problems on twitter and infusionsoft had been awesome responding. But even though the responded well, they couldn't do anything for me. I had a call with Joe, the social media guy that was responding, then an account manager and then they even set me up with a product manager. I appreciated this effort and I felt like they were going out of their way to try and help me. But the bottom line is they gave me all the emotional support in the world but their product couldn't do (out of the box) what I wanted it to.

But I'm cruising now. I am easily creating one time orders which list all the subscriptions and even though I have to put today's date so I can run the credit card charges it is working. I would rather leave the due date to match the actual renewal date but I can't run the charges if I do that. So now I think I won't have to create my own invoices and store them locally I can just create these one time orders and email those out and receive payments against them. As I create them I plan to manually move the nextbilldate for the corresponding subscriptions forward to the appropriate date. So the financial reporting will be off at least as far as tracking income by subscription but we are getting the money in and applying it in a way that keeps the accounts correct. Then a few let downs. For some silly reason the price of the subscriptions that I am passing into the orderitems are being listed 3 times on each line. They add the price to the title, then they add it to the unit price and to the total. Now, given the total will be different if you change the quantity (we never do cause you don't need 2 subscriptions to the same thing) but why put that stupid thing in the header. I guess I could almost handle that EXCEPT that the information in my description field is being truncated! Arrrggggg. So after I add the subscription begin and end dates, the discount (if they have one) and our already fairly long description you aren't getting even 70% of the whole thing and it's confusing. I am not even going to talk about how bad I wan't to remove the quantity field and pass a different value to the unit price(I want that to reflect the default price, before discounts). But I have almost 0 control over that invoice. I can customize some stuff and create an invoice template, but I can't do anything with those line items which means it doesn't do any good to mess with the headers. I could throw some fields and other stuff up there but they aren't nearly as important as these things I am discussing.

Infusionsoft:

1. Please allow me to send out invoices x number of days in advance. Or at least let me apply charges to an invoice that isn' actually due yet. Other than subscriptions that bill automatically with credit card customers need notice and time to submit payment. Right?
2. Don't put the price in the header for orderitems on one-time invoices or at least let me have the option to leave it out.
3. Give me more space for the description for each orderitem. In fact, who cares if I want it to scroll 3 or 4 lines, why truncate it?
4. Can I please have some control over that orderitems table layout for those one time invoices.
5. For your built-in invoices will you please list the begin and end dates for subscription line items, and also list any discounts or give me the option to have this stuff listed or not. it is important.
6. I was able to easily program via the API a system that notifies customers of upcoming renewals at 30, 10, and 1 day intervals so we don't have irate people issuing chargebacks. This should be built in. My system works awesome but I was surprised there was not a way to do it inside the program.

This entry was posted on December 16, 2011 at 10:20 AM and has received 787 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

For almost as long as we have been using Infusionsoft we have also been using an "add on" product called Customerhub. We use it only as an interface for our customers to do a little of their own account management. It really is a great program, especially compared to what we were trying to use before. Doesn't surprise me that Infusionsoft made this acquisition and actually, now that I think about it It's kind of nice to see them adding some weapons to their arsenal. Kyle and Nathan (co-founders) of Customerhub both previously worked at Infusionsoft. They probably make a little more money now that they are back :-). But they fit the Infusionsoft culture well. Great guys with energy and vision. I don't see a downside to this acquisition.

Check out the announcement from Customerhub

Announcement from Infusionsoft

This might not be easy for infusionwp and some of the other Infusionsoft linked membership management sites to see, but those products still provide a slightly different experience and even, as I understand it some additional features. There is still room for others. The way customerhub is designed makes for a better fit with Infusionsoft. The other membership plugins, many of which are based on wordpress are just that, based on wordpress and fill an important void for Infusionsoft customers who want to use wordpress.

This entry was posted on November 1, 2011 at 1:34 PM and has received 366 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We have been using salesforce.com for about 3 1/2 years now. What a great product. When it comes to CRM I would consider them the leader. A hosted solution, we have never had any trouble with availability or issues like that. It is a well designed product. BUT it is so #$#@ expensive. We pay $100 per month per user for the enterprise version and with 20-30 users you see how much that can add up too. That's still better than an in house solution that you need an admin to take care of. Cheaper than an admin for sure. But to add additional functionality like marketing automation or billing you have to add 3rd party products and that raises the price exponentially. Before long you price a small business right out of salesforce.com

Then I was introduced to infusionsoft.com. A great product with it's strength in marketing automation. But the CRM portion isn't even in the same league with salesforce.com. And it is $700 per month for 30 users, substantially less money and ecommerce and marketing automation included.

I came across this article comparing the two: http://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/salesforce-com-vs-infusionsoft-as-a-small-business-crm/

This entry was posted on August 11, 2011 at 9:32 AM and has received 3280 views. There are currently 2 comments. Print this entry.

I'm a member of Brad Martineau's Infuse My Business program. Whatever it's called. Anyway, Brad's the man and knows more about infusionsoft than most of the people at infusionsoft (he use to work there). In the last "Jam Session" he had some great tips on searching in Infusionsoft. Search is a real weekspot for infusionsoft and I don't know why they don't fix it. But these tips really helped make searching easier.

1. ctrl-q is a shortcut key combination to move your cursor to the search box in the upper right hand corner.
2. ctrl-downarrow moves thru the list of search types that you see when you click the magnifying glass
3. you can type something like "da mi" and it will pull up any person whose first name begins with "da" and last name begins with "mi", like me, David Mineer, for example. infusionsoft assumes the first group of letters is what the first name starts with, and the second group is what the last name starts with. I seriously had been cutting and pasting in the whole name every time. No more
4. If you type something in the search box that includes a "@" it will assume you want to search for an email address and work accordingly
5. You can use "*" as a wildcard character. I still am not sure of all the ways this works but I mostly use it to replace the first name so I can search just for a lastname, or portion of a lastname i.e. "* mineer"
6. This is a big one that we had struggled with and somebody at infusionsoft told me once and I forgot then couldn't find another person that seemed to know. But using the "Find" under the people tab, where you have all the fields you can fill out, you can use an underscore "_" in combination with "Contains" or the reverse "Does Not Contain" to search for all records that either have a value or don't have a value. So if you want everyone who doesn't have an email you put the "_" in the email field and choose contains in the dropdown and you get that list.
7. This doesn't have to do with searching but when you are in a date field if you press "i" you get a list of date shortcut keys. Some don't make any sense, but they are there. Don't know why + doesn't increment one day and - go back one day. Whatever.

This entry was posted on July 21, 2011 at 4:30 PM and has received 1239 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.