Send invoices and documents on WhatsApp
Endelir delivers the invoices, receipts, vouchers and tickets your own system produces to the customer on WhatsApp, in the same thread as the transaction. The invoice, the receipt, the booking voucher and the ticket all belong in the same place as the conversation that produced them. Endelir puts them there — sent by a person from the shared inbox, or by your billing system through the API — and leaves them in the thread where anyone on your team can find them again.
The document goes to email and the conversation stays on WhatsApp
The booking is agreed in a chat. The payment is confirmed in a chat. Then the invoice is emailed to an address the customer gave once, may have mistyped, and does not check. Two days later they write back on the number they actually use and ask where their receipt is.
So somebody goes hunting. They open the accounting system, find the right document, download it, and send it from a personal handset — or forward it from their own email, which means the record of it existing lives in one person's sent folder. The next colleague who is asked the same question starts the hunt over.
Sent from the inbox, a chat flow, or your billing system
Endelir sends files to a WhatsApp conversation three ways. Someone on your team attaches one to a reply in the shared inbox. A chat flow sends a saved document when a customer asks for it. Or your own system calls the Endelir API with the customer's number and a link to the file, which is how an invoice gets sent the moment it is raised, without anyone touching it.
Endelir does not make the document. It has no invoice numbering, no tax calculation and no ledger — the file comes from your accounting, billing, booking or ticketing system, and Endelir is what carries it to the customer and keeps it in the conversation. What you get back is a delivery record against the right contact, in the thread the transaction already lives in.
How it works
- 1 Your system creates the document The invoice, receipt, voucher or ticket is raised where it always was — your billing, booking or ticketing software. Endelir does not generate it.
- 2 It is matched to the customer The send call carries the phone number, so the file goes to that contact's existing conversation rather than starting a stray thread.
- 3 Inside the service window, or outside it Inside the service window opened by the customer's own last message, the file is sent as an ordinary document message. Outside it, delivery uses a template Meta has approved in advance, with the document in its header.
- 4 The file arrives named You supply the filename, so the customer sees Invoice-2481.pdf rather than a string of characters from your storage.
- 5 Delivery is recorded Sent, delivered, read or failed, against that contact and that message — and posted back to your system if you turn the workspace webhook on.
- 6 The customer can reply A question about a line item is answered by a person in the same thread, with the document visible above it.
- 7 The record stays put The message and its file remain in the conversation history, where the next person to be asked can find them without opening the accounting system.
What this looks like in practice
A hotel used to email the folio at checkout. Guests who had booked over WhatsApp often never opened it, and the front desk spent the next week resending copies from a shared mailbox that nobody could search properly.
Now the property management system calls the Endelir API with the guest's number and the folio as soon as the bill is settled, and the PDF arrives in the same thread the guest booked through. When someone asks why the laundry charge is there, the receptionist can see the document and the booking conversation at once, and answers without asking the guest for a reference number.
What can happen next
Who this suits
What to know before you set it up
While the customer's service window is open you can send a document freely. Outside it, sending one uses a message template Meta has approved beforehand, with the file in the template's header. A template that carries only the facts of a transaction the customer actually made generally sits in the utility category — Meta decides the category when it reviews the template, and an offer bundled into the same message changes what it is. Send the invoice, and keep the discount for a separate marketing message to a customer who has opted in.
When you send a file by link, WhatsApp fetches that link itself, so the URL has to be reachable without a login — which is exactly why a confidential document should not sit at one. For anything sensitive, send a short message containing a link the customer signs in to open. Supported document types are PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and plain text, and everyone with access to that shared inbox can open whatever you send, so decide what belongs in a thread and what belongs behind a password.
What to watch
- How many documents reach delivered, and how many fail
- How long passes between the document being raised and it being sent
- How many customers ask for a copy they were already sent
- How many document messages turn into a question for your team
- How many invoices are settled after the document lands
- How often someone sends a file by hand that your system could have sent
Related
Questions people ask
Can I send an invoice PDF through WhatsApp?
Yes. A PDF is the ordinary case. Someone on your team can attach the file to a reply in the shared inbox, a chat flow can send a saved document, and your billing system can call the Endelir API with the customer's number and a link to the file. WhatsApp fetches that link, so it has to be reachable without a login; anything confidential goes in the message as a link the customer signs in to open instead. Supported types are PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and plain text. The filename you supply is the one the customer sees. Sending while the customer's own service window is open needs no template; outside that window, delivery uses an approved template with a document header.
Can invoices be sent automatically after payment?
Yes, when your billing or commerce system tells Endelir to send one. The trigger lives on your side: your system confirms the payment, raises the receipt, then calls the Endelir API with the customer's number and the file. Endelir does not watch your payment gateway and never decides on its own that money has arrived. Build the workflow on the payment-confirmed event rather than on the moment a payment link went out — a sent link is not a paid invoice, and a receipt for money you have not received costs more to undo than a late one. Endelir records what became of the message, and posts the status back to your endpoint if you turn the workspace webhook on.
What other business documents can be sent through WhatsApp?
Receipts, booking vouchers, tickets, itineraries, order documents and service reports all work the same way, as do brochures inside a sales conversation. The file types supported are PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and plain text. The test is relevance: the document should answer something the customer asked for or relate to a transaction they made. A brochure sent to someone who is in the middle of discussing a purchase is a different thing from a brochure sent to a list, and the second one is marketing — it needs a marketing template and a customer who has opted in.
Are invoice messages Utility messages?
Inside the customer's service window there is no template and no category — you are answering someone who wrote to you. Outside it, you send a template, and a template delivering an invoice, a receipt or a document tied to a transaction the customer actually made generally fits the utility category. Meta decides the category when it reviews the template, not us, so write the template as a plain statement of the transaction. The moment you add "and take 15% off your next order", it stops being a utility message. Keep the promotion in its own marketing message to a customer who has opted in.
Can a customer ask for the invoice again later?
Yes. The message and the file stay in the conversation, so anyone on your team opens the thread and sends it again — no hunt through a mailbox, and no dependence on the person who sent it the first time. One caveat: if your system issued a link that has since expired, the old message will not help and your system needs to issue a fresh one. Automatic re-delivery is possible but the lookup belongs to you — a chat flow can call your URL when a customer asks, and your system answers by calling the send API with the right file. Endelir holds no copy of your billing records and cannot work out which invoice is theirs.
Should sensitive documents be sent directly through WhatsApp?
Think about the document before you attach it. Two things are true of a file sent this way: it sits on the customer's phone, and everyone with access to your shared inbox can open it. On top of that, a file sent by link has to be fetchable without a login, which is a poor place for anything confidential to live. For sensitive material, send a short message with a link the customer authenticates to open, and keep the file behind that sign-in. A payment receipt is usually fine to attach; a medical report or an identity document usually is not. Your own privacy obligations decide where the line sits.
Can Endelir create the invoice itself?
No. Endelir has no billing module for your customers — it does not number invoices, calculate tax, hold a ledger or produce a document of any kind. What it does is deliver the files your accounting, billing, booking or ticketing system creates, keep them in the customer's conversation, and record what happened to each one. If you are choosing between tools on this point, the question to ask is whether your existing system can hand a file and a phone number to an API. If it can, Endelir takes it from there.
Put receipts, vouchers and documents in the same conversation as the transaction
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