SMS Troubleshooting

Check these in order:

1. Are you on the Pro plan? SMS notifications require a Pro subscription. See Billing & Plans.

2. Is your SMS add-on enabled? Go to Settings → SMS Notifications. If you see the $15/month upsell card, the add-on is not yet active. See Enabling SMS.

3. Has the master toggle been turned on? Even with the add-on enabled, sending is paused until you flip the master toggle.

4. Is the specific notification type enabled? Each notification (Invoices, Estimates, Review Requests, Portal Invites, On My Way) has its own toggle. If “Invoices” is off, invoice SMS buttons are hidden everywhere.

5. Are you the owner? Only the account owner can enable the add-on and toggles. Team members can see and use existing toggles but can’t change them.

6. Do you have available credits? If your balance is 0 (visible in the credits widget), send buttons may be hidden or disabled. See SMS Credits & Billing.

If everything looks correct and the button still isn’t there, contact support.

When the toggles are all on but the button is disabled for a specific customer, the customer-side requirements aren’t met:

1. Does the customer have a phone number? Open the customer detail page and verify the phone number field is filled in. Customers with no phone won’t appear in SMS-enabled dropdowns.

2. Is the phone number valid? Service Invoice Pro normalizes phone numbers to US format. Numbers that don’t look like a valid US phone (10 digits, with or without +1) will be rejected when sending.

3. Has the customer opted out? If they replied STOP at some point, future SMS to that number are blocked. See Customer Opt-Out & Compliance.

Your Pro subscription was either downgraded or expired. SMS is a Pro-only feature.

1. Go to Settings → Billing.
2. Verify your subscription is active.
3. If your card failed, update it; if you’re on Free, upgrade to Pro.

The customer replied STOP (or another opt-out keyword) at some point. SMS to that number is blocked at the carrier level and by Service Invoice Pro.

Options:

• Ask the customer to reply START to any previous text to re-enable.
• If the customer wants to re-subscribe but can’t find a previous text, they need to text START to the same phone number that previously sent them SMS.

See Customer Opt-Out & Compliance for details.

1. Open the customer detail page.
2. Verify the Phone field is filled in.
3. Confirm the number is a real US phone number — 10 digits (e.g. 555-123-4567) or with country code (e.g. +1 555-123-4567).
4. Common issues: trailing whitespace, letters in the number, missing area code, or international format without +1.

Each invoice and estimate has a 24-hour cooldown between SMS sends to the same customer. This prevents accidental duplicate texts.

Options:

• Wait until 24 hours have passed (the error message tells you how long is left).
• If you need to send sooner, use the email channel instead.
• For urgent re-sends, copy the portal link from the invoice and text it manually.

On My Way SMS has a 15-minute cooldown per job to prevent customers from receiving multiple “we’re on the way” texts.

Wait the indicated time and try again. If the original text already went out, the customer is already informed — no need to resend.

Review requests are limited to one SMS per job, ever — they cannot be resent. This prevents customers from being asked for a review repeatedly across multiple invoices for the same job.

If the customer didn’t receive or respond to the original review request, the recommended approach is to ask them in person or send a review request from a different job.

If you genuinely need to resend a review request from the same job (rare), contact support and we can reset it manually.

Your monthly credit balance has been used up. Sending will resume on your next billing cycle date (shown as Next Refill in the credits widget).

Options while waiting:

• Send via email instead.
• Contact support to top up credits manually before your next refill.

See SMS Credits & Billing for how segments are counted.

You’ve hit a sending throttle. Limits are:

• 50 messages per user per day (resets at midnight UTC)
• 15 messages per user per hour (rolling)
• 200 segments per organization per day
• 3 messages per recipient phone number per 24 hours

These exist to protect deliverability and prevent abuse. Wait for the relevant window to reset, or have a different team member send.

Credits are refunded automatically when a rate limit is hit — no segments are consumed.

Review request SMS needs a Google review link to direct the customer to.

1. Go to Settings → Review Requests.
2. Add your Google Business Profile review URL.
3. Save and try sending again.

See Review Requests for help finding your Google review URL.

Check these in order:

1. Confirm the phone number. Open the customer detail page — is the number correct? A typo or wrong number means the message went somewhere else (or nowhere).

2. Is the number a landline? SMS can’t be delivered to landlines or VoIP numbers that don’t support text. The carrier accepts the message but never delivers it.

3. Is the number on a do-not-disturb list? Some carriers and devices filter business SMS, especially if the customer marked previous business SMS as spam.

4. Has the customer’s phone changed carriers? Number portability can occasionally cause delivery issues for a few days after a port.

5. Wait 5 minutes. Most messages deliver within seconds, but during peak times carrier delays of 1-5 minutes happen.

6. Check if your credit balance refunded. If the message failed downstream, the credit will be refunded automatically — visible in the Remaining counter. If credits were refunded, the send failed and the customer never got it.

If multiple customers report missing texts across different carriers, contact support.

Check these in order:

1. Was the link truncated? Some older phones or messaging apps truncate long URLs. Ask the customer to long-press or tap-and-hold the link to copy it, then paste into a browser.

2. Is the portal/review link still valid? If you revoked portal access for that invoice or estimate, the link no longer works. Generate a new link and resend.

3. Is the customer typing the URL manually? The link contains a long random token. Manual typing almost always introduces errors. Always have them click the link directly.

4. Did the SMS provider modify the URL? Some providers replace links with their own tracking links. Service Invoice Pro doesn’t do this, but check that the customer is using the original message.

This is almost always because typical Service Invoice Pro SMS uses 2 segments per send, not 1. The invoice and estimate templates include your business name, an invoice number, a dollar amount, a portal URL, and the required STOP footer. Together, this typically pushes over 160 characters → 2 segments → 2 credits per send.

To verify:

1. Go to Settings → SMS Notifications and note your current balance.
2. Send a test SMS.
3. The balance should drop by the actual segment count (usually 2).

If you want to send more for the same money, edit your On My Way template to be as short as possible. See SMS Credits & Billing for the full segment math.

The balance updates in real time as sends complete. If it looks off:

1. Refresh the page. The widget updates automatically but a stale tab may show old data.

2. Check for pending refunds. If a send failed downstream (e.g., the carrier couldn’t deliver), the refund happens asynchronously and may take a minute to arrive.

3. Check the next refill date. If today is your billing date and credits haven’t refilled yet, the Stripe webhook may be running late. Refills usually arrive within a few minutes of your renewal time.

If the balance looks wrong for more than 30 minutes, contact support.

When you disable the SMS add-on, your remaining credits stay on the account record but you can’t send any new messages. Credits are not refunded as cash.

If you re-enable the add-on later, you’ll receive a fresh 300 segments — the old balance is replaced, not added to.

The standard path is to ask the customer to reply START to any previous text from your business. The carrier and Service Invoice Pro both clear the opt-out within seconds.

If the customer can’t find a previous text (deleted it, switched phones, etc.), contact support — we can manually clear the opt-out flag with written confirmation that the customer wants to re-subscribe.

This can happen if:

1. The customer texted STOP to a different business that uses the same SMS carrier infrastructure. In rare cases, broad opt-outs propagate.

2. A team member manually set the unsubscribe flag in the customer record. Check the customer detail page for the SMS subscription status.

3. The customer’s phone forwarded an automated STOP during a carrier change.

Contact support with the customer’s name and phone number — we can investigate and clear the flag if appropriate.