Message templates

Messaging → Templates holds every automatic message Velobook sends for you. Each can be rewritten, and each has its own switches for email, text and WhatsApp. When they go out is covered in reminders: email and SMS.

Finding your way round the table

• Templates are grouped into Booking, Workshop status updates, Bike hire and Hire delivery updates. Click a group's heading to open or fold it. Booking starts open
• Each row has a switch per channel: Email, Text and WhatsApp
• Text and WhatsApp are separate switches. With both on, a customer who chose WhatsApp gets the message there instead of a text, and everyone else gets a text
• Turn WhatsApp off and the message goes by text only. Turn Text off and it goes only to customers on WhatsApp
• Messages with no approved WhatsApp version say Not on WhatsApp and go by email and text
• Where texting isn't available (New Zealand, for example), there is no Text column. The WhatsApp switch is the one you use
• Open a row to edit it. The email and its text sit on two tabs behind one Save
• Leave a field blank and Velobook's default copy is used
• Drop in variables such as `{{customerName}}`, `{{bookingTime}}` and `{{manageUrl}}`; the editor lists the ones each template supports
• Texts show a live count of 160-character parts as you type, because that is how texting is billed

What each one does

• Reminder (1 week before) is skipped when the booking is made less than a week out.
• Drop the bike in the day before is off until you turn it on. It goes two days before the booking, for shops whose booking date is the day the work happens rather than the day the bike arrives.
• Review request goes two weeks after the booking and needs a review link under Integrations → Reviews.
• Payment receipt goes when you record a payment taken in person (cash, cheque, a card on your own terminal). It says what was paid, how, and what is still owing.
• Return day set is for collect and return jobs. It goes when you set or change the day you're bringing the bike back, not when you clear the day or save the same one twice.
• It arrived with us is off until you turn it on. It goes when a job moves to Arrived, for shops that take work in by post or courier. Leave it off if customers hand the bike over in person, or they get it while standing at your counter.
• Parts arrived only goes when you choose to send it from the delivery screen.
• Service reminder is never automatic. You send it from a bike (Customers, then the bike, then the bell), now or on a date you pick. The Default interval on its row is preselected each time; see service reminders.
• Service follow-up sits under it: an email after each service asking if the bike is due again. Pick one interval or several (3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 2 years). It has no switch of its own; Send scheduled emails turns it off.
• Hire starts tomorrow goes the morning before a hire, with when and where to collect and any waivers still to sign. A hire booked too late for that gets it soon after booking instead, never overnight. Add your own notes, like what to wear.
• Hire overdue goes once per hire, the morning after it was due back, if the bikes aren't marked returned.

The tour-confirmation text has its own card under the table. Its wording is fixed.