Every appointment normally sends confirmation and reminder messages according to your shop's default templates (see Configuring text reminders for how those shop-wide templates work). Sometimes one specific appointment needs different treatment — a customer who asked to stop being texted about this particular visit, a same-day booking where the confirmation is redundant, or a walk-in you'd rather remind by email instead of text. The Confirmation & Reminders controls let you override confirmation and reminder behavior for a single appointment, without touching the templates everyone else's appointments still use. You'll find the same four controls in three places: the Schedule Appointment page when you're booking directly, the same section inside the "Schedule an appointment" step when you create a new quote, and an appointment's Quick View popover on the calendar once it's already on the books.
Setting it when you book the appointment
On the Schedule Appointment page, the right-hand sidebar has a Notes card (Customer Notes and Internal Notes) followed directly by a Confirmation & Reminders card. That card holds the four controls described below. If you don't touch it at all, the appointment books with your shop's normal defaults — confirmation on, reminders on, no custom hours, no forced channel — the same as if this card weren't there.
You'll find the identical Confirmation & Reminders controls in the same spot if you check "Schedule an appointment" while creating a new quote instead of using the standalone booking page — same four controls, same defaults, same behavior.
Changing it after the appointment is already on the calendar
Click any appointment on the calendar to open its Quick View popover. Below the date/time and status badge sits a Confirmation & Reminders row with a bell icon and a short status line — it tells you, at a glance, whether the confirmation already went out and whether a reminder is scheduled, sent, or turned off. Click that row (not the pencil "Edit" icon, which only edits the time and notes) to open the settings dialog. Inside, if the confirmation has already gone out, the dialog shows you the exact date and time it sent; if you'd set a custom reminder time and it's already fired, the dialog tells you that too (it doesn't show the exact time reminders went out, just whether one already has), so you know whether a change affects a message that's already gone or one still pending.
What each control does
- Send confirmation — the one-time message sent when the appointment is booked. Turning this off means this appointment never gets a booking confirmation, no matter what your shop's Booking confirmation template says.
- Send reminder — the reminder message(s) leading up to the appointment. Turning this off suppresses whatever reminder would otherwise fire for this appointment, whether that's the shop's default reminders or a custom time set below. It also means this appointment won't get the automatic "your appointment time changed" message if you later edit its time, since that notification only fires when reminders are enabled for the appointment.
- Remind this many hours before (only shown while reminders are on) — leave it blank to use the shop's default reminder schedule. Enter a number of hours (1 to 720, i.e. up to 30 days out) to replace the shop's default reminders with a single reminder timed for that many hours before the appointment instead. You can't set a lead time longer than the time actually remaining before the appointment starts — saving a value that's already too late to fire is rejected with an error telling you how soon the appointment is.
- Preferred contact method — Auto, SMS, or Email. Auto uses whatever channel the shop's template sends on; if that's SMS and the customer has no phone on file (or is opted out), it falls back to email. There's no reverse fallback — if the template is set to Email and the customer has no email on file, nothing goes out. Choosing SMS or Email here forces that channel for this appointment's confirmation and reminder instead.
Things to know
- This is a per-appointment override layered on top of your shop's default templates — it never edits those templates. See Configuring text reminders for the shop-wide settings this overrides.
- Any staff member who can open and edit an appointment can change these settings — there's no separate permission tier gating this beyond normal appointment access.
- Leaving every control untouched, on a new or existing appointment, behaves exactly as if this feature didn't exist: confirmation on, reminders on, shop-default timing, no forced channel.
- A custom reminder time replaces the shop's default reminder schedule for that one appointment — it doesn't add an extra message on top of the shop's own reminders.
- Turning "Send reminder" off also silences the automatic notice that would otherwise go out if you later edit that appointment to a new time from its detail page, since that message only sends when reminders are enabled. It does not affect the separate "notify customer" checkbox available when you drag-reschedule an appointment on the calendar — that one always sends when checked, regardless of this setting.
- The custom-hours value is checked against the current time, not just the appointment's original booking time. If you move the appointment's start time earlier, a previously valid custom reminder can become too-late and get rejected until you adjust one or the other.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Where do I turn off reminders for just one appointment?
A: A few places — the Confirmation & Reminders card on the Schedule Appointment page while you're booking directly, the same section in the inline booking step when you schedule an appointment from a new quote, or the Confirmation & Reminders row inside an appointment's Quick View popover (click the appointment on the calendar) once it's already booked. All three use the same four controls.
Q: Does this change my shop's reminder templates for every other appointment?
A: No. It's a per-appointment override — your shop-wide confirmation and reminder templates (Settings → Notifications) are untouched. This just tells one appointment to ignore them, or use different timing or a different channel.
Q: What exactly does turning off "Send reminder" stop?
A: The reminder message that would otherwise go out before the appointment — whether that's the shop's default reminder schedule or a custom-time reminder — and also the automatic "your appointment time changed" message from editing the appointment's detail page, since that one only sends when reminders are enabled. It doesn't affect the separate "notify customer" checkbox on the calendar's drag-to-reschedule flow, which always sends when checked.
Q: What happens if I leave the hours field blank?
A: The appointment uses your shop's default reminder schedule instead of a custom time.
Q: How far in advance can I set a custom reminder?
A: Between 1 and 720 hours (30 days) before the appointment, and it has to still be far enough out to actually fire — a lead time longer than the time remaining before the appointment starts gets rejected.
Q: What does "Auto" mean for contact method?
A: It uses whatever channel your shop's template is set to send on, falling back to whichever contact method the customer has on file if the template doesn't specify one.