Booking messages

Booking messages are what your guests receive around their booking, by email or by text. Open Booking settings → Messages. You customise the wording, drop in details like the guest's name and booking time, and preview the result before saving.

The messages you can edit

Five messages are built in and always sent:

• Booking confirmation — sent the moment a guest books.
• Booking cancellation — sent when a booking is cancelled.
• Subscription confirmation — confirms a guest's marketing opt-in. Only used if you've turned on double opt-in for your consent step.
• Table ready (waitlist) — a text to a walk-up party when your host presses Call on the till's waitlist.
• Table nearly ready (waitlist) — a text when your host presses Reminder, a few minutes before the table is free.

These are built in: they always go out, there's no automation to set up, and they can't be deleted. While one is switched on, your wording is what guests receive. Switch one off and guests still get it — in our standard wording instead of yours.

You can also add these, which send from the rules you set in Automations:

• Booking reminder — a nudge the day before.
• Confirm your table — asks a guest to confirm they're still coming, so you can free the table if they can't make it.
• Confirm your table — chase — one last nudge for guests who haven't answered.
• Review request — asks for a review after the visit.
• Win-back — for a guest who hasn't been in for a while.
• Birthday — sent on a guest's birthday.

The review request, win-back and birthday messages are marketing, so they only go to guests who've consented.

Sending a message by text instead of email

Each message has a Channel — Email or SMS. Switch it to SMS and the editor changes to match what a text actually is:

• The subject line disappears, because a text doesn't have one.
• The plain-text body becomes the whole message. There's no HTML on a phone.
• A live count appears showing how many texts your message costs.

Texts are billed per 160 characters, so a message of 161 characters costs twice as much — on every booking. The count updates as you type, and tells you when you've crossed a line.

Watch for one thing in particular: a curly apostrophe (the slanted kind most word processors insert automatically) or an emoji changes how the whole message is encoded and cuts your limit from 160 characters to 70. The editor says so when it happens. A straight apostrophe is free.

SMS has to be switched on under Channels first. If it isn't, confirmations and reminders still go by email rather than not sending at all.

Marketing messages and opting out

The review request, win-back and birthday messages are marketing: they only go to guests who opted in, and they always carry a way to opt back out.

On email that's a built-in unsubscribe header. On text it has to be a link, because guests can't reply to a text at all. The link is added for you — you don't have to remember it, and it can't be removed. The count includes it, which is why a short marketing text can show as two.

If you'd rather choose where it sits in your wording, add the Unsubscribe link token from Insert a detail and write your own sentence around it. Nothing extra is appended when you do.

The token only appears on marketing messages. On a confirmation or a reminder it would render as nothing at all, because those aren't marketing and never carry an opt-out.

Add a message

The Start with a template section shows the extra messages you haven't added yet. Each one arrives already written, so you're editing wording rather than starting from a blank page.

1. 1

   Pick a template

   Click the one you want. It's created straight away and opens for editing.

2. 2

   Change the wording

   Read it through and edit the subject and body to sound like you (see below).

3. 3

   Switch it on

   Use the Enabled toggle so the message can send.

4. 4

   Save

   Your message is stored. Set when it sends in Automations.

Your messages sit in two groups. Built in are the ones we set up for you: edit the wording or switch one off, but they can't be deleted. Added by you are the ones you picked from the gallery, and those you can delete.

Each row shows whether it's On or Off, and a preview of what the guest sees — the subject line for an email, or the first line for a text. A row marked Text goes out by SMS rather than email.

Inserting guest and booking details

Both the subject and body support merge tokens — placeholders that get swapped for real details when the email sends. Click a token under Insert a detail to drop it where your cursor was. The tokens are:

• Guest name
• Venue
• Booking date
• Booking time
• Party size
• Cancel link
• Manage link
• Review link — your public review link, set on the Automations page.
• Deposit line — a ready-made sentence like "Deposit received: £80.00." when the booking has a deposit, and nothing at all when it doesn't — so it's always safe to include. Shown only if deposits are enabled for your account; see Deposits and prepayments.

Body and preview

The body has an HTML tab and a Plain text tab. The plain-text version is sent alongside the HTML for email apps that need it.

You don't need to know HTML. Type your message into the HTML box as ordinary words, with a blank line between paragraphs, and it goes out laid out as an email: your paragraphs, in the same card as the built-in messages, with your logo and colour. A link such as the Manage link becomes a button under the sentence you put it in — "Manage my booking", "Cancel my booking", "Leave a review" — so guests never see a long web address. An unsubscribe link stays a short "Unsubscribe" link. If you do write HTML, it's sent exactly as you wrote it. Leave the Plain text tab empty and your words are used there too, with the links written out, because a plain-text email can't show a button.

If a token is typed slightly wrong — {{venue} with a bracket missing, {{ Venue }} with spaces or a capital — we still fill it in when the message sends, and two details with nothing between them get a space. The editor points each one out in grey so you can tidy it. A token we don't recognise at all, like {{venu}}, is shown in red: it reaches the guest exactly as typed, so fix it before you save.

