How do birthdays work?

The whole birthday story — capturing dates of birth, the greeting email and text, the loyalty gift, birthday promotions, and the Birthdays page that runs it all.

The Birthdays page — in the sidebar under Grow — runs the birthday story: the loyalty gift, birthday promotions, the live timeline and the birthdays-on-file count. The greeting's on/off switches, timing and treat line live with every other customer message in Settings → Customer notifications → Birthdays (the page links there). It's Available on Pro plan and above, and comes with the standalone Loyalty product too.

At the top you'll see a live timeline of what each customer's birthday looks like — for example "1 week before → Greeting email sends → Birthday offer lands in their account → 30 days after it lands → the offer expires". The greeting legs reflect your saved notification settings; the gift legs update as you edit below, before you even save. Next to the page title there's a count of how many customers have a birthday on file, and a Send me a test email button that sends a sample of your birthday email to your own address (transactional emails are unlimited on the plans and products that include birthdays, so it costs nothing).

Getting birthdays on file

Birthday features only reach customers with a date of birth saved on their profile. Dates arrive four ways:

• Staff add one on the customer's profile (Customers → open a customer → edit).
• Customers add one themselves in the customer portal, under My Profile → Edit.
• Loyalty members without a birthday see a small dismissible prompt on their portal loyalty card — "Add your birthday — there might be a treat in it" — that jumps them to the profile edit.
• The Join the loyalty scheme tick-box on your booking, event and waitlist pages reveals an optional Birthday field once ticked — filled in, it's saved to the customer's profile when they join (it never overwrites a birthday that's already on file).

The greeting (email and text)

The greeting's switches live in Settings → Customer notifications, in the Birthdays section (the page's The greeting card summarises the current state and links there with Manage notifications →).

• Birthday message (email) — sends at 9am on the day you pick under When the email sends: on their birthday, or 1/2/3 days, 1/2 weeks or 1 month before. An early timing works as a "come and celebrate with us" nudge; picking one reveals Also send again on the actual day.
• Birthday treat line (optional) — free text like "A free glass of fizz on your birthday", shown as a highlighted treat box in the email, with an optional Treat small print line.
• The SMS toggle — the text always goes on the day itself, and needs SMS set up.
• The email's subject and wording are edited in Settings → Email templates (template Birthday); the SMS wording in SMS templates.

Birthday emails only go to customers who are opted in to marketing (and haven't turned off occasion emails in their portal preferences), and they count towards your marketing email allowance.

The gift (loyalty members)

The The gift section is your loyalty scheme's birthday perk — it needs a loyalty scheme, and it's managed here (the Scheme tab on the Loyalty page shows a pointer card).

• Birthday gift — once a year, automatically, for members with a birthday on file. Choose What they get: Bonus stamps / Bonus points, or An offer from a promotion (one of your claimable promotions, saved straight to the member's account — it shows in their portal and on their wallet card, and your team redeems it in the Scanner).
• When it lands — the same timing choices as the email, from "On their birthday" to "1 month before". If a member is missed on the day (say the promotion was paused), the gift catches up for up to a week afterwards.
• Offer expires (optional, offer gifts only) — "N days after it lands". The offer stops working after that day and the date shows on the member's portal; if the promotion's own end date is earlier, the earlier date wins.

The email announces an offer gift. When the gift is an offer AND the greeting email is on, the two are timed together: the offer lands the same morning the email sends, and the email's treat box becomes "A birthday treat, on us" naming the promotion — "We've added it to your loyalty account…". The gift's own timing control shows "Lands with your greeting email" while they're linked.

Upcoming birthdays and sending a gift early

Under the timeline, the Upcoming birthdays list shows every customer with a birthday in the next 30 days, soonest first. When a gift is set up, each loyalty member's row carries the real state: Perk scheduled (with the day the automatic send fires) or Perk sent (with when it went). Customers who aren't loyalty members are labelled so you know the gift won't reach them.

Staff with the loyalty balance-adjustment permission also see a Send now button per member row:

• Not sent yet — a confirmation explains the gift goes immediately and replaces the scheduled automatic send (the automatic run skips that member for the year), then sends on your confirm.
• Already sent this year — the confirmation says so, with when, and offers a deliberate Send again (for example if the customer asked). That's an extra gift on top of the yearly one; the automatic send stays once a year regardless.

Sending is a protected action, so you may be asked to confirm your password first — or, on a shared front-of-house device, a manager who holds the balance-adjustment permission can approve it with their PIN instead (the same approval used for balance adjustments).

Next to "Send me a test email" in the page header, Preview opens the birthday email on screen — rendered by the same engine that sends it, with your branding and copy, in light or dark mode and at phone or desktop width.

Birthday promotions

The Birthday promotions section lists every promotion with a birthday trigger — its status (live / paused / scheduled / ended), its window ("±7 days around the birthday"), and whether it's mentioned in the greeting email. Editing stays in the Promotions builder — use Edit in the builder on a row, or Create a birthday promotion. See How do promo codes and automatic offers work?.

Gift vs promotion — the difference. The gift is guaranteed: it's banked to each member automatically, once a year, whether or not they visit. A birthday promotion is conditional: it only does anything if the customer actually books during its window — nothing is added to anyone's account, and customers aren't told about it; the discount or perk simply lands on the booking. Run both and a member who books during their birthday week gets both — two treats, by your setup (the page shows a note when that's the case). One special case: if the same promotion is both the gift and a birthday promotion, your per-guest limit on that promotion caps the total a member can use — the banked offer and the automatic booking discount draw on the same allowance.

Who can change what

The greeting (in Customer notifications) needs the operational-settings permission — the treat text needs the edit-templates permission, and the text (SMS) toggle is owner/admin. The gift (on the Birthdays page) needs the "Set up and edit the scheme" loyalty permission; staff without it see the section read-only.

Related: How do I send birthday messages (with an offer)? · How do I set up a loyalty scheme? · How do saved offers work? · How do I create a promotion?