Chargify, one of the leading services for subscription billing, is a great way to run the billing for your online business. With a few lines of code, you can integrate Chargify into your website or app and they’ll take care of the rest.
In this example, we’re going to show you how you can use Formstack Documents to automatically send welcome letters to new customers that are added to Chargify. To help with the integration, we’ll be using Zapier and then Lob to print and mail our letters.
To get started, we’re going to setup our letter template using a Word document. Inside our Word document, we’ll add all the normal content for our letter and then we’re going to add our merge fields where we want our customer’s information to go. Merge fields look like {$Name}, {$StreetAddress}, etc.
Once we have our template finished, it’s time to upload it to Documents. From the Documents page in Formstack Documents, click the New Document button and then enter a name. On the next step, select I have a document I would like to use and then pick the file from your computer.
Next, you’ll be taken to the Settings tab where you can update document settings like the type of file that is generated and even the name of the file. For this example, we’re going to generate a PDF and include the name of our customer in the file name so that we can easily track the file in reports.
Once you’ve updated the settings, it is time to setup the delivery to Lob so that our letter is automatically printed and mailed to our customer. From the Delivery tab, click New Delivery and then select Lob.
On the next screen, you’ll see a spot to enter your Lob API Key and then you’ll have to select the merge fields for the To address. For the From address, we’re going to choose << Other >> and then enter our mailing address.
After we’ve finished our Lob delivery setup, we’re ready to setup the integration with Chargify so that when a new customer is added, that information is automatically sent to Documents. We’ll be using Zapier for this integration.
Inside Zapier, click the New Zap button and then select Chargify as the trigger app and then pick New Customer as the trigger.
Zapier will then have you authenticate your Chargify account and pull in sample data to make sure everything is working correctly. Follow those steps and click the Finish button when you’re done.
Next, you’re going to setup the Action for the Zap. Go ahead and pick Formstack Documents as the app and then Create Document Merge as the action.
After you’ve authenticated your Documents account, Zapier is going to take you to a page where you’ll need to select the document that you want to merge. Go ahead and select the letter template then Zapier will load a list of all the merge fields in your template.
For each of the merge fields in your template, you’ll need to pick the corresponding Chargify fields. This tells Zapier how to send data to Documents so that it is inserted in the correct spot on your template.
Once you’ve mapped all of your fields, follow the steps to finish up the Zap and then turn it on!
Now, it is time to run a test! Go ahead and add a new customer to your Chargify account. That data will then automatically be sent over to Documents, your letter will be generated, and then sent over to Lob for printing and mailing.
Congrats, you’re all done! You can now automatically populate all kinds of documents from your Chargify account. Can you think of any other ways that you could use Formstack Documents to simplify your paperwork process?