Sharper sends several types of secure, no-login-required links to customers by email: an invoice payment link, a deposit payment link, an e-sign contract link, and an ACH bank-account sign-up link. All four work the same way under the hood, and all four can fail the same two ways. This article covers both — including exactly what to enter in each setting and how to update it.
The Email Never Went Out
Each of these link types depends on a base web address being configured first. If that setting is blank, the email fails to send — and nothing tells staff why. There's no error banner or failed-send notice; the send action simply doesn't produce an email. If a customer says they never received one of these emails, check the matching setting below before anything else:
Link Type | Setting to Check | Where It Lives |
Invoice payment link | Invoice Email Pay Url | Company Settings → Template Settings |
Deposit payment link | Deposit Pay Url | Company Settings → Template Settings |
E-sign contract link | E-sign Email Contract Url | Company Settings → Outlet Defaults |
ACH sign-up link | ACH Sign-up Form Url | Company Settings → Template Settings |
If the relevant setting is already filled in and the send still isn't working, contact Sharper support — this points to a configuration or account-level issue beyond what staff can resolve directly.
What to Enter in Each Field
A blank field is easy to spot, but a field that's filled in incorrectly looks the same as a working one until a customer tries to use the link — so it's worth knowing what a correct value actually looks like:
It must be a complete web address, starting with
http://orhttps://. A bare domain or partial address (without the "http" part) will not save correctly.It must be the exact page that's meant to handle that specific action — the page a customer lands on to pay an invoice is not the same page they'd land on to sign a contract or set up ACH, even if they're on the same website. Which exact page this should be depends on how your booking site is set up, so if you're not certain which address belongs in a given field, confirm the correct one with Sharper support rather than guessing — entering the wrong page will look identical to entering the right one until a customer clicks the link.
It should not already contain a question mark (
?). Sharper appends its own tracking information to whatever address you enter here, joined with a?. If your address already has one, the link Sharper builds will be malformed.It's a hardcoded value, not something Sharper keeps updated for you. If the page these links are supposed to point to ever moves — a new domain, a new booking site — these fields stay exactly as they were typed until someone manually changes them. See How to Update These Settings below.
How to Update These Settings
These are hardcoded addresses — Sharper does not keep them in sync with anything else, ever. Each of these four fields is stored exactly as you type it and stays that way indefinitely. If the address it should point to ever changes for any reason — you move to a new booking site, switch domains, restructure your website — Sharper will not detect that or update the field for you. It is entirely on you (or whoever manages these settings) to come back and manually update all four fields whenever the underlying address changes. Until that's done, every link Sharper sends will keep pointing at the old, wrong address — and it will look exactly like a correctly-configured setting until a customer actually clicks the link and it fails.
For Invoice Email Pay Url, Deposit Pay Url, and ACH Sign-up Form Url:
Go to Company Settings → Template Settings.
Locate the field and enter or update the address.
Click Save.
For E-sign Email Contract Url:
Go to Company Settings → Outlet Defaults.
Locate the field and enter or update the address.
Click Save.
Changing one of these settings only affects links sent after the change — an email already sent to a customer has the address baked in and won't update retroactively. If you've corrected a wrong address, any link sent before the fix still needs to be re-sent fresh.
The Email Templates These Links Depend On
This is the part that catches people out even after the URL setting is correct: the URL setting only decides where the link goes. Whether a clickable link shows up in the email at all is a completely separate thing, controlled by the email template itself. Each link type is inserted into its email using a specific merge variable, and that variable has to actually be present in the template's content — if a template was rebuilt, copied from a different Type, or had its content replaced, it's entirely possible for the URL setting to be perfectly correct and the customer still gets an email with no link in it.
Link Type | Email Template Type | Merge Variable It Needs | Where the Template Is Chosen |
Invoice payment link | Invoice |
| Company Settings → Template Settings → Invoice Email Template |
Deposit payment link | Deposit Pay Email |
| Company Settings → Template Settings → Deposit Pay Email |
E-sign contract link | E-sign Email |
| Set per contract — System Settings → Contracts, open the contract, "E-sign Email Template" field (see callout below) |
ACH sign-up link | ACH Sign-up Email |
| Company Settings → Template Settings → ACH Sign-up Email |
If a customer says the email arrived but there's no link in it (or it shows literal text like {{pay_link}} instead of a clickable link), open the assigned template at System Settings → Templates and confirm the matching merge variable from the table above is actually present in its content. Always add it using the Variables toolbar button while editing — never type it by hand — and don't remove it when customizing the wording around it. This is a different problem from the URL setting being blank: the email still sends, it just has no way to send the customer anywhere.
E-sign works differently from the other three. Its email template isn't a single company-wide default — it's chosen individually on each contract. If a customer says they never received a contract to sign, check that contract's E-sign Email Template field at System Settings → Contracts before anything else. Unlike a blank URL setting, a missing E-sign Email Template doesn't fail silently — staff see an on-screen "Please select email template" error at the moment of sending, so this is usually caught immediately rather than discovered later from a customer complaint.
For the full list of merge variables available on each template Type, see System Settings - Template Merge Variables Reference.
A Previously-Sent Link Stopped Working
If a customer says a link that worked before now gives an error, two things are worth checking:
The link is more than 90 days old. Every link type above expires 90 days after it was sent. Re-send a fresh one — the reservation, invoice, contract, or ACH request doesn't need to be recreated first.
Online Site Url was changed recently — but only for e-sign and ACH links. The e-sign contract link and the ACH sign-up link both carry your outlet's site-identifying token, the same one tied to the Online Site Url field in Company Settings → Reservation Settings. Changing that field rotates the token, which invalidates every e-sign and ACH link already sent, even ones well within their 90-day window. Deposit and invoice payment links do not carry this token and are not affected by an Online Site Url change. Either way, the fix is the same: re-send a fresh link rather than troubleshooting the old one.