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. That said, the inbox and the template library are separate systems today: the composer's quick-reply popover in any conversation shows a small fixed set of built-in canned messages, not your saved/edited template list. Your shop's saved templates are what actually go out on automated sends (booking confirmations, reminders, etc.). To send one manually mid-conversation, copy the wording from Settings → Notifications into the message box — there's no one-tap insert from your saved library in the inbox yet.
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.