Leave the subject blank on a built-in message and guests get our standard subject line. With nothing in the body, a built-in message sends our standard wording, and any other message isn't sent at all.

Use Show preview to see the email as a guest gets it, so you can check the wording and layout before you save.

Your venue's name is real in the preview — it's the name on your account. The guest, the date, the party size and the links are a sample booking, because there's no real one to show while you're writing. The same is true of the previews in the message list. Your logo, brand colour and email signature images are real too: they come from your branding, under More, then Branding — drawn at the size and position you chose there under Booking emails. If you put your signature Below the card, the preview shows it in its own card under the message, exactly as it's sent. The same goes for the switches there: turn on Venue address and phone or Social links and the preview carries your site's address line and Instagram, Facebook and X links under the signature, from the details you keep under Locations.

If you wrote a message as your own HTML, your signature and logo only appear where the HTML has a place for them: {{footer_block}} for the signature and {{logo_block}} for the logo. When your branding has a signature or a logo and the HTML has no place for it, a note under the HTML box says so — the message is sent without it until you add the token where it should go, or write the message as plain words, which places both for you.

The new editor

Some accounts have the new shared editor switched on (we switch it on for you). Messages then opens as a list with a + New message button, and each message opens in a full-screen editor with the same layout as every other Tillable editor:

• Details on the left — the guest's name, the venue, the date and time, the party size and the booking links. Click one to drop it where you were typing. A tick shows which ones the message already uses.
• The message in the middle, exactly as a guest gets it, with the subject line and the wording boxes underneath. Preview on phone shows it on a handset.
• Settings on the right — the channel (email or text), whether the message is on, and a list of checks: a detail written slightly wrong, or an HTML message with no place for your signature.

A message is named after what sends it, so there is nothing to rename or duplicate: + New message offers only the messages you don't have yet, and a new one arrives written as plain words you can change. Built-in messages can't be deleted. Classic at the top takes you back to the previous editor for the same message. Opening a message and closing it again changes nothing — Save only lights up once you've edited something.

Writing the message in place

A message written as plain words opens with Write as: Message selected. The middle of the screen is the email itself — your logo, the card with your brand colour, your signature — and you type straight into it, where the words sit. Each detail is a grey chip showing what the guest will read (the sample guest's name, your venue's real name, the date), and a booking link is shown as the button it becomes, such as Manage my booking.

• Click where you want to type, and type. Enter starts a new line; a blank line starts a new paragraph, exactly as the email lays it out.
• Click a detail on the left to drop it in at the cursor. Backspace over a chip removes it, or click the chip and use the bin in Settings.
• Click a chip to see what it shows and how it is written ({{guest_name}}, for example). Click the words to get back to the whole message's settings.
• Preview on phone shows the finished email, byte for byte what a guest gets.
• What you type is what is saved: nothing is tidied, trimmed or re-flowed, and a message you open and don't touch is saved exactly as it was.

Write as: HTML code shows the same words in the HTML box — they are the same message — alongside the plain-text box. A message that already contains HTML opens in HTML code; choosing Message there asks first ("Start again as a message"), replaces the HTML with our starter wording for you to edit, and can be undone until you save. If you type an HTML tag into the words, the message is sent as HTML code rather than laid out, and the checks say so.

The top and bottom of the email

When you write as a Message, the email on screen has three parts. Hover over it and each one is named: Top (your logo and a heading), Your message (the words), and Bottom (your signature image, and your venue's address and social links). Click the top or the bottom and its settings open on the right.

• Top — show or hide your logo, pick its size (Small, Medium, Large) and whether it sits on the left or in the centre. The Heading is a line above your words in larger type, such as "Your table is booked". Type it straight into the email where it says Add a heading, or in the settings. It is this message's own, up to 200 characters; leave it empty for none.
• Bottom — switch on your venue address and phone and your social links (from the details you keep under Locations), and pick the signature image's size (Small is today's; Full width fills the card so the wording on the image can be read) and where it sits: Inside the card, or Below the card in its own panel underneath. The signature image itself comes from Branding — the settings say how many you have, and where to upload one.

When you press Save, your top and bottom settings are saved first, then the message. If either cannot be saved, the editor tells you which one and what did save, and keeps your changes so you can try again. A setting that cannot do anything yet is greyed out with the reason — no signature image uploaded, no address on your site, or sites that use different branding (then set them per site under Branding). If you write a message as your own HTML, the top and bottom come from your HTML instead: put {{logo_block}} and {{footer_block}} where they should go.

If you do not have Bookings Pro

Opening this page without the add-on shows you what it does and links back here, rather than a "page not found". Bookings Pro is switched on for your account by us — talk to your account manager to add it. Everything else in Bookings, your diary included, works exactly as before.

What's next

• Automations — set when reminders and other timed messages send.
• Channels — set what guests see as the sender.