Back-office emails¶

The emails Badger sends to the people who run a shop, about something it did for them. Two are live: Gift Aid claim sent and Payout on its way. Every later one uses the same layout. How they're sent and rendered is in Transactional email; this page covers how they look and why.

Decisions¶

• Badger's brand, never the shop's. These emails come from Badger, so they don't take the shop's theme or email colours. They are the one place a shop owner regularly sees Badger outside the admin.
• Sent from the shop's address under Badger's name. The sender reads Badger Commerce <the shop's from-address>, through the shop's own Mailtrap account, so each shop pays for its own notifications. An earlier design sent them from a Badger address through Badger's account (the mock-up still shows that). It was dropped so Badger doesn't pay for every shop's mail.
• The figure first. The amount is in the subject line and is the biggest thing on the page, e.g. "£2,229.50 Gift Aid claimed for …" or "£1,284.60 arrives Thursday 22 October". Everything under it explains that figure.
• Figures agree with the money. The payout's "In this payout" counts come from the payments in that payout (orders matched by PaymentIntent), not from a date range, so they always agree with the amount above them. Payments with no Badger order are counted as other payments.
• Good news, not a statement. The payout email shows the amount, when it arrives and how many orders and subscription payments it covers, nothing more. The breakdown, fees included, is on the payout's page: an email listing what the shop paid in fees reads as a bill (decided 2026-10-28, after the first live one for DMRT).
• A quiet word from Badger, after the business. The From Badger panel sits below the email's own content, never above it. It reminds owners what Badger does for them ("All 878 declarations were collected at checkout…"), and it must be true for every shop that gets it: check the claim against site-content/bdgr/research/capabilities.md.
• The button opens the thing itself, in Badger. The Gift Aid email links to that claim's page (/admin/donations/hmrc-submissions/submission/{id}), not a filtered list. The payout email links to that payout's page (/admin/reports/payouts/{id}), never to the Stripe dashboard: these emails bring owners back to Badger.
• Each email can be switched off. Recipients are per-email settings (giftaid-admin-notification-email, payout-notification-email). Left empty, that email isn't sent.

Brand¶

The type is Outfit, falling back to Helvetica where a mail client won't load web fonts. The wordmark is text, not an image: "badger" light, "Commerce" medium in the brand colour. The card is 560px at most, and padding drops from 28px to 20px on phones.

Anatomy¶

From top to bottom, each a fragment of templates/platform/email/layout.html:

1. Wordmark and shop name, from the layout.
2. Card (page → content), holding:
   • hero: a kicker (what happened, in capitals), the figure, then one sentence of context.
   • section: a small heading between blocks ("In this payout").
   • rows of row (label and value), noteRow (a smaller line under the label, e.g. "46 orders, 1187 to 1232"), referenceRow (monospace, can wrap: references people read out or paste, like the HMRC reference) and totalRow (the line the others add up to).
   • tiles: up to three counts side by side. Choose them by what the shop uses and leave out any that are zero.
   • note: a muted line inside the card.
   • button: one dark button opening the thing the email is about.
3. From Badger (badger), optional.
4. Footer (reason): why they got it, then the company line.

Rules for a new back-office email¶

• Build it from the layout's fragments. If you need something new, add it to the layout as a fragment rather than styling it inside one email, so the next email can use it.
• Styles are inline: many mail clients drop <style>. The only <style> block is the phone breakpoint in the layout.
• Every word comes from messages.properties, resolved in the shop's language. Money goes through #shopMoney and dates through #shopDates, with dates written out in full ("7 April 2026").
• Ship a plain text version (…-text.html) with the same content.
• Leave out rows that have nothing to say (a zero fee, a missing reference) instead of showing zero or a dash.
• No customer's personal data: these go to staff mailboxes that are often shared. Counts, totals and order numbers are fine.

Not built yet¶

• "Try this" tips in the From Badger panel, each shown only to shops not using that feature.
• A "New in Badger" line, shown only while the latest release post is under 30 days old.
• A "Choose which emails you get" link in the footer.
• An admin page listing one payout's orders, for the payout email's button.

Mock-ups¶

• Badger back-office emails (October 2026): the Gift Aid and payout emails side by side, with the old Gift Aid email for comparison. It was made before the sender decision, so its inbox lines show a Badger address. It also shows the tips, "New in Badger" and preferences link that haven't been built yet.