Customising SMS Templates
Each booking event has a default SMS body that you can replace with your own copy. The Templates tab in Settings → SMS lets you edit the bodies for every event in one place.
The Customer / Supplier Toggle
At the top of the templates editor is a toggle:
- To customer — the message your booking customers see
- To supplier — the message you and your admin team see (only for events that send to admins, like New Booking and Form Response)
Pick a side, edit the templates, switch sides, edit those. Both sides save together when you click Save at the bottom.
Some events appear on only one side. For example:
- Form Request only has a customer template — the supplier doesn't need an SMS reminding them they sent a waiver.
- Form Response only has a supplier template — the customer already gets a "thanks, we got your waiver" email.
Switching sides hides events that don't apply to the other recipient.
How to Edit
- Go to Settings → SMS → Templates
- Pick To customer or To supplier at the top
- Edit the body of any event you want to change
- Click Save at the bottom of the page (single button — saves everything at once)
To revert one event's body back to the default, click Reset to default under that event's textarea. Other events stay as you customised them.
Merge Tags
Use these placeholders inside template bodies — they're replaced with real data when the SMS sends:
| Tag | What it expands to |
|---|---|
{{customer_name}} | Customer's first name (or "there" if missing) |
{{supplier_name}} | Your business name |
{{booking_id}} | Public booking reference |
{{booking_start}} | Booking start time, e.g. "4:00pm 6 May 2026" |
{{pickup_time}} | Rental pickup time |
{{return_time}} | Rental return end time |
{{amount}} | Currency-formatted dollar amount |
{{form_url}} | Shortened waiver / form link |
If you reference a tag that doesn't apply to the event (e.g. {{form_url}} in the New Booking template), the placeholder is silently stripped at send time so the customer never sees {{...}} literally.
Length & Cost
SMS bodies cost per segment:
- 160 characters for plain text (GSM-7 alphabet)
- 70 characters if any character forces Unicode encoding (emoji, smart quotes, accented letters)
Long bodies cost more — a 600-character message is 4 segments, billed at 4× the per-message rate. Keep customer-facing templates under 160 characters where possible to stay at 1 segment.
The editor warns you when a body would exceed 1 segment so you can shorten it before saving.
"Reply STOP to unsubscribe"
Customer-facing templates automatically have "Reply STOP to unsubscribe" appended if it's not already in the body. This is required for compliance with US carrier rules (A2P 10DLC) and best practice everywhere else.
You don't need to add it yourself — but if you do, we won't add it twice. Use your own wording (e.g. "Reply STOP to opt out") if you prefer; we only auto-append when the word "STOP" is missing entirely.
Supplier-side templates don't get the STOP footer (operators opt in per-user, no regulatory unsubscribe requirement).
Tips
- Front-load the important info. Customers see the first ~50 characters in the lock-screen preview. Get the booking ID and time there.
- Cut emojis from customer SMS unless your brand depends on them. A single emoji forces Unicode encoding → 70-character segment limit → easy to overflow into 2 segments.
- Personalise with
{{customer_name}}— it's a 2-character cost (since names average ~6 chars vs. "there" at 5) for a noticeable boost in open-action rates. - Test by sending to your own number — use the Send confirmation button on a booking detail.