When are automatic reminders sent?

Depending on the nature of your business, and the kinds of customers you deal with, you will probably want to control when reminders are sent.

For most businesses, either one or two days prior, is a good time to send an SMS reminder.

If you choose to also use email reminders, it is a good idea to send these earlier than the SMS reminder, perhaps 3 or 4 days prior to the appointment.

Controlling when reminders are sent is done by adjusting your Account Settings.

Adjusting Account Settings for the sending of Automated Reminders

To change the settings you need to be an administrator-level user.

Choose Account > Settings from the menu.

Controlling on which Day reminders are sent

On the main Settings tab you will see a set of check-boxes labelled Workdays for reminders.   These may be set to control when a reminder is sent.

If, for example, you set reminders to be sent two working days before the appointment, and set the workdays as Monday-Friday, then Monday’s appointments will be reminded on Thursday, and Tuesday’s appointments will be reminded on Friday.

This feature can be used to ensure that appointment reminders are always sent on a day when someone is available to respond to customers who may need to contact you in regard to their appointment.

If you just want reminders sent every day then check all the boxes.

Controlling at what Time reminders are sent

On both the SMS Settings and Email Settings tabs you will find time fields for Reminders From / To.  These control the time of day at which reminders may be sent.

For Email reminders, it probably doesn’t matter too much, but you might have some unhappy customers if you send them text messages at 2am!

The system looks for reminders to send every half hour.  So if you set you reminders to go out between 9am and 11am (for example), then the system will look for reminders that need to be sent, at 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, 10:30, and 11:00.

Will a reminder be sent?

If you have set SMS reminders to go out 2 days before an appointment, then on Monday the system will look at ALL appointments for Wednesday to see if they need SMS reminders.

For each appointment the system checks a set of rules to determine if a reminder should, and can, be sent.