Email & templates

Overview#

CentraPoint emails your customers on your behalf: invoices, receipts, reminders, subscription notices, debit order agreements and customer portal codes. Under Settings → Email you choose how these are sent, change what they say, and see every message that went out.

Who sends your emails#

Default: sent by CentraPoint#

Unless you set up your own server, customer emails go through CentraPoint's mail server. The sender shows your company name with CentraPoint's address (for example "Acme Hosting via CentraPoint" <no-reply@…>), which keeps SPF and DKIM valid. Replies go to your company email, and the company name comes from the same page (your account name if it is empty): both are under Settings → Company settings.

Your own SMTP server#

To send customer emails from your own domain, fill in Settings → Email → Configuration and tick Send customer emails through my own SMTP server.

Emails CentraPoint sends to your own users (password resets, invitations, EFT proof-of-payment notices, referral rewards, two-factor and email verification) always come from CentraPoint, so a broken SMTP server never locks your staff out.

Testing the connection#

Tests use the saved settings, so save first. Both are in the Test card:

• Test connection connects to your server and signs in (25-second limit), then reports success or the server's error.
• Send test email sends a short message to your own user address through the saved SMTP server, even before you enable it. It appears in the log as "SMTP test".

The Status card shows which server currently sends customer emails: your server (host:port), CentraPoint, or nobody (no mail server configured, in which case emails are logged as skipped).

Signature and footer#

These apply to templated customer emails whichever server sends them (not to the built-in invoice and receipt layouts described below):

• Signature (HTML): added below the body. Scripts, frames and event handlers are removed when you save.
• Footer address, Terms URL and Privacy policy URL (URLs must start with http:// or https://): shown in the footer, replacing the default "Sent by CentraPoint on behalf of the merchant" line.

Emails show your company name in the header. On plans with custom branding, the header line and buttons use your primary brand colour.

Email log#

Settings → Email → Logs lists every email sent for your account, newest first, 25 per page: time, recipient, subject, template, status and linked customer.

Filter by recipient or subject text, status, template and date range (South African days). View shows the sender, error, message ID and the rendered email. For a failed or skipped email whose content was stored, Resend sends the same content again (attachments are not kept, so a resent invoice or receipt has no PDF).

Email templates#

Settings → Email → Templates lists the customer emails by category (Payments, Invoices, Subscriptions, Debit orders, Customer portal, Reports, General) with their current subject and status: Default, Amended (you changed it) or Disabled. Templates you have not changed use the CentraPoint default and pick up improvements automatically.

Editing a template#

Open a template to edit it:

• Subject: up to 300 characters, plain text (line breaks are removed).
• Body (HTML): up to 200,000 characters. Scripts, frames, forms, event handlers and javascript: links are removed when you save.
• Placeholders: the placeholders the template supports, as buttons. Click one to insert it at the cursor. In the body, a placeholder ending in Url is inserted as a button.
• Send this email: untick to disable the template when you save.

The heading above the body is fixed per template and is not editable. The Preview panel renders your unsaved changes with sample values, inside your branded layout, as you type. Send test to me sends the current editor content, with sample values, to your own address; the subject starts with [Test] and the log shows it as "Template test".

Placeholder syntax#

<p>Hi {{firstName}},</p>
<p>Your {{planName}} subscription renews on {{nextBillingDate}} for {{amount}}.</p>
{{button:portalUrl|Manage subscription}}
<p>Questions? Email {{supportEmail}}.</p>

In the subject, tokens render as plain text, and a button token becomes Label: url. The plain-text version of each email is generated from the HTML automatically.

Disabling and resetting#

• Disable stops that email from being sent to customers, without changing its content. Enable turns it back on.
• Reset to default discards your changes: the CentraPoint default is used again, and the template is enabled.

Invoice and receipt emails#

The invoice and receipt emails use a built-in layout until you customise them; once you save a change, your template is used instead. Either way the invoice or receipt PDF is attached (see Tax & PDF documents). Receipts are only emailed when Email customers a receipt when a payment completes is on under Settings → Company settings (on by default), at most once per payment. Invoice emails go to the customer's billing email when set, else their email. A receipt for a customer's payment goes to the billing email when set, else the payer's email, else the customer's email; a payment with no customer goes to the payer's email. Disabling either template stops that email.

Template reference#

Every customer email template, with the placeholders it supports:

Common placeholders#

All templates except report_delivery support these four:

portalUrl is only filled in while your customer portal is open, so its button disappears when the portal is off. In the editor preview and test sends, any placeholder without a sample value shows as [name].