Most of the SMS your shop sends day-to-day is the same handful of messages over and over: scheduling acknowledgments, cure-time reminders, parts delays, photo gallery shares. SalesThumb ships with a starter library of these, and you can add your own on top.
Step 1 — Browse the starter library
Settings → Notifications, then Browse template library. This opens a picker with SalesThumb's built-in SMS templates covering the common cases — booking confirmations, pickup notices, cure-time care instructions, reschedules, and more. Pick the ones you want; they get cloned into your shop's own template list, where you can edit the wording to match your voice.
Step 2 — Add or edit templates
From the same Settings → Notifications screen, you can edit any cloned template or write your own from scratch. Templates use double-brace merge fields, and the "Available merge fields" card lists the ten valid ones. Two caveats worth internalizing: each automated send only fills in the subset that applies to it (a booking confirmation can name the customer's vehicle; a 24-hour reminder can't), and any field that isn't filled in — because the data is missing, because that send doesn't supply it, or because you typo'd the name — goes out blank rather than blocking the send. Configuring text reminders has the per-template breakdown. Keep the message under 1,600 characters, or it'll split into multiple SMS segments.
Step 3 — Use them in the inbox
Templates are shop-level — there's no personal "my templates" list, so anything you save at Settings → Notifications is available to the whole team, in two places: your saved templates are what goes out on automated sends (booking confirmations, reminders, etc.), and the same library also powers the Quick replies popover (the sparkle icon) in any Inbox conversation. Open it mid-conversation and it lists whichever of your saved templates are active and set to the SMS channel — pick one and it drops into the message field, merge fields already filled in for that customer, ready to edit before you send. There's no separate "inbox quick-reply list" to maintain — add, edit, or deactivate a template here and the Quick replies popover reflects it immediately. If your shop hasn't saved any active SMS templates yet, the popover shows an empty state pointing back here.
Tips
- Keep templates short. SMS is not the place for paragraphs. 2-3 sentences max.
- Always include `{{first_name}}`. Personalized templates outperform generic ones.
- Test on your phone before relying on a new template — rendering can surprise you.