Email Settings

Alpha Insights can send automated email notifications with your store's profit and expense reports. Configure email recipients, frequency, and which metrics to include in your scheduled email reports.

Accessing Email Settings

  1. Go to Alpha Insights → Settings
  2. Navigate to the Email settings page (via tab or link)
  3. You'll see configuration for Appearance Settings and email reports

Quick Overview

What you can do:

Appearance Settings

Control the overall formatting and branding of your email notifications.

Include Header and Footer

What it does: Adds Alpha Insights branded header and footer to your emails

Options:

When to disable:

Recommendation: Keep both enabled for professional-looking emails with proper formatting

Email #1 - Profit Report

Your primary performance email with revenue, profit, orders, and sales metrics. This is the most important report for tracking daily business performance.

Recipients

Comma Separated List Of Recipients

What it is: Email addresses that will receive this report

Format: email1@domain.com, email2@domain.com, email3@domain.com

Examples:

Placeholder: If left empty, the email will default to your WordPress admin email address

Tip: You can send profit reports to different people than expense reports - configure each report separately

Frequency

How Often This Email Should Be Sent

Choose when you want to receive profit reports. You can enable multiple frequencies - the report will send at each enabled interval.

Available options:

Multiple selections: You can check multiple boxes to receive reports at different intervals

Common configurations:

Disable all: Uncheck all boxes to stop profit report emails

What Would You Like To Include?

Customize which metrics appear in your profit report emails. Check or uncheck each metric based on what you want to see.

Available Metrics

Order Revenue

Order Cost

Order Profit

Order Count

Average Order Value

Average Profit Per Order

Total Products Sold

Total Product Discounts

Total Refunds

Additional Expenses

Net Profit

Selecting Metrics

Minimal configuration: Order Revenue, Order Profit, Order Count

Balanced configuration: Order Revenue, Order Profit, Order Count, Average Order Value, Net Profit

Comprehensive: Enable all metrics for complete visibility

Recommendation: Start with a balanced configuration - you can always add more metrics later

Testing and Preview

Preview Email

What it does: Opens a preview of what the profit report email will look like

How to use:

  1. Click Preview Email button
  2. Opens in new browser tab
  3. Shows actual email HTML with sample data
  4. Check formatting, layout, and structure

Use for: Verifying email appearance before enabling scheduled reports

Send Test Email

What it does: Immediately sends a test profit report with your actual store data

How to use:

  1. Configure recipients in the field above
  2. Select which metrics to include
  3. Click Send Test Email
  4. Email sent immediately to all configured recipients
  5. Check your inbox (and spam folder)

Testing workflow:

  1. Enter your email address in recipients
  2. Choose metrics you want
  3. Click "Send Test Email"
  4. Review the email you receive
  5. Adjust configuration if needed
  6. Click "Save Changes" when satisfied

Important: Test email uses your actual store data, not sample data

Example Profit Report

Subject Line: Your Store Profit Report - [Date Range]

Email Content Example:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Your Store Performance Report
Last 7 Days: Oct 15-22, 2024
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

💰 Order Revenue: $12,450.00
📦 Orders: 143 orders
📊 Average Order Value: $87.06

💵 Order Cost: $7,558.00
✅ Order Profit: $4,892.00 (39.3% margin)
📈 Average Profit Per Order: $34.21

📦 Products Sold: 287 units
💸 Discounts Applied: $525.00
↩️ Refunds: $450.00

🏢 Additional Expenses: $645.00
🎯 Net Profit: $4,247.00

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Email #2 - Expense Report

Track and review your business expenses automatically. Perfect for accounting, bookkeeping, and expense monitoring.

Recipients

Same format as Profit Report - comma-separated email addresses

Different recipients: You can send expense reports to different people than profit reports

Common setup:

Frequency

Choose when to receive expense reports:

Typical usage: Monthly expense reports are most popular for accounting and bookkeeping purposes

What Would You Like To Include?

Customize which expense metrics appear in your reports.

Available Metrics

Total Expenses Paid

Total No. Expenses

Average Expenses Per Day

All Parent Category Expenses

All Child Category Expenses

Understanding Category Levels

Parent categories: Top-level groupings

Child categories: Sub-categories under parents

Tip: Enable "Parent Category Expenses" for clean overview, or "Child Category Expenses" for detailed analysis

Example Expense Report

Subject Line: Your Store Expense Report - [Date Range]

Email Content Example:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Expense Report
October 2024
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

💰 Total Expenses: $3,245.00
📋 Number of Expenses: 47
📊 Average Per Day: $103.71

Expense Breakdown by Category:
📢 Advertising: $1,850.00 (57%)
  - Facebook Ads: $1,200.00
  - Google Ads: $650.00

📦 Shipping & Fulfillment: $750.00 (23%)
  - Carrier Fees: $600.00
  - Packaging: $150.00

💻 Software & Tools: $345.00 (11%)
  - Email Marketing: $199.00
  - Analytics Tools: $146.00

🏢 Office Supplies: $200.00 (6%)

🔧 Other: $100.00 (3%)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Testing Expense Reports

Same testing options as Profit Reports:

Email Delivery

When Emails Are Sent

Daily emails: Approximately 8:00 AM in your WordPress timezone

Weekly emails: Monday morning (8:00 AM)

Monthly emails: 1st of each month (8:00 AM)

Timezone: Based on your WordPress timezone setting (Settings → General → Timezone)

Important note: Email timing depends on WordPress cron, which requires site traffic to trigger. For guaranteed timing on low-traffic sites, consider setting up a server cron job.

Email Deliverability

Default WordPress Email

By default, Alpha Insights uses WordPress's built-in email system (PHP mail function). This works but has limitations:

Recommended: Use SMTP

For much better email delivery, install an SMTP plugin:

Popular SMTP plugins:

Recommended SMTP services:

Benefits of SMTP:

Sender Configuration

Sender email address: Controlled by WordPress → Settings → General → Email Address

Sender name: Set by your SMTP plugin or theme

Best practices:

Saving Your Settings

After configuring email settings:

  1. Click Save Changes button (top or bottom of page)
  2. Wait for confirmation message
  3. Send test emails to verify configuration
  4. Check your inbox and spam folder

Settings take effect immediately - next scheduled email will use your new configuration

Troubleshooting

Not Receiving Emails

Check these items:

  1. Spam folder: Check junk/spam - whitelist the sender
  2. Email address: Verify correct address in settings (no typos)
  3. Frequency enabled: At least one frequency box must be checked
  4. WordPress cron: Verify scheduled tasks are running (WP Crontrol plugin)
  5. Host allows email: Some hosts block outbound email - check with hosting support
  6. SMTP configured: If using SMTP, verify settings are correct

Testing steps:

  1. Click "Send Test Email"
  2. If test arrives → scheduled emails should work (check spam folder for schedule)
  3. If test doesn't arrive → email sending is broken (check SMTP, host settings)

Emails Going to Spam

Common causes:

Solutions:

  1. Install and configure SMTP plugin
  2. Use sender email from your domain
  3. Set up SPF record: Contact your DNS provider
  4. Set up DKIM: Configured in SMTP service
  5. Whitelist sender in your email client

Wrong Data in Emails

Check:

Emails Not Sending at Right Time

WordPress cron dependency: WordPress cron requires site traffic to run

Solutions:

Best Practices

Email Configuration

For Different Business Types

Solo business owner:

Small team (2-5 people):

Larger business:

Privacy and Security

Summary

Email settings in Alpha Insights provide:

Configure your email reports to match your business review schedule, and you'll always stay informed about your store's profitability!