Reminders and notifications

Calendia can message customers automatically at four points: right after booking, before their appointment, right after it as aftercare, and later, if it's time to come back.

Confirm the booking by SMS

When you create a booking with Quick book from the Dashboard, tick Send booking confirmation by SMS (shown once the customer has a phone number) to text them the details immediately. This uses your SMS credits.

Remind customers before their appointment

Reminders are set per service:

1. Go to Services and open an existing service.
2. Under Automatic reminder, set Hours before appointment.
3. Choose Email, SMS or Both.
4. Optionally write a Message, then save the service.

Leave the hours field blank to send nothing. If Message is blank, Calendia uses your current default for that channel from the Messages tab in Company settings. A message saved on the service overrides that default for every channel selected on the service. This means Both can use separate email and SMS defaults, while a custom service message is used for both.

The default SMS includes the business, service, date, time and {address}. For an in-person appointment, {address} uses that location's address. If the booking has no location, it can use the business address from its legal details. It is left out for video appointments, virtual locations and bookings with no physical address. You can also use {address} in your own confirmation and reminder templates.

Video consultations also get their own automatic reminder, sent by email 30 minutes before the call starts.

A service-specific Message is not translated automatically. Calendia sends it exactly as saved for every selected channel and customer language. If you serve customers in several languages, leave it blank and keep the business templates on Calendia's localized defaults unless the same custom wording suits everyone.

Let customers choose their own reminders

You can also let customers opt in to extra reminders for each booking:

1. Open Company settings and go to Messages.
2. Under Customer reminder choices, turn on Allow email reminders, Allow SMS reminders, or both.
3. Save the changes.

After booking, the customer can select each allowed channel independently on the confirmation page, or return to Manage booking later. A booking made through the widget includes a link to the same confirmation page. Nothing is selected automatically. The suggested times are 8 hours before for email and 1 hour before for SMS, and the customer can change them while the reminder time is still in the future.

Email requires an email address on the booking, and SMS requires a phone number. These customer choices are additional to the service's automatic reminder.

Send aftercare after the visit

Still on the service, the Follow-up message section sends aftercare once the appointment is done:

1. Set Days after appointment.
2. Choose a Channel: Email, SMS or Both.
3. Write the Message.

Leave the days field blank to send nothing. Unlike the booking reminder below, this always sends once it's due — it doesn't check whether the customer has booked again — and it also only goes out between 09:00 and 20:00.

Remind customers to book again

Still on the service, the Booking reminder section nudges a customer to rebook once a treatment is due to wear off:

1. Set Days after appointment.
2. Choose a Channel: Email, SMS or Both.
3. Write the Message — you can use placeholders like {customer_first_name} and {booking_url}.

It's only sent if the customer hasn't already booked a newer appointment for that service, and only goes out between 09:00 and 20:00.

Keep enough SMS credits

Open Company settings and go to the SMS tab to see your SMS credits balance, Top up SMS credits, and set up Autobuy (choose When credits drop to and Buy this package) so you never run dry.