Merge tags

Drop booking details into any message — names, times, prices and links.

A merge tag is a short piece of text in curly brackets that Booked swaps for real booking details as the message goes out. You write {customer_first_name} once, and every customer reads their own name. The same tags work in email subjects, email bodies and text messages.

What a merge tag is

Every message Booked sends is a template — one piece of wording covering every customer, every branch and every service. Tags are how that one template says something different to each person. The shipped Booking approved email is written "Hi {customer_first_name}," and arrives as "Hi Sarah,"; its When row is written {booking_date} at {booking_time} and arrives as that appointment's date and time.

Tags are literal. Booked looks for the exact spelling and replaces it. Anything else in curly brackets is left in the message word for word, and your customer sees it.

Inserting a tag

Go to Booked › Customisation › Notifications, pick an event, put your cursor where the detail belongs, then click a chip in the Insert: row.

• 1Email / SMS — the same tags work on both sides of this switch, but each event has two separate templates. A tag you add to the email does not appear in the text.
• 2Subject — tags work here too. Every shipped subject ends with {company_name} so the customer knows who is writing.
• 3Insert: — click a chip and the tag drops in at your cursor, spelled correctly. The safest way to add one.
• 4Send test — mails the template you are looking at to any address, filled with sample details.

Every tag, and what it prints

These are all the tags Booked understands. You cannot create your own.

Two further tags are kept off the chip row — {brand_color} and {brand_color_soft} — which the shipped designs use to colour pills and buttons. They print colour codes, not words.

How the tags read once filled in

Here is the confirmation a customer of Bramhall Pharmacy receives, with the substituted details marked up.

• 1The greeting — {customer_first_name} took the first word of "Sarah Whitfield". Had she typed "Mrs S Whitfield", this would read "Hi Mrs,". Use {customer_name} if that worries you.
• 2Date and time — always 2026-09-04 and 14:30, whatever you set under Settings › Region & currency, and there is no way to reformat them. Write around it: "on {booking_date}, arriving for {booking_time}".
• 3The address — only the Address line of that branch. Town and postcode do not come through, so type the rest by hand.
• 4An empty tag leaves a gap — nobody was assigned, so {employee_name} produced nothing. Booked does not hide the label or the row for you.

What happens when a tag is empty

A tag Booked recognises but has no value for vanishes completely — no placeholder, no dash. The wording around it stays, which is how you get "Your appointment is with ." Expect blanks from:

• {employee_name} when no staff member is assigned to the booking.
• {location_phone}, {location_address} and {company_phone} until those fields are filled in under Business › Locations and Settings › Company.
• {customer_phone} if your booking form does not ask for a number.
• {video_link} on every in-person appointment.

Where a detail might be missing, give the tag a line of its own. A blank line reads as a tidy gap; a blank word mid-sentence reads as a mistake.

Tags that only suit some messages

• {booking_price} is the booking's full price, never the amount handled. In Payment received it overstates a deposit; in Booking refunded it overstates a partial refund. If you take deposits, write "received against a total of {booking_price}".
• {booking_status} prints the code, so a customer would read "no_show". Keep it out of anything they see — the shipped designs use a coloured pill instead.
• {video_link} only has a value on video appointments, so it belongs in Booking pending and Booking approved and nowhere else.
• {booking_date} in Booking rescheduled is the new date. There is no tag for the old one.

Tags in text messages

The SMS templates use the same tags and lean on them heavily. Switch the channel to SMS and the field is called Message rather than Email body; the tags behave identically.

• 1Say who you are — a text has no subject line and no branded header, so {company_name} at the front is doing real work. Keep it.
• 2Long values cost money — tags expand before the message is measured. Wording that looks short in the editor can run past the one-message limit for a customer with a long name or service, and be charged as two.
• 3The same plain date and time — there is no separate SMS formatting.

Check your tags with a test email

Under Save template there is an address box and a Send test button. It sends whatever is in the editor right now, saved or not, using fixed sample details: Alex Sample, Yellow Fever Vaccination, Priya Sharma, 22 Market Street Manchester, today's date, 10:30, 85.00 in your currency, status confirmed. Your real company details are used, so it also checks that Settings › Company is filled in.

Expect two quirks. {video_link} is not in the sample set, so it appears in the test as literal text — normal, not a typo. And because the test uses the editor's current contents, an unsaved draft can look saved: press Save template as well. There is no test button for SMS.