Zapier + Make automations — common shop patterns

SalesThumb has direct integrations for QuickBooks, Twilio (SMS), Resend (email — connect your own account under Settings → Integrations → Business Texting & Email), and integrated payments. There's no published Zapier or Make.com app yet, and the REST API is read-only today (it can list and look up records, but nothing can create or change them) — but SalesThumb's outbound webhooks are real and HMAC-signed, and both Zapier and Make can catch them with their generic "Webhooks" trigger. That's the pattern this article covers.

Setup basics

Go to Settings → API Keys and open the Webhooks tab, then add a subscription: pick the events you want and paste in the URL your Zapier "Catch Hook" step (or Make's "Custom webhook" module) gives you. SalesThumb signs every delivery with HMAC-SHA256 and sends it as an X-SalesThumb-Signature header, so verify the signature on the receiving end if your automation acts on money-related events.

The same Settings page also has an API keys tab where you can generate an st_live_ key, and an API reference tab for the live REST API. That API is read-only: six GET endpoints that list and look up customers, appointments, and invoices for your shop (full reference at /docs/api/rest). It can't create, update, or delete anything, so an automation that needs to *write* into SalesThumb — for example, creating a customer from a form submission — can't be built on it yet. Use webhooks to get data out as it happens, and the read API to pull records on demand.

Real webhook events you can subscribe to today:

appointment.created, appointment.confirmed, appointment.checked_in, appointment.completed, appointment.canceled
quote.sent, quote.accepted
invoice.created, invoice.sent, invoice.paid
payment.received, payment.refunded
warranty.registered, warranty.claim_filed
customer.created

There's no review.created, job.completed (appointments, not "jobs," and the real event is appointment.completed), sms.received, or payout.created event — if you've seen automation templates referencing those, they won't fire.

Pattern 1 — Quote sent → CRM update

Trigger: SalesThumb webhook quote.sent Action: HubSpot/Salesforce/Pipedrive → Update deal stage to "Quote Sent" + log activity

Why: keeps your CRM source-of-truth aligned with what's happening in the shop.

Pattern 2 — Invoice paid → Mailchimp tag

Trigger: SalesThumb webhook invoice.paid Action: Mailchimp → Add tag "Paid Customer" to subscriber Action 2 (optional): Mailchimp → Add to "Past Customers" automation

Why: enables post-job email sequences (reviews, referrals, recoating reminders) via Mailchimp if you prefer it over native SalesThumb sequences.

Pattern 3 — Appointment completed → Auto-create a follow-up task

Trigger: SalesThumb webhook appointment.completed Action: Asana/Trello/Notion → Create a task in your "Post-job follow-ups" project, assign to a manager, due in 3 days

Why: structured follow-up that doesn't rely on the owner remembering.

Pattern 4 — Warranty claim filed → Slack alert

Trigger: SalesThumb webhook warranty.claim_filed Action: Slack "Send message" → your ops channel → flag the customer + vehicle so someone picks it up same-day

Why: a filed claim sitting unseen for days is how a warranty problem turns into a bad review.

Pattern 5 — Payment received → Bookkeeper email

Trigger: SalesThumb webhook payment.received Action: Gmail → Send to bookkeeper with the payment amount

Why: gives your bookkeeper a running feed of payments instead of waiting for a manual export.

Pattern 6 — New customer created → add to an external welcome sequence

Trigger: SalesThumb webhook customer.created Action: Mailchimp/ActiveCampaign → Add contact + start a welcome sequence

Why: if you run customer marketing from a tool SalesThumb doesn't natively sequence for, this keeps it in sync without anyone re-typing contact info.

What isn't possible yet

A few things people expect from a Zapier/Make integration aren't there today — don't spend time trying to build these:

Creating or updating a customer, quote, or invoice in SalesThumb from Zapier/Make. There's no working inbound endpoint, so a "when a web form is submitted, create a SalesThumb customer" zap can't be built yet.
Revenue totals on a schedule (e.g., "every night, get today's revenue and drop it in a spreadsheet") — the read API has no revenue/report endpoint; it only lists and looks up customers, appointments, and invoices.
Reacting to a review, an SMS reply, or a payout — none of those are events SalesThumb emits.

Common gotchas

Webhook retries: a failed delivery is retried automatically after about 1 minute, 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 2 hours, 6 hours and 24 hours (7 attempts in all), with the same X-SalesThumb-Delivery-Id header on every attempt. If every delivery to a subscription has failed for more than 24 hours, it's paused automatically and the owner gets one email — so if your Zapier/Make webhook URL changes or goes stale, re-check the subscription status in Settings → API Keys, on the Webhooks tab, and turn it back on once fixed.
Signature verification: every delivery is signed (HMAC-SHA256); verify it if the automation does anything money-related.
PII: be careful what you send to external systems. Don't pipe customer phone numbers to a Google Sheet that's broadly shared internally.