How do I edit SMS wording?

Customise the text of each SMS customers receive, keep an eye on the credit cost per send, and send yourself a test text.

Edit the wording of every text customers receive in Settings → SMS templates — there are 12 templates, from the booking confirmation to the birthday message.

SMS messaging is Available on Plus plan and above (and included with any paid product), and this page also needs SMS set up first (see How do I set up SMS messages?). Only the owner and admins can edit SMS templates (the same Edit Templates permission as email wording, so it can be granted to other roles in the permission editor). The No-show follow-up text only sends automatically on the Pro plan and above — an amber banner reminds you on lower plans. This page is wording only — turning each text on or off lives on a different page, Settings → Customer notifications (Which confirmations and reminders do customers get?).

Edit a template

• Go to Settings → SMS templates and pick a template from the SMS template dropdown — for example Booking confirmation, Booking reminder, Waitlist table ready or Birthday.
• Edit the Message text. The live phone preview on the right shows exactly what customers receive.
• Click a chip under Available placeholders to copy it — for example {{firstName}}, {{date}}, {{time}}, {{partySize}} — then paste it into your text. Placeholders are swapped for the customer's real details when the text sends. Only the placeholders each template actually supports are offered.
• Watch the credit line under the editor: a plain text up to 160 characters uses 1 credit per send; longer texts are billed per part (153 characters each). Using emoji or special symbols shrinks that to 70 characters (67 per part), so one emoji can double the cost — the editor warns you.
• The two marketing texts — Birthday and Thank you — automatically get a short "Opt out: {link}" line added to the end of every send. It's required by UK marketing law and can't be removed; the preview and the credit estimate include it, so what you see is what each send costs. (Tip: the default wording is deliberately emoji-free so each of these texts costs 1 credit at a typical venue-name length — adding an emoji to your custom wording switches the whole message to the shorter emoji character budget and makes each send noticeably dearer; the editor warns you.)
• Click Save changes. Reset to default removes your custom wording for the selected template, returning it to the system wording (so it also picks up any future wording improvements automatically).

Send yourself a test

• Enter a Test phone number at the bottom of the page.
• Click Send test SMS and confirm. The test sends a generic connection-check message — not the template you're editing — and uses at least 1 SMS credit from your monthly allowance. The button is unavailable while you have unsaved changes.

What customers see

Texts arrive from your SMS sender name. Keep messages short and factual — confirmations and reminders are transactional, so customers can't unsubscribe from them the way they can from marketing.

Every default text ends with a short "No reply." marker, because replies to these texts aren't monitored — customers who need to reach you should ring or use your booking page. The default wordings are sized so each one fits a single credit at a typical venue-name length; if you customise a template, keep an eye on the credit line so your version doesn't tip into a second part.

Related: How do I set up SMS messages? · How do I edit the emails customers receive? · How do I check my usage against my plan's limits?