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 › Messages, on the Daily digest tab.
What the digest is — and what it is not
Most of what Booked sends is about one booking and goes to that booking’s customer. Two things go to your team: the alerts, the moment a customer books, cancels or moves something themselves, and the digest, once a day, about the whole day. There is no copy of the customer’s confirmation and no blind copy. If you want your team to know what is in the diary each morning, 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.
Names, phone numbers and services all appear in plain text in the email. Send it to a mailbox your team controls — a shared branch inbox, not a personal address that leaves with the person.
Switch it on and set the default time
Open Messages and choose the Daily digest tab. Everything on it is saved by the one Save button at the bottom.
Messages
One email per location with that day’s appointments, so whoever opens up knows what is coming. Sent through your own email setup.
The Daily digest tab with the digest on and a 07:30 default.
- 1Daily digest — the fourth tab on Messages.
- 2Digest is on — the master switch for the whole feature. It ships off. While it is off nothing sends, however you set the branch rows; the line underneath says how many locations it is going to. While it is off, the Default time and every branch row are greyed out.
- 3Default 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.
The master switch, the default time and every branch row are written together by this one button, at the foot of Per location.
It is a record of the day it is sent, never a preview of tomorrow. Send it in the morning and it is a run-sheet; send it in the evening and it is a summary. There is no setting to send tomorrow's list instead.
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 Locations. Both the master switch and the branch’s own switch have to be on before that branch sends — and until they are, its Send to and Time boxes stay disabled.
Messages
One email per location with that day’s appointments, so whoever opens up knows what is coming. Sent through your own email setup.
Who gets it and when. Leave the time blank to use the default.
One row per active branch — Bramhall on the defaults, High Street with its own address and time, Hazel Grove switched off.
- 1The row’s switch — 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 is the branch’s own email address from Locations: leave the box empty and that address is used. The line under the branch name always shows where the digest will go, or “Goes to the site admin email”.
- 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.
| Order | Address used | When |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Send to box on that row | Whenever you have typed one in. |
| 2 | The location's Email field | Send to is empty. Set under Locations › the branch › Details. |
| 3 | Your WordPress admin email | Both of the above are empty. |
If none of the three is a valid email address, that branch is skipped in silence — no error appears on the Messages 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.
Bramhall
Wednesday 26 August 2026 · 5 appointments
| Time | Service | Customer | Staff | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 07:45 | Blood pressure check | Margaret Ellis 07700 900318 | Priya Sharma | Confirmed |
| 09:00 | Travel health consultation | Oliver Ball (×2) 07700 900145 | Priya Sharma | Confirmed |
| 10:30 | Yellow fever vaccination | Dev Patel 07700 900612 | — | Pending |
| 13:15 | Flu vaccination | Joan Whitaker 07700 900204 | Aisha Khan | Completed |
| 16:00 | Ear microsuction | Tom Rowley 07700 900877 | Aisha Khan | No Show |
One morning's digest for a single branch.
- 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 your WordPress site’s time zone, set in WordPress under Settings › General. If Settings › Region & currency warns that “Your two time zone settings disagree.”, put that right first, or the digest runs on a different clock from your diary.
- 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.
- 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.
- It is a real digest, with real people in itNot a sample. It contains today's actual bookings, names and phone numbers, and it is written to Settings › Activity log just like a scheduled one.
- 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 — usually by moving off WordPress mail to your own mailbox. See email delivery.
If a digest does not arrive
- Both switches on? The master switch and the branch’s own switch both have to be on, and you have to have pressed Save.
- 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 “Daily digest for” the branch, with the number of appointments and the address it went to. It is not listed under Messages › Sent, which only covers messages to customers.
- No locations yet? The table is replaced by "Add a location first. The digest is sent per location." Add a branch under Locations and it appears here.
One more thing to check if a colleague cannot find the screen: it needs the Messages permission under Team — View to look, Edit to change it. The Manager role includes it; the Practitioner and Marketing roles do not. See team access.