How to send GST invoices to customers on WhatsApp with Tiram

Your customers already live in WhatsApp. An SMS gets ignored, an email address is often wrong or unread, and a paper bill is lost by the time the customer wants it for a return or a warranty. A PDF invoice dropped into WhatsApp is opened, saved, and searchable months later — and it cuts the endless ‘can you send me the bill again’ calls to near zero.

Just as important, you can see what happened. Instead of hoping the bill reached the customer, Tiram shows you per message whether it was delivered and read — proof you can act on when a payment reminder or a delivery confirmation matters.

WhatsApp invoicing is included in Tiram's Gold and Platinum plans. The Silver plan does not include it — on Silver the WhatsApp screens don't appear in the app, and the underlying WhatsApp APIs are plan-gated rather than returning a generic error.

This is a plan-tier gate, not a platform gate: it applies identically whether you run Tiram as the cloud SaaS app or the offline Windows/Mac desktop app. Upgrading from Silver to Gold turns on the whole WhatsApp channel at once — invoicing, marketing campaigns, message templates, contact and opt-out management, delivery activity, and connection diagnostics — alongside multiple warehouses, reward points, custom roles, API keys, and bulk exports. WhatsApp isn't sold as a standalone add-on.

WhatsApp invoicing runs on your own WhatsApp Business number through Meta's official WhatsApp Business Cloud API — not a shared Tiram sender — so bills arrive from your business identity. You connect it once in Settings → WhatsApp, using one of two methods:

Quick connect (Embedded Signup). Click ‘Connect with Facebook’, sign in to Meta in a secure popup, pick your business and phone number, and you're done — no tokens, no app secrets to copy.

Manual setup. Paste four values from your Meta app — Phone number ID, WhatsApp Business Account ID, a permanent access token, and your app secret. Tiram verifies them and a ‘Test connection’ button confirms the link is live. Either way, the number stays yours; Tiram just sends through it.

WhatsApp requires every business-initiated message to use a template that Meta has pre-approved — that's how the platform keeps spam out. For invoicing you need one utility (transactional) template, which Tiram gives you three ways to create: build a custom one in the editor and submit it for review, pick a ready-made one from Meta's Template Library (pre-vetted, approved instantly), or import a template you already have on your WhatsApp Business Account.

Once a utility template is approved, set it as your default receipt template. From then on, sending a bill doesn't ask you to pick a template each time — the default is used automatically. Templates can be authored in English or Tamil.

From any invoice or Quick Bill sale, choose Send invoice via WhatsApp. Tiram pre-fills the customer's phone number (warning you if it doesn't look valid — include the country code), lets you preview the message, attaches the invoice as a PDF, and sends. If you've set a default receipt template, no further choices are needed; you can also pick a different approved template for a one-off.

Because the bill goes as a real PDF attachment, the customer gets a document they can save, forward to their accountant, or reopen for a return — not just a line of text.

Every send is logged with a live status you can watch in the invoice's Send history: Queued (accepted, about to go), Sent (handed to WhatsApp), Delivered (reached the customer's phone), and Read (they opened it — the blue ticks). A message that can't be delivered shows Failed with the reason, so you can fix the number or template and Resend in one tap.

Delivered and read receipts arrive through Meta's delivery webhook, which is available on the cloud app. On the offline desktop app, sending works fully; the delivery and read receipts are the part that needs the public webhook, so they're the exception there.

Meta bills WhatsApp per conversation, so Tiram lets you set a spend ceiling for the utility category over a period you choose (daily, weekly, or monthly). Once that cap is reached, further sends are held until the next period or until you raise the cap in Settings → WhatsApp — a simple guardrail so a busy billing day never produces a surprise bill.

Separately, Meta assigns your number a daily messaging tier (from 250 conversations a day up to unlimited) that rises as your number keeps a good quality rating. Tiram respects that tier automatically, so ordinary invoicing stays well inside it.

SMS has no delivery proof you can trust and no room for a real document; email bounces, lands in spam, or is simply never checked by a walk-in customer; a paper bill is gone the moment it's needed for a return. WhatsApp is the one channel Indian customers actually open — and the only one of the four where you get a delivered-and-read signal per message plus a PDF the customer keeps.

Inside Tiram it's also the least work: the customer, the invoice, and the WhatsApp send all live in one place, so there's no exporting a PDF and re-attaching it in another app.