Emailing Clients
Send emails, invoices, estimates and receipts to pet owners, and track whether each message was delivered.
Wattle sends emails to clients from the screens you already use, and keeps a record of what went out and whether it arrived.
One limit: replies don't come back into Wattle. Inbound email isn't set up, so a client's reply lands in your clinic's normal inbox. You also can't forward a message - you compose a fresh one each time.
Your client just gets an ordinary email: your subject, your message, your chosen signature, and any attachment. They see nothing about Wattle, drafts or folders. Personal emails go as plain text. Invoices, estimates and receipts are the exception - a formatted document with the PDF attached.
Common tasks
| I want to... | Do this |
|---|---|
| Write a one-off email | Communications → Compose |
| Email a specific owner | Their file → ⋯ → Send email. Address pre-filled |
| Send a bill or quote | Open the invoice or estimate → Send. PDF attached automatically, and shown in the window so you can check it first |
| Send a receipt | After recording a payment → Send receipt in the success message |
| Copy someone in | Add CC, just right of the To field |
| Attach a file | Drag it onto the message area, or the paperclip. + tile adds more |
| Change the sign-off | The pen icon in the compose footer |
| Tie the email to a pet | Start from the patient's file, or use Link a patient below the To field |
| Keep one for later | Save as draft. Closing the window does not save |
| Finish a draft | Drafts folder → click the row |
| Bin a draft | Row ⋯ → Delete draft, or the trash icon while composing |
| Tidy a sent message away | Row ⋯ → Archive |
| Get it back | Archive folder → select → Restore |
| Deal with a failure | Issues folder → open the row to see what happened → fix the address on the client's file → Compose it again |
| Find a message | The folder dropdown, or Search |
Where messages live
| Folder | Holds |
|---|---|
| All | Everything except archived |
| Drafts | Not sent yet |
| Sent | On their way, or delivered |
| Issues | Bounced or failed |
| Archive | Tidied away |
On a client file you get a patient filter; on a patient file, a toggle between Show only this patient and Show all client comms. Neither tab has folder or status filters - use the main inbox for that.
Delivery status
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Not sent yet |
| Sending | Wattle is handing it to the mail service |
| Sent | Left Wattle successfully |
| Bounced | The address rejected it - often wrong or closed |
| Failed | Something went wrong sending |
A short Sending pause is normal; the list refreshes itself every few seconds, so don't reload. An unusually slow send may briefly read Delayed before landing on Sent or Failed. Failed sends also appear in your notification bell, so you'll know without watching the inbox.
If a message sits on Sending for more than about ten minutes, it has stopped. Open it and use Retry send. Until August 2026 a message could get stuck there permanently with nothing offering to send it again, usually after losing signal partway through a retry - if you have old messages sitting on Sending, that's what they are, and Retry send clears them.
A stuck message may still have reached the client. It most likely never went out, but it can also stop after the mail service accepted it. If sending twice would matter - chasing an unpaid invoice, for instance - check with the client before you retry.
Gotchas
- Closing the compose window doesn't save anything. Only Save as draft does.
- Drafts delete; sent messages only archive. A draft that's gone is gone. A sent message is a record you can never truly delete.
- Retry send is for a message that didn't get out, not for a wrong address. Bounced, Failed and stuck-on-Sending messages all offer Retry send, from the row menu or the opened message. But a bounce is usually the address being wrong or closed, and retrying sends it to the same address again - fix the address on the client's file and compose a fresh message instead. A message the recipient reported as spam is deliberately never retryable, from anywhere.
- An archived message leaves All, Sent and Issues and lives only in Archive. It can feel like it vanished. It didn't.
- Search only looks at the subject line - not the recipient, not the body.
- Keep attachments under 10 MB each. The capacity meter on the compose form is more generous than the upload itself, so a file between 10 MB and 25 MB looks accepted and then fails to attach. Shrink it, or share it another way. 40 MB across all of them is the other limit, and that one the meter has right. Only PDFs, images, CSV, Word and Excel are accepted.
- A fresh compose starts with your own signature already in the message, and the current choice isn't shown on the form - you only see the options inside the pen dropdown. If the signature matters, set it and check the body before sending.
- Changing the recipient clears any patient link, because pets belong to one owner. Pick the pet again afterwards.
- The patient dropdown only lists the chosen recipient's pets, so select the owner first.
- Bulk actions apply to the current page only. If your drafts span several pages you must act on each in turn - there's no select-all-across-pages.
- 100 emails per clinic per day, resetting midnight UTC. The warning banner only shows in the main Communications inbox, not in compose windows opened from a client, invoice or estimate. If you've sent a lot today, glance at the inbox before writing a long one. Regularly hitting the cap? It can be lifted - ask whoever set up your clinic.
- Check the PDF before you send it. On an invoice, estimate or receipt the document is prepared as soon as the compose window opens and appears in the attachments area with its size and a View button. Opening it is the quickest way to confirm the bill reads the way you meant before the client sees it.
- If the PDF can't be prepared, the compose window tells you in red, before you send. It gives the reason and a Try again button. You can still send the email without it, deliberately, so a problem with the document never stops you writing to a client. Just remember they'll get the message with nothing attached.
Can't see Compose, Send, or the Communications menu at all? Usually permissions.
Related
Clients · Patients · Invoices · Estimates · Taking payments · Printing & PDFs