What Booked sends, and when
Every automatic message, from the confirmation and receipt to the reminder, plus the alerts to your team.
Booked has a message for each moment in a booking’s life. Seven are tied to something happening — a booking made, a payment taken, a refund, an appointment moved. Reminders go before the appointment, one for each lead time you switch on, and one more message chases questions a customer has still to answer. The waiting list and packages have messages of their own, and five alerts tell your own team what customers have done. Here is every one, where to switch each on or off, and the order they arrive in.
Every message Booked can send
You will find them under Booked › Messages, in the Set up group of the sidebar. You can rewrite any of them, and add or remove reminders on the Reminders tab, but you cannot add a moment of your own. Emails you write yourself live under Your own templates, and go out only when you send one from a booking: see emailing a customer from a booking. Most exist twice: once as an email on Email templates and once as a text on Text messages. Package bought and the alerts to your team are emails only.
| Message | What sets it off | Shipped email subject |
|---|---|---|
| Booking pending | Someone books online while auto-approve is off and there is nothing to pay at the time, or you add a booking with the status Pending. | We’ve received your booking — {company_name} |
| Booking approved | Someone books online while auto-approve is on and there is nothing to pay at the time; their online payment goes through; you set a booking to Confirmed; or someone takes a waiting-list offer. | Your appointment is confirmed — {company_name} |
| Booking changed | The customer, service, staff member, location or price changes, but not the status or the time. | Your appointment details have changed — {company_name} |
| Booking rescheduled | The start time changes and the status does not — whether you move it or the customer does from their account. It shows the old time struck through beside the new one. | Your appointment has moved — {company_name} |
| Booking cancelled | A booking’s status is changed to Cancelled, or the customer cancels from their account. | Your appointment has been cancelled — {company_name} |
| Payment receipt | Money is taken: a deposit or the full price paid online when they book, once the payment has gone through, or the rest charged to a card they left on file with Take the remaining. | Your receipt from {company_name} |
| Booking refunded | You refund a payment, from the booking or from the Payments screen. It gives the amount and says it usually shows within 5 to 10 working days. | Your refund has been processed — {company_name} |
| Reminder · the day before | A confirmed appointment is a day away, or less if it was booked later than that. The only reminder switched on for a new site. | Reminder: your appointment on {booking_date} — {company_name} |
| Reminder · 3 hours before, and any other reminder you add | A confirmed appointment is that close, once you have switched the reminder on. Check its email switch: the second reminder you add can arrive with its email off and only its text on. | Your appointment is coming up — {company_name} |
| Questions still to answer | The customer was sent your appointment questions by secure link and has not answered them yet. | Please finish your booking form — {company_name} |
| Joined the waiting list | Someone joins the waiting list. It confirms what they are waiting for and the times that suit them. | You’re on the waiting list — {company_name} |
| A time has come up | A time they are waiting for comes free. Its button books it; the offer is held for them for a set time, then passes to the next person. | A {service_name} appointment has come up — {company_name} |
| Package bought | Someone buys a package, paid or free: their receipt, and how to use the credit. | Your {package_name} — {company_name} |
Each of these goes to the customer, and only to them. Group bookings get one message to the person who made the booking, not one each, with everyone in the party listed. A multi-visit course or a same-visit bundle also sends one confirmation, about the first appointment: a course’s confirmation lists every visit, and each visit gets its own reminders; a bundle’s lists everything booked into that visit.
The To your team group at the bottom of the list is different: five alerts that go to your own team — New booking, Customer cancelled, Customer rescheduled, New on the waiting list and Package sold — when a customer books online, cancels or moves from their account, joins the waiting list or buys a package. Who gets them, and what they say, is in Alerts to your team.
What the shipped messages say
The emails about an appointment — pending, approved, changed, rescheduled, cancelled, the reminders and the questions chase — open with a coloured label and a card of the details: Service, When (the date, then the start and end time and how long it lasts), Where, With and Reference. Booking pending, Booking cancelled and Questions still to answer leave out With, and Booking rescheduled shows the old time struck through above the card.
Under the card go the details only some bookings need: questions still to answer, everyone in a group, the rest of a bundle or course, and what has been paid. Each has its own placeholder and is empty when it does not apply, so a simple booking gets none of them. Booking pending, Booking approved, Booking changed and Booking rescheduled also end with a link to the customer’s account, when customer accounts are on.
