I’ve had several clients come to me experiencing problems with their forms (proposals and questionnaires) going out before they are even ready. This is in spite of the fact that the Requires Approval box is checked on the workflow step. So, I thought this would be a great topic to share with everyone since many people might not realize what is actually going on. 

To begin, just in case you’re not aware… 

Contracts and Forms have the ability to have expiration dates and reminders set. You can customize a Canned Email Template that will go out automatically for any form or contract expiration reminder. You set the expiration and reminders by going to the form’s settings page.

Now, to move on

Here is where the technicalities come in that causes something to happen which isn’t what you expect to happen when you set this up…. So, let’s say I set a relative expiration of 7 days “after applied to project” and a reminder to be sent 2 days before it expires. With a contract, the clock starts counting down when the contract is sent to the client, however, with a form (proposal, questionnaire, etc) the clock starts ticking when the workflow begins. I know, that is a bit confusing, so I’ll explain a little more. A contract isn’t “applied to a project” until it is sent, however a form is “applied to a project” as soon as the workflow begins (even though it hasn’t been sent to the client yet). So, the form that has the expiration date of 7 days might not get sent until 10 days after the workflow begins. 

OK, so back to our hypothetical workflow….. 

You’ll notice that your client got an email reminding them of their proposal expiring (or they emailed you back wondering what’s going on). But you haven’t even had the Discovery Call with them yet! Yikes! You go to your workflow and see that it is still showing that it needs to be approved and hasn’t been sent yet. What in the heck is going on?!?

Alright, so here is what happened….  

The client actually received the Form Reminder that you set with the form expiration. This is because the clock began counting down when you started the workflow, it doesn’t “watch” when the form is actually sent out in the workflow. I know, it’s kinda frustrating, but I have a solution!

Instead of setting a form reminder on the form itself, build out the reminder email in the workflow, not on the form. You can still set the expiration date on the form, however, I would make it a little longer since it might not be sent for a week or so. Since Dubsado has workflow “triggers” based on a form not completed, it makes this an easy solution.

I hope this helps avoid some frustrations in the future! 🙂

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