Automations
The follow-ups that bring customers back are the ones nobody has time to send: a thank-you after the session, a nudge six weeks later, a friendly note after a no-show. The Automations module sends them on your timing and conditions, and logs every run so you can see exactly what went out and why something didn’t.
Automations add to the built-in booking emails. They never replace them.
Turn It On
- Go to Bookings → Settings → Modules, switch on Automations and click Save modules.
- Open Bookings → Settings → Automations. Start from a recipe, or click Add automation.
Start From a Recipe
Under Start from a recipe, click Add next to one. Each recipe is added paused, so you can adjust the timing and wording before you click Turn on.
| Recipe | What it does |
|---|---|
| Thank you and review request | Two hours after an appointment is marked completed: thanks, a review link when Reviews is on, and a booking link. |
| Time to book again | Six weeks after the appointment ends: a nudge with the booking page. |
| No-show follow-up | An hour after a no-show: a friendly note with a link to choose a new time. |
| Unpaid hold recovery | Ten minutes after a booking that still awaits online payment: a payment link that works only while the hold lasts. |
Unpaid hold recovery never stretches a hold. If the hold has less than two minutes left, or the customer released it, the run is skipped. If the Reviews module also emails review requests, turn one of the two off.
Build Your Own Rule
A rule has a Name, one Trigger, optional conditions and one Action. Pick the trigger under When:
- Booking made, Booking confirmed, Booking cancelled, Booking rescheduled, Appointment completed, Marked no-show and Unpaid hold expired take a Delay in minutes after the event (0 runs at once), up to 30 days.
- Hours before the start runs 1 to 720 hours before the appointment.
- Days after the end runs 0 to 365 days after it.
Under Only when (optional), narrow it down. None ticked means any:
- Services and Staff.
- Payment state when the run is due: Paid, Awaiting online payment, Pay offline (unpaid), Free, Session credit, Partially refunded or Refunded. It’s checked at run time, because payments change.
- Customer: Any customer, First booking only or Returning customers only.
Under Do, choose the action:
- Send an email to The customer or The assigned staff member, through your normal email settings.
- Send an SMS or WhatsApp message through the SMS and WhatsApp module. Only customers who opted in receive it, and opt-outs and quiet hours apply.
- Send a signed webhook to an HTTPS address. The signing secret is shown once after saving; Replace the signing secret rotates it.
- With the Integrations module on, FluentCRM or MailerPress actions to add or remove tags and add to lists.
Pick On or Paused and click Save automation. Messages can use {name}, {service}, {when}, {staff}, {location}, {manage_url}, {site}, {status}, {payment}, {book_again_url}, {pay_url}, {hold_expires} and {review_url}. A line whose link or time is empty is left out.
Read the Run Log
The Run log lists every run with its status: Scheduled, Done, Skipped, Failed or Cancelled, plus a detail line explaining why.
- When a run comes due, it checks everything again: the rule is still on, the booking still exists, the trigger still holds and the conditions still match. If not, it’s skipped with the reason.
- A reschedule, cancellation, expiry, decline or no-show cancels the booking’s earlier time-based runs. A reschedule then plans new ones at the new time.
- Provider outages and timeouts retry on their own. After the fifth failure the run is marked failed, and Retry queues it again.
- Pause skips a rule’s waiting runs when they come due. Delete cancels them; finished runs stay in the log.
Limits
- Up to 50 automations per site, and one action per rule. Add a second rule for a second action.
- Rules apply to booking changes made after you save them. Existing bookings aren’t back-filled.
- Location isn’t a condition yet.
- Runs happen in the background after a booking is saved, so they never slow down or block a booking. They do depend on the worker, so run it from system cron.
- Finished runs are deleted after 90 days. The log stores the booking reference, never the message content.
- Developers can add their own actions. See Hooks and Filters.