A video call changes the wording too. Every change below sits in the template inside an amber group headed if a video call ({if video} and {/if} in the code), so an in-person customer never sees it, and you can reword any of it (see editing your emails and texts).
| Message | On a video call |
|---|---|
| Every appointment email | Where reads “Video call”, with “Online, in your web browser” under it, instead of the branch and its address. |
| Booking approved, Booking changed, Booking rescheduled and the reminders | A Your video call section: it opens in their web browser with nothing to download, a Join the video call button, and the link written out. |
| Booking pending | No link yet — the booking may be turned down — just “Your video call link comes with the confirmation.” |
| Booking approved | Signs off “Speak soon.” instead of “We look forward to seeing you.” |
| Booking cancelled | Adds “The video call link no longer works.” |
| Reminder · the day before | Adds “Find somewhere quiet and join a minute or two before your time.” |
| Questions still to answer | Asks for the answers before “your video call” rather than before “you come in”. |
| The texts | Booking approved, Booking changed, Booking rescheduled and the reminder texts carry the join link. See setting up texts. |
| The waiting list | Each says the appointment is by video call, and A time has come up adds that the link comes once the time is theirs. |
| New booking and Customer rescheduled | A line for your team saying it is a video call, the customer has the link, and a link to join from. New booking also says “(a video call)” after the service — and “for 3 people” on a group. |
Where the templates live
Open Booked › Messages. Six tabs run across the top: Email templates, Text messages, Reminders, Daily digest, Design and Sent. The screen opens on Email templates.
Messages
Write your own emails — results ready, a change of plan, anything — and send them from any booking.
When a booking is confirmed.
Confirmed
Good news — your appointment is confirmed. Here are the details:
Service
Date
Start time to End time · How long
Who with
Booking reference
Business name
Business phone
Anything the booking needs that this email leaves out is added at the end — or where you put “Anything else the booking needs”.
Messages › Email templates, with the Booking approved email open.
- 1Messages — in the Set up group of the sidebar.
- 2The six tabs — Email templates and Text messages hold the wording; Reminders decides when reminders go; Daily digest is the run-sheet emailed to your own staff; Design is the logo and colour every email wears; Sent is the log of everything that went out.
- 3The event list — the moments, in six groups: when they book, money, before the appointment, the waiting list, packages, and the alerts to your team. A green dot means that message goes out; a grey one means it is switched off — here the 3-hours-before reminder’s email, which ships switched off. Under them, Your own templates holds emails you write yourself and send by hand from a booking.
- 4Email goes out — the switch for this one message. Off means it is skipped entirely: the booking still happens and calendar sync still runs, and the customer hears nothing.
Turning a message on or off
Every template has its own switch. Out of the box the emails are on, apart from the 3-hours-before reminder’s, and the texts are off, apart from the reminder texts, the Questions still to answer text and the waiting list’s A time has come up text, which are on and simply wait for Booked SMS. The waiting-list texts also need Text them as well as emailing under Settings › Waiting list. Either way, a fresh site texts nobody until you switch texts on.
- Pick the tab, then the eventEmail templates or Text messages, then the event in the list — for example Booking cancelled.
- Set the switchTop right of the editor: Email goes out, or Not sent / Text goes out on the text side.
- Press SaveThe switch is only stored when you press Save on that message. Change a second message and save only that one, and the first change is still unsaved — leave Messages and it is lost. (The switches on the Reminders tab save the moment you click them.)
When a booking is cancelled, by you or by them.
Cancelled
Your appointment below has been cancelled. If this was a mistake, or you’d like to rebook, we’re happy to help.if a video call The video call link no longer works.×
Service
Date
Start time to End time · How long
Booking reference
Call us to rebook
Business name
Business phone
Anything the booking needs that this email leaves out is added at the end — or where you put “Anything else the booking needs”.
The editor for the Booking cancelled email.
- 1Email goes out — off means the message is skipped entirely. The booking still happens; the customer hears nothing.
- 2Subject — email only. Booking details show in it as named tags; to add one, type its code, such as {company_name}, and it becomes a tag when you click away.
- 3The toolbar — bold, italic, underline, bullets and Link. The </> button shows the HTML behind the email, with every tag written out as its code — the quickest way to spot the junk that comes with text pasted from Word.
- 4+ Add a detail — opens a menu of booking details and ready-made sections; pick one and it drops in at your cursor as a named tag such as First name, or under your paragraph as a grey card for a section. Hover over a tag to see its code. Only the details that make sense for this message are offered. A code you type yourself becomes a tag when you click away; one that stays in curly brackets, like {customer_firstname}, is a typo the customer would read. Show only when… beside it turns the words you have selected into a condition group, such as one headed if a video call.
- 5Save — saves this one message, and only this one.
- 6Preview — opens the email as it will arrive, filled with made-up details and wrapped in your design. Unsaved changes are included, and nothing is sent.
- 7Email me a test — pick A normal booking, A video call or A group of three, type your address, and Booked sends that version, with “[Test]” at the start of the subject. Texts have Text me a test in the same place.
When Booked ships a new design for its messages, it only replaces templates nobody has edited. A template you have reworded keeps your words, and anything it leaves out that a booking needs — the video link, the payment summary, everyone in a group — is added underneath it. Your on/off switches are never changed.
