The daily digest

Your day's appointments emailed to each branch every morning.

The daily digest is one email per branch, once a day, listing that day's appointments. It goes to your team — not to your customers. Set it up in Booked › Customisation › Notifications, on the Daily digest tab.

What the digest is — and what it is not

Everything else Booked sends is triggered by something a person does: a customer books, a card clears, you move an appointment. The digest is different. It is the only message Booked sends on a clock, and the only email your business receives from Booked at all. There is no "new booking" alert to staff, no admin copy of a confirmation and no blind copy — if you want your team to know what is in the diary, this is the feature that tells them.

It is a staff run-sheet, not a customer reminder. Nothing in the digest reaches the people who booked. It never says "your appointment is tomorrow" to anyone, and switching it on does not change a single customer-facing email.

Switch it on and set the default time

Open Notifications and choose Daily digest — the screen opens on Templates, so you need that second button. Everything on this panel is saved by one button at the bottom, Save digest settings.

• 1Daily digest — the second of the two buttons at the top of Notifications. The first, Templates, is where the customer emails live and is what you land on.
• 2Send a daily digest of each location's appointments — the master switch for the whole feature. It ships off. While it is off, every field below it is greyed out and nothing sends, however you set the branch rows.
• 3Default send time — the time each branch uses unless it sets its own. It starts at 18:00, which delivers the list after the day has finished. For a morning run-sheet, change it to something like 07:30.
• 4Save digest settings — the master switch, the default time and every branch row are written together by this one button. A green Saved appears next to it.

Turn on each branch and choose who gets it

The digest is built per branch, so every location gets its own email with only its own appointments. The table lists your active locations, in the order they appear under Business › Locations. Both the master switch and the branch's own On switch have to be on before that branch sends — and until they are, its Send to and Time boxes stay disabled.

• 1On — includes this branch. Off by default, and off for every new location you add later, so remember to come back here when you open a branch.
• 2Send to — where this branch's email goes. The grey text you can see is the branch's own Email address from Business › Locations: leave the box empty and that address is used.
• 3Time — this branch's own send time. Leave it blank and it follows the default above, which is what Bramhall is doing here.
• 4Preview — mails you today's real digest for that branch right now. See below: it does not go to the Send to address.

Which address the email ends up at

Booked works down three steps and uses the first one that holds a valid address.

If none of the three is a valid email address, that branch is skipped in silence — no error appears on the Notifications screen. Only one address is used per branch; there is no second recipient or copy list. To reach several people, point Send to at a shared mailbox or a distribution group your mail provider maintains.

What lands in the inbox

The subject names the branch, the number of appointments and the date, so a manager covering three sites can tell the emails apart at a glance. Inside is the same branded wrapper as your customer emails, wrapped around a single table of the day, earliest appointment first.

• 1Subject line — the branch name, the appointment count and the date, written for you automatically. Nothing about the digest's wording or layout can be edited.
• 2Customer — the name, then (×2) when it is a group booking so you know how many people are turning up, and the phone number underneath for chasing a late arrival.
• 3Staff — an em dash means nobody is assigned to that appointment yet. Worth a look before the day starts.
• 4Status — a coloured label: green for confirmed, yellow for pending, blue for completed, red for a no-show.

Two things are worth knowing about the list. First, it includes every booking for that date except cancellations — so a pending booking nobody has confirmed, and a no-show from earlier in the day, both still appear. Second, a quiet day still sends: instead of the table, the email reads "No appointments booked for this day. Enjoy the quiet one!" That is deliberate — it tells you the digest is alive rather than leaving you wondering.

When it actually goes out

Booked checks for due digests every 15 minutes, so a branch set to 07:30 goes out at some point in the quarter-hour after 07:30 rather than on the dot. Each branch is emailed at most once per calendar day.

• Times follow the site's timezone — the one in WordPress's own Settings › General. Changing the Timezone field on Booked's Region & currency tab does not move the digest.
• Switch it on late and it still sends today. If you turn a branch on at 11am with a 07:30 time, that morning's digest goes out at the next 15-minute check rather than waiting for tomorrow.
• A quiet website can delay it. WordPress runs background jobs when someone visits the site, so on a site with very little traffic the digest can arrive late or be missed for the day. If your site is quiet overnight, an early send time is more fragile than a mid-morning one.
• Inactive branches stop sending, silently. Set a location to inactive and it disappears from this table and from the schedule, with no warning that its digest has stopped.

Check it now with Preview

Preview sends today's genuine digest for that branch immediately, so you can see exactly what your team will get. There are three things to hold in mind before you press it.

1. It goes to you, not to the branchPreview always mails the WordPress account email of whoever is signed in — never the Send to address on the row. That makes it safe to test, but it also means it does not prove the branch address works.
2. It is a real digest, with real people in itNot a sample. It contains today's actual bookings, names and phone numbers, and it records a digest_sent entry in Settings › Activity log.
3. It does not use up the day's sendPreviewing does not mark the branch as done, so the scheduled digest still goes out at its normal time. It also works while the digest is switched off, and before you have saved.

If the preview reports "Could not send — check your email setup.", the problem is the site's mail, not the digest. Fix it under Settings › Emails & texts › Email delivery — usually by switching from WordPress default to SMTP.

If a digest does not arrive

• Both switches on? The master toggle and the branch's On toggle both have to be on, and you have to have pressed Save digest settings.
• Is the branch active? Only active locations appear in the table and only active locations are emailed.
• Is there an address? Check the Send to box, then the location's Email field, then your WordPress admin email.
• Is the site sending mail at all? Press Preview. If that arrives and the scheduled one does not, the send time or the site's background jobs are the cause, not your mail setup.
• Check the log. Every digest that leaves is written to Settings › Activity log as digest_sent, with the branch and the address it went to.
• No locations yet? The table is replaced by "Add a location first — the digest is sent per location." Add a branch under Business › Locations and it appears here.

One more thing to check if a colleague cannot find the screen: the Notifications page needs permission to manage settings. Staff on the employee role do not see the Booked menu at all, and a manager without that permission sees an error instead of the panel.