A billing notice is the email a billing run sends when a planned charge, reminder, cancellation, or other action succeeds or fails. You write the subject and body once, add merge fields, and each action that uses the notice sends that wording with the recipient’s details filled in.
Prerequisites
- You need the billing notices permission in Setup.
- If you want a notice to go only to certain organization contacts, create those contact roles first.
Where to Find It
Go to Finance & Billing › Setup › Billing › Notices to view all billing notices in your account. Select Create Billing Notice, or open an existing row, to create or edit a notice. To review the wording an invoice notice uses, open its billing notice from this page; you’ll see the reusable subject and body, not a copy of an email a recipient already received.
The Settings
| Setting | Options | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Any text | Empty; required | Identifies the notice when you choose it on a billing run, billing template, or recurring billing run |
| Send this notice to | All contacts, only certain roles | All contacts | For an organization customer, controls which linked contacts receive the email |
| Which contact roles | One or more contact roles | None | Required when Send this notice to is "only certain roles" |
| Status | Active, inactive | Active | Controls whether staff can choose the notice for a new run, template, or recurring run |
| Subject, body with merge fields, sender settings | Empty; required | Sets the email content and sender settings used when the notice sends |
In the email editor, merge fields are grouped by the records a billing action can provide. These include the contact, customer, installment schedule, invoice, run, original order, and organization, along with each record’s custom fields.
Tip
Not every billing action includes every merge field group. If you use a merge field for a record the action does not include, the field prints blank instead of causing an error. Before you use the notice, check that its merge fields match the kind of action that will send it.
Who Receives It
| Customer | "Send this notice to" | Who receives the email |
|---|---|---|
| An organization | All contacts | Every contact linked to the organization who has an email address |
| An organization | Only certain roles | Only linked contacts who hold one of the chosen roles and have an email address |
| A contact | Either setting | The contact themselves, regardless of the setting |
If a contact has no email address on file, Rhythm leaves that contact out without showing an error. If an organization has no matching contact with an email address, Rhythm sends nothing and records only an internal warning, but the billing action is still treated as completed. If expected contacts do not receive a notice, check that they have the role you chose and an email address on file.
A billing notice only goes to contacts linked to the organization being billed. Rhythm does not automatically include a parent organization related to that organization, and there is currently no setting here that adds it. This applies to routine charge and reminder notices as well as any other outcome. Membership dues billing has its own separate way to direct a child organization’s invoices to a parent organization’s billing contact. If that is what you need, use that option instead of billing notices, since they support different billing situations.
If a child organization has no contacts of its own, invoicing that organization gives you no billing contact to choose by default. Turn on the option to include contacts from the parent organization when invoicing the child, and a parent-organization contact becomes available as the billing contact.
Dependencies and Precedence
- Deactivating a notice affects only the selector. A run, template, or recurring run that already names an inactive notice keeps sending it. Deactivation only stops staff from choosing that notice for new work.
- A notice is chosen independently for success and failure. A billing action can use one notice for a successful outcome and a different notice for a failed outcome.
Change Impact and How to Revert
When you edit a notice’s wording or recipients, the change affects every future email sent with that notice, including actions that are already planned but not yet sent. Rhythm does not keep a separate copy per run, so the next email sent with that notice uses the updated subject or body. To revert the change, reopen the notice and change the setting back.
Why You Cannot Delete Some Notices
You cannot delete a billing notice while any planned or completed billing action still names it as its success notice. Rhythm refuses the deletion, and the notice stays in place.
Warning
This protection does not cover a notice used only as an action’s failure notice. If you delete a notice that some actions use only as their failure notice, Rhythm removes those actions along with the notice, including actions that already ran and recorded what was charged. If you are not sure whether any action names the notice as its failure notice, deactivate it instead of deleting it.
If you need to retire a notice that is still in use, set its status to inactive instead of deleting it. That stops staff from choosing it for new work without changing the runs, templates, or history that already depend on it.
Permissions
Creating, editing, deactivating, and deleting a billing notice requires the billing notices permission in Setup.
Validation and Errors
| Message contains | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The name field will not save empty | No name was entered | Enter a name |
| "Only certain roles" cannot be saved with no roles chosen | You chose "only certain roles" but did not select a role | Choose at least one contact role, or switch back to "all contacts" |
| The email will not save empty | No subject or body was written | Write the subject and body |
| Delete refused | A billing action still names this notice as its success notice | Find and update the action, or deactivate the notice instead |