Reminders before the appointment
The Reminders tab decides when reminders go. Only the day before is switched on for a new site. A week, three days, two days, 12 hours, 3 hours and an hour before are there to switch on, and Add your own lead time takes any other from 1 to 23 hours or 1 to 7 days. Each reminder has its own email and its own text.
Messages
Switch on the ones you want. Each has its own email and text. Only confirmed appointments get them, each goes once, and moving an appointment starts them over.
Reminder: your appointment on {booking_da…Edit
Needs texts switched onEdit
Messages › Reminders, with the day-before and three-hours-before reminders on.
- 1Reminders on — the master switch. Off, and no reminder goes to anyone, whatever is ticked below.
- 2A lead time — switch one on and its email and text appear underneath. Only confirmed appointments get reminders, each goes once, and moving an appointment starts them over.
- 3Email and Text — each can be on or off separately. Edit opens its wording. The text one says Needs texts switched on until Booked SMS is live.
- 4Add your own lead time — any other lead time, from 1 to 23 hours or 1 to 7 days before.
A reminder goes out as soon as the appointment is inside its lead time, checked every 15 minutes. So a booking made this afternoon for tomorrow morning gets its day-before reminder within about a quarter of an hour, not the day before.
What decides which message goes out
For a booking made on your website with nothing to pay at the time, one setting does most of the work: Auto-approve new bookings under Settings › Booking rules. Off, and bookings land Pending and get the Booking pending email. On, they land Confirmed and get Booking approved. A booking whose screening is flagged for review stays Pending regardless.
When your booking form takes a deposit or the full price, the emails wait for the money. Once the payment goes through, the booking is confirmed — even with auto-approve off — and the customer gets Booking approved, then a Payment receipt. Someone who gives up at the card step is sent nothing, so nobody is told they are booked when they are not. If a customer’s browser never reports a payment that did go through, Booked still finds it — in its hourly check of recent card payments, or when Bookings syncs payments — and sends the same emails then, as long as the appointment is still to come.
How far ahead people can book, how fine the slots are, and what happens the moment a booking lands.
Settings › Booking rules — the switch that picks which email a new booking gets.
- 1Booking rules — under Taking bookings in the settings rail.
- 2Auto-approve new bookings — off by default. For a booking with nothing to pay at the time, this is the difference between a customer receiving “we’ve received your booking” and “your appointment is confirmed” — and, because reminders only go to confirmed appointments, whether a pending booking gets reminded at all.
When you edit an existing booking, Booked sends one message per save, chosen in this order: a changed status wins, then a changed start time, then anything else. Move an appointment and mark it Confirmed in the same save and the customer gets Booking approved, never learning the time moved. If they need to know both, change the time, save, then change the status and save again.
Dragging an appointment to a new time counts as an edit, so Booking rescheduled goes out immediately. If you are reshuffling a whole day, every drop emails somebody — switch Booking rescheduled off while you work, then back on.
A typical booking, message by message
Here is the whole run for a customer who books a travel vaccination at your Bramhall branch and pays a deposit online, with auto-approve off and the day-before and 3-hours-before reminders on.
- They book and pay the depositNothing is sent while they are at the card step. Once the payment goes through, the booking is confirmed and Booking approved goes out, followed by a Payment receipt for the deposit. Your team gets its New booking alert at the same moment.
- You move them to a later slotYou drag the appointment in the Diary. Booking rescheduled is sent the moment you drop it, showing the old time and the new one.
- The day beforeReminder · the day before goes out, and three hours before the appointment Reminder · 3 hours before follows.
- They attend and pay the restIf they left a card on file, Take the remaining on the booking charges it and sends a Payment receipt for the balance. Money taken at the counter and recorded by hand sends nothing.
- You mark it CompletedNo message is sent — Completed and No-show map to nothing, though a follow-up can start from either.
Every one of those is listed under Messages › Sent, and on the booking itself under Messages sent, so you can see exactly what the customer received.
Things that send nothing at all
- Deleting a booking. Deleting removes it in silence. To tell the customer, set the status to Cancelled first, let that email go, then delete.
- Marking a booking Completed or No-show. Neither status maps to a message.
- Recording a payment by hand. Setting a booking’s payment to paid, for cash or a card at the counter, sends no receipt. Receipts go only for money Booked takes itself: online, or from a card on file.
- A card step they give up on. The customer is not told they are booked, and your team gets no alert.
- Texts, until Booked SMS is on. Text templates are written and ready; they go out once texts are switched on under Text messages. Until then, each text that would have gone is listed under Sent as Not sent.
- An alert about what your team does. Alerts to your team cover only what customers do themselves. Bookings you add and changes you make send the customer their usual message, but no alert. For a run-down of each day’s appointments, switch on the Daily digest.