Buyer's Questions: The Invoice Questionnaire

Invoicing after an auction can be a very labour-intensive process. Clients will often get in touch to request amendments to their invoice. The reasons for these changes could be numerous, but common examples are VAT changes, shipping changes or errors. The back-and-forth required to make these changes adds up to a lot of extra work for the auction house team.

Snoofa has a very elegant solution to make this process a lot smoother, save staff time and give clients more ownership. It’s the The Invoice Questionnaire.

The idea behind the Buyer’s Questions is to require buyers to fill in a set of questions before they can see their invoice. Whatever they fill out informs the final invoice, meaning that time doesn’t need to be taken to make many edits.

Sending the Invoice Questionnaire

We send the questionnaires from the Invoices list in the Cashiers section, once the invoices have been generated.

They can be sent either individually or in bulk using the tick boxes and drop-down option.

We can keep track of which have been sent and which have been answered in the Q Sent and the Q Answered columns.

Buyers will be able to view the questionnaire in the Invoices section of their Client Zone.

When clicking on the questionnaire, they will be presented with a screen similar to this one:

Buyers can select their preferred payment method and choose any shipping or collection options. These are set in the system settings, so they don’t have to appear as options if not relevant. Buyers can also add a note to communicate any specific requirements to the auction house.

Once the client has completed the questionnaire, the selected options will appear in the Invoice Parameters box on the invoice editor. Administrators can override any options that the buyers have chosen.

More information about the CITES option

Now the invoice can be sent. Similarly to the questionnaire, this can be done in bulk, or by clicking the Send button individually on each invoice.

Clients will now receive an email with their invoice attached and can view the invoice in the Invoices section of their Client Zone.

If Online Card Payment is enabled and has been chosen by the buyer as their preferred payment method, the Submit Payment button will appear for clients to make the payment.

It is not mandatory to use Snoofa’s invoice questionnaire if not desired. It can be disabled completely (to do this go to System Settings > General > Invoice Settings).

So there you have it, those are the Buyer’s Questions. This should reduce some of the post-auction stress and give buyers ownership of their purchasing.

However, if you don’t want to use the questions, you can skip this stage and simply send invoices out immediately.