Send appointment confirmations and reminders

Dispatch Bros covers the whole appointment conversation with three built-in automations: a job confirmation that texts the customer the moment a job is booked, and two appointment reminders (typically 24 hours and 2 hours before the visit). All three live in Automations → Workflows — flip the toggle to turn each on, and click Configure to change the wording and timing.

Before you start

• Jobs need a scheduled date (and a time, for time-anchored reminders) — reminders for jobs without one are skipped, not guessed.
• You need an SMS-ready sender number (SMS status).
• Reminder texts respect quiet hours (how quiet hours work).

Step 1 — Turn on the job confirmation

1. Open Automations → Workflows and find the job confirmation card — its trigger is "When a new job is created".
2. Click Configure and edit the Message Template. The most useful placeholders here are {first_name}, {company_name}, {date}, {time_frame}, and {tech_name} (all placeholders).
3. Under Send Timing, keep Send immediately or set a short delay.
4. Press Save Changes and flip the toggle on — the card shows the Active badge.

Step 2 — Turn on the reminders

Repeat the same steps for the two reminder cards. Each has two timing styles, chosen in the Reminder Timing panel:

• Relative to the appointment — use the Send Timing control: a number, a unit, and before appointment (for example 24 hours before, or 2 hours before).
• Day before at a fixed clock time — pick a time like 6:00 PM. Each customer gets the reminder at that time on their clock: the time zone is resolved from the job's service address first, then the customer's phone area code, then your company time zone. A customer in Massachusetts and one in Los Angeles both get it at 6:00 PM local.

Step 3 — Optional: resend if the customer doesn't confirm

Both reminders (and the confirmation) support the Resend if no response section — check "Send a reminder if the customer doesn't respond" and set the cadence and maximum. The chain stops the moment the customer replies or texts STOP, and quiet hours still apply to every reminder. Details: quiet hours and resend.

What your customer sees

A normal text from your business number — for example "Hi Sarah, this is a reminder about your appointment on Wednesday, March 26 between 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM." If Stop on Reply is on, a customer who texts back a question cancels any queued follow-ups so a human can take over the thread.

Troubleshooting

Check the Runs tab — the Reason column names the exact cause:

• "Job has no scheduled date" / "Job has no scheduled time" — the reminder can't anchor to anything. Add the date/time on the job (reschedule a job).
• "Appointment time already passed" — the job was created or rescheduled inside the reminder window, so sending it would have been nonsense. This is expected for same-day bookings and a 24-hour reminder.
• "Deferred (quiet hours)" — the reminder was rescheduled to after the quiet window, not dropped.
• "Customer opted out" — the customer texted STOP; nothing sends.
• The confirmation never sends at all — check the card's toggle. The workflow is the single switch: when it's off, no confirmation SMS goes out anywhere in the app.