Emails

Small Change sends its own emails from Craft's mailer, through the queue, so a slow mail server never holds up a payment. Make sure your queue runner is working (php craft queue/listen, or a cron job running php craft queue/run).

What is sent

The same list is on Small Change → Settings → Emails, with a switch beside each email. The name in brackets is the email's template name, which the tab shows under each label. You'll need it if you change the look.

Email	To	When
Receipt (receipt)	Donor	Each successful payment, once, including each payment of a recurring donation. Includes the Gift Aid wording if declared.
Payment failed (payment-failed)	Donor	A payment method that clears slowly, such as a bank debit, failed after checkout.
Recurring payment failed (subscription-payment-failed)	Donor	Stripe couldn't take a payment of a recurring donation. Links to Stripe's invoice page.
Recurring payment needs confirming (subscription-action-required)	Donor	The donor's bank wants them to confirm a recurring payment. Links to Stripe's invoice page.
Recurring donation ended (subscription-cancelled)	Donor	A recurring donation was cancelled, by the donor, by you or by Stripe.
Manage link (portal-link)	Donor	The donor asked for a link to manage a recurring donation.
New order or donation (admin-new-order)	adminEmail	An order is paid or a donation comes in. Later payments of a recurring donation don't send it.
Refund failed (admin-refund-failed)	adminEmail	Stripe couldn't complete a refund.
Dispute opened (admin-dispute)	adminEmail	A donor disputed a payment with their bank.
Recurring donation ended (admin-subscription-cancelled)	adminEmail	The same cancellation, for you.

A receipt belongs to one particular payment. A recurring donor gets one receipt for each payment, and a repeated job or delivery never sends the same receipt twice. Resend receipt on an order sends a deliberate extra copy.

Turning emails off

On the Emails tab, Send emails is the master switch. With it off, nothing is sent and nothing is queued. That includes the manage link, so a donor who asks for one is told it can't be emailed and to get in touch with you instead. Resend receipt is hidden on orders while receipts are off.

Each email also has its own switch there, stored as disabledEmails. That list uses the email keys, which aren't the template names: receipt, paymentFailed, subscriptionPaymentFailed, subscriptionActionRequired, subscriptionCancelled, portalLink, adminNewOrder, adminRefundFailed, adminDispute and adminSubscriptionCancelled. The staff emails need an admin address; leave it empty and they aren't sent.

An email that's off when something happens is skipped for good. Switching it back on doesn't send the ones you missed.

Donors shouldn't get two receipts. If you'd rather use Stripe's, switch off receipt here. Otherwise turn off Stripe's successful-payment emails in the Dashboard (Settings → Business → Customer emails).

Changing the wording

Click an email in the table on the Emails tab (or its Edit link) to change its subject, heading and opening message. The preview underneath updates as you type. It uses the latest order that suits the email, or made-up details if there isn't one, and nothing is sent. Preview in the table opens the saved version in a new tab. You can do this in production too, even where admin changes aren't allowed. The screen is read-only, and the link says View, only when emailContent is set in config/small-change.php.

Leave a field blank to keep the built-in wording. The receipt's subject field starts out with the receiptSubject setting, and a subject you save here wins. The message replaces the opening paragraphs only: the facts a donor needs, such as the order summary, the Gift Aid declaration and any links, are always included. Write it as plain text with a blank line between paragraphs. These placeholders work in all three fields:

Placeholder	Becomes
{charityName}	The charity name from the General tab, or the site name.
{siteName}	The name of the site the order was placed on.
{orderNumber}	The order's reference.
{firstName}	The donor's first name, if they gave a home address for Gift Aid. Otherwise blank.
{amount}	The payment or refund amount, formatted, such as £25.00.

The manage link isn't tied to an order, so only {charityName} and {siteName} have anything in them there.

The text is stored in the database (emailContent), not project config, so each environment keeps its own wording and a deployment doesn't overwrite what was changed in production. The sender fields and admin address are kept the same way.

Changing the look

Settings cover the envelope: sender name and address, reply-to and the admin address. Leave the sender fields blank to use Craft's own email settings.

To change more than the wording, put your own template in templates/_small-change/emails/ (the path is the emailTemplatePath setting). That folder doesn't exist until you create it; installing the front-end templates doesn't make it. Name the file after the email's template name from the table above, such as receipt.twig or admin-new-order.twig. If a template with that name exists there, it wins over the shipped one, and anything you haven't overridden falls back to the shipped version. Your template can extend the shipped layout and reuse its order summary:

{% extends 'small-change/emails/_layout' %}

{% block body %}
    <h1>Thank you, {{ billingAddress.firstName ?? 'friend' }}!</h1>
    {% include 'small-change/emails/_summary' %}
    <p>Reference {{ order.number }}. Registered charity 1234567.</p>
{% endblock %}

The wording from the edit screen only appears in your template if it prints content.heading and content.message. The edit screen warns you when an override is in use.

Every email also goes out as plain text, made from the HTML, with links kept as Label: https://….

Variables

Variable	Contents
order	The order element.
payment	The payment this email is about (amount, paidAt, giftAidAmount…), or null.
lineItems	The order's lines.
billingAddress	The Gift Aid home address, if one was given.
giftAid	declared, amount and text (the wording in your settings when the email is sent, which on a resend may be newer than the one the donor saw).
siteName, settings	The site name and the plugin's settings, without the Stripe secrets.
content	The wording from the control panel: subject, heading and message (already escaped and split into paragraphs). Each is empty when the built-in wording applies, so print {{ content.heading ?: 'Your own default' }} to honour both.
context	Extra facts for some emails: amount, interval and invoiceUrl on the recurring payment emails, amount and interval on the recurring donation ended emails, amount and reason on the refund-failed and dispute emails.
url	On portal-link: the signed link. That email has only url, siteName, settings and content.

Changing an email in code

Emails::EVENT_BEFORE_SEND fires with the message before it goes. You can add a BCC, change a header, or set isValid = false to stop it. See Events.