How to turn on automatic review requests

Automatic review requests need one of three things to happen after a job: you BCC an address, you forward an email, or you route something through Zapier or Make. All three land in the same place and use the same timing rule you've set on your Intake page. None of them need a software integration.

Find your address

Every business gets one unique Goodshout address. Find it on Intake under Your Goodshout address (Pro only): it looks like yourbusiness-xxxxx@inbound.goodshoutapp.com. Copy it before you start; you'll paste it into whichever method below fits how you invoice.

Method 1: BCC it when you send an invoice

This is the simplest option if you email invoices directly.

1. Open the email you're about to send your customer.
2. Add your Goodshout address to the BCC field, alongside the customer.
3. Send as normal.

Whether you can make this automatic (so you never have to remember) depends on your invoicing tool:

• Fergus lets you set an ongoing BCC in your email settings, up to 6 addresses, applied to every invoice and quote automatically. Set it once and forget it.
• Xero's newer invoicing screen lets you add a BCC per invoice send, but there's currently no way to save it as a default. You'll need to add it each time (it's usually remembered as a recent recipient, which speeds this up).
• ServiceM8 and Jobber both let you add extra recipients when sending an invoice by email, but we haven't been able to confirm from their own documentation whether that field acts as a true BCC or is visible to the customer, or whether it accepts any address. If you use one of these, try it, or use forwarding below instead, which we can confirm works regardless.
• Any other invoicing tool: check its email settings for BCC, CC, or copy. Most trade and accounting software has one.

Method 2: Forward a confirmation email

No invoicing tool BCCs for you, or you're cash or EFTPOS only? Forward any email that confirms the job (a payment receipt, a booking confirmation, whatever you've got) to your Goodshout address after the fact.

1. Open the receipt or confirmation email.
2. Forward it to your Goodshout address.
3. Send.

This works even though the customer's address usually isn't in the forwarded headers anymore: we scan the message for a plausible customer email instead of relying on the To field.

Method 3: Go fully automated with Zapier or Make

This is the option for anything that doesn't already email the customer itself: a Stripe payment, a Calendly booking, a job marked done in a CRM. Once it's built it's hands-off: your trigger fires, a short email goes to your Goodshout address with the customer's email address in it, and a request is created automatically, every time.

The shape is always the same two steps, whichever tool you use:

1. Trigger: whatever event means the job's done (a payment, a booking, a status change).
2. Action: send an email to your Goodshout address (not to the customer). Put the customer's email address in the body of that email. We read the first email address in the body and send the review request to it.

The customer never receives anything from this step: it's a note to us, not to them. Nothing else in the email is read, so keep the body to the customer's email address so we can't pick up the wrong one. To have the request greet them by name, add a line above it that says Name: Jane Smith (map the name from your trigger step). The name is optional.

For the email step, use the sender you already have. Sending from your own Gmail or Outlook works best, because it's connected in a couple of clicks and has no unusual limits. Zapier's built-in Email by Zapier also works, with the limit noted below.

Setting it up in Zapier

1. Log into Zapier and click Create Zap.
2. For the trigger, search for the app the event happens in (for example Stripe) and pick the event (for example New Payment). Connect your account, then test the trigger so Zapier can see a real, recent example to work from.
3. Click the + to add a step. Search for Gmail (or Microsoft Outlook) and choose Send Email, then connect your account. If you'd rather not connect a mailbox, search for Email by Zapier and choose Send Outbound Email.
4. Fill in the action:
   • To: your Goodshout address.
   • Subject: anything, for example "New job".
   • Body: the customer's email address, mapped from your trigger step. Optionally add a line above it that says Name: followed by their name.
5. Test the step, then switch the Zap On in the top right.

Zapier's free plan gives you 100 tasks a month, and a two-step Zap like this uses one task per run. One catch: Email by Zapier is limited to 5 emails a day on free plans, so if you might send more than 5 requests in a day, use the Gmail or Outlook step instead.

Setting it up in Make

1. Log into Make and click Create a new scenario.
2. Add your trigger module first (for example search Stripe, or Calendly, and pick the event), connect your account, and click Run once so Make can pull through a real example. Where there's an instant version of the trigger (it's labelled "instant"), use it: see the note below.
3. Click the + on the right of that module to chain the next step. Search for Gmail (or Microsoft 365 Email (Outlook)) and choose Send an Email, then connect your account. Make's plain Email module also works, but it needs your email provider's SMTP details, which is fiddlier.
4. Fill in the action:
   • To: your Goodshout address.
   • Subject: anything, for example "New job".
   • Content: the customer's email address, mapped from the trigger step. Optionally add a line above it that says Name: followed by their name.
5. Click Run once to test, then flip the scenario toggle in the top left to ON.

Make's free plan gives you 1,000 credits a month. Instant triggers only use credits when something actually happens. A trigger that checks on a schedule uses a credit on every check, even when there's nothing new, and the free plan checks at most every 15 minutes, which on its own can use up most of a month's credits. So use an instant trigger where you can.

Exact button labels move around a little as both tools update their own UI. If something doesn't quite match what's on screen, the trigger-then-email shape above still holds.

Setting the timing

Whichever method fires a request, it follows the same rule: When should it go out? on your Intake page. Change it there once and it applies to all three.