Not every customer will open a PDF. A share link is a web page showing the document in your own template, which opens on any phone.
How one is made
Emailing a document from its send window mints the link automatically, and the email carries a button that opens it. To copy the link without emailing anybody, open the ⋯ menu on the document and choose Share a link; it sends nothing and changes nothing.
A draft’s link opens once the document is sent. The page refuses drafts, so copy the link after sending it or marking it as sent.
What the customer can do
| Document | They can |
|---|---|
| Quotation | Accept or decline it. |
| Proforma | Accept or decline it. |
| Invoice | Acknowledge it, or raise a query. |
A query raises a notification on your side. That matters: a disputed invoice is otherwise silent until it is overdue, and by then a month has gone.
You can see it was opened
Opening the link records when. “They never received it” becomes a question with an answer.
Is it safe
- The link carries a 24-byte token. It cannot be guessed.
- There is no account and no password — which is the point, because a customer will not create one to read a quotation.
- Responses are rate limited to ten in ten minutes, so the accept button cannot be hammered.
- It shows one document. Nothing else about your business is reachable from it.
Treat the link as the document. Anybody holding it can read it, exactly as anybody holding a printed invoice can.
Why bother, when you already email a PDF
Three reasons, and the third is the one that gets invoices paid.
- A PDF attachment on a phone is a download, a viewer and a pinch-zoom. A link is a page that already fits the screen.
- An attachment is a dead end. A link can carry an Accept button, or a Pay button.
- You can see it was opened. “I never received it” stops being the end of the conversation.
What to send it on
Emailing the document mints the link for you. You can also copy it and send it on WhatsApp, which in most Indian businesses is where the customer actually is — and a link survives WhatsApp, where a 2 MB PDF often does not get opened.
Practical cautions
- Treat the link exactly as you would treat the printed document: anybody holding it can read it.
- It shows one document. It is not a login and it opens nothing else about your business.
- If you send the wrong document to the wrong person, the fix is the same as on paper — send the right one and say so. There is no recall.
Where to go next
Something missing or wrong here? Tell us. A question that needed asking usually means a page that needed writing.