Which confirmations and reminders do customers get?

Turn booking confirmations and reminders on or off per channel, and choose when reminders are sent, in Settings → Customer notifications.

Customers can receive a confirmation when they book, a reminder before they arrive, and an optional extra "advance" reminder — each one switchable per channel (email and SMS) in Settings → Communications → Customer notifications, under When a booking is made.

The controls you can change depend on your role permissions. The SMS column needs SMS to be set up first, and SMS messaging is Available on Plus plan and above (and included with any paid product) — see How do I set up SMS messages?. This page controls whether and when messages send; the wording lives on different pages — Email templates and SMS templates.

On a phone, choose a section and use All sections to return to the index. The Booking message settings overview below the controls summarises booking switches and saved marketing automations. It includes choices staff make per booking; each message still needs its own trigger and suitable recipient details, so the overview is not a delivery count for one customer.

Confirmations

• Go to Settings → Communications → Customer notifications and open When a booking is made.
• Online booking confirmation — switch the Email and SMS toggles on or off. This sends when a customer books through your online booking page, and it covers online bookings only — including the "request received" email for a booking waiting for your approval, and the confirmation when you approve it.
• Staff-created booking confirmation — choose On, Ask or Off per channel. Ask shows a checkbox in the booking pop-up so staff decide per booking. Bookings your team adds follow this row only — never the online one.
• Walk-in confirmation — the same On / Ask / Off choice for walk-ins.
• Click Save changes.

Reminders

• Booking reminder — switch email and/or SMS on, then pick a Send timing underneath. Email options run from Morning of and 30 mins before up to 72 hours before (default 24 hours before); SMS options go up to 6 hours before (default 2 hours before). On the Free plan the email timing is fixed at 24 hours before — choosing your own timing is Available on Plus plan and above. A reminder email that would land in the small hours (between midnight and 9am) is held and sent at 9am instead — so a late-night table booked with "24 hours before" timing still gets its reminder, at a sensible hour, never overnight and never silently skipped. (If waiting for 9am would leave less than an hour before the booking, the reminder keeps its original time.)
• Advance reminder — an extra early reminder, 24 hours before or 48 hours before. It only sends for bookings made 72+ hours in advance, so customers who booked months ago get an early nudge as well as the day-of reminder. Give it a different timing from your Booking reminder email: when both are on at the same timing, the advance email sends nothing — the ordinary reminder already goes then. The page says so under the timing, with a one-click switch to the other timing. Both channels send at a civil hour: the advance email goes out at 9am, and the advance text sends at 9am venue time to match — advance texts only ever go out between 9am and 9pm, so nobody's phone buzzes at midnight.
• Click Save changes.

SMS reminders never send on the Free plan even if the toggle looks available — the SMS cell shows a lock there.

Ask customers to confirm they're still coming

Under the reminders, Ask customers to confirm they're still coming (off by default; every plan) turns your Booking reminder into a quick check. The reminder email gets I'm still coming and Cancel booking buttons, and the reminder text gets a link to confirm or cancel — so it uses 2 text credits instead of 1. Both open the customer's manage-booking page, which asks "Are you still coming?": the booking only counts as confirmed when they press I'm still coming there, never just by opening the link.

Your team sees the answer on the booking — in the list, the booking panel, Home, the timeline and the floor plan: a Confirmed tick, or a Not confirmed yet flag for a booking asked in its reminder with no answer yet. Nothing is ever cancelled because a customer hasn't answered — the flag is for your team to decide, for example by giving them a call.

It covers every booking that gets a reminder (online and your team's — not walk-ins or event tickets), and it only asks anyone while a booking reminder is switched on; otherwise the row is dimmed and says why.

What the customer sees

Confirmations include the booking details, your policies (if enabled in the template) and a manage-booking link; reminders repeat the same details. In both, the Time row shows the visit as a start-to-end range in your 12- or 24-hour style (e.g. "7:15pm – 8:45pm") with a Duration row beneath it (e.g. "1½ hours"). Each email or text uses one credit from your monthly allowance (long or emoji-heavy texts can use more — see How do I edit SMS wording?).

The "Always sent" notices

Open Settings → Communications → Customer notifications → Always sent to see the list — eight money and cancellation notices that fire automatically and can't be switched off: late-cancellation fee charged, no-show fee charged, deposit refund receipt, the two automatic refund-with-apology notices (for a payment taken when a booking or ticket couldn't be completed), event refund processed, ticket cancellation, and whole-event cancellation. They're locked on deliberately: staying silent when a customer's money moves invites chargebacks and "where's my money?" queries. The rows are there so you can see exactly what fires and when — nothing about them saves or changes.

Related: What do customers get when bookings change? · How do I edit the emails customers receive? · How do I set up SMS messages?