Help centre · Customers and keeping them
Automatic messages: ready for pickup, missed appointments and unanswered estimates
Your own words, sent when something happens and nobody presses send. Every one is off until you switch it on, texts only go to numbers with permission, and one switch pauses them all.
For owner, manager · checked against the product on 2026-10-06
Open Settings › Automations and find Automatic messages. Each message has its own form: tick Send this message automatically, choose Text, Email or Text and email, choose when it goes, and write it in your own words. The preview under the box shows your saved message filled in for a sample customer. Every message is off until you switch it on.
The three messages
Ready for pickup goes when somebody moves a repair order to Ready — right away, or 15, 30 or 60 minutes after, which gives you time to move it back if Ready was a mistake. If the order has gone back to the bay by then, nothing goes. Missed appointment goes when a booking's time has passed by the amount you choose and nobody has checked the customer in or opened a repair order from it. It does not change the appointment. If somebody already pressed No-show and that note went, this one stands down. Estimate reminder goes once, the number of days you choose after an estimate was sent through the customer page, if nobody has answered. It carries a fresh link to the same estimate. It only covers estimates sent without reminders of their own: reminders ticked in the Send dialog always win, and the Send dialog says in one line what will go on its own.
Your words may use {first}, {shop}, {vehicle} and, depending on the message, {order}, {when} or {link}. A placeholder the message cannot fill is refused when you save, so a customer never receives an empty gap or a stray brace. Clear the box to use our wording, which also goes out in Spanish to customers who chose it.
What stops a message
Permission is checked at the moment a message leaves, not when it was queued. A text only goes to a number with permission to be texted, and a customer who replied STOP has none. Choosing Text never falls back to email. A text due inside your quiet hours waits until they end. Demo data never sends. Each message goes once per order or booking, and the same customer gets the same message at most once in 24 hours. Every one that does not go is listed under Recent automatic messages with the reason.
Every message that goes lands in the customer's conversation, marked as sent automatically, and on the repair order when there is one. The activity history records it too.