Lupa's default reminder settings control the automatic notifications clients receive around their appointments — confirmation emails when they book, reminders in the days leading up, and optional follow-up messages afterwards. These settings apply to all appointments booked through your store and can be customised per reminder step with different timing, channels (email, SMS, WhatsApp), and message content.

💡 In short: Configure when and how clients are automatically notified about upcoming appointments — set the timing, choose the channels, and customise the email and SMS templates from Settings > Default Reminders.

At the top of the page, the Appointments toggle controls whether any automatic appointment reminders are sent. When turned off, no confirmation, reminder, or follow-up messages will be sent for appointments at this store.

When appointment reminders are enabled, you can configure four separate notification steps, each with its own timing, channels, and message templates:

Each step can be independently enabled or disabled using the toggle next to its name in the sidebar.

For Reminder 1, Reminder 2, and Follow-up, you can customise when the notification is sent:

💡 Reminder 2 must be set to fewer days before than Reminder 1. For example, if Reminder 1 is 7 days before, Reminder 2 must be 6 or fewer days before.

For each reminder step, you can choose which channels to use:

Each reminder step has its own email template. Select a reminder step from the sidebar, then use the Email tab to edit:

Click Insert Placeholder to browse and insert available placeholders.

Toggle Live Preview to see the email rendered with sample data before saving.

💡 For the Confirmation step, if the appointment has matching pre-appointment instructions, a "View Pre-Appointment Instructions" button is automatically added to the email — you don't need to include this in your template.

Select a reminder step and click the SMS tab to edit the text message:

⚠️ Keep SMS messages under 160 characters when placeholders are expanded. The character counter shows the raw template length, but the actual message may be longer once placeholders like {{pet_name}} are replaced with real values. If the resulting message goes over the limit we will split it into 2 messages, so clients will still receive the information.

If WhatsApp Business integration is connected, select a reminder step and click the WhatsApp tab to choose a template:

📍 WhatsApp templates are created and approved in Meta's WhatsApp Business Manager, not in Lupa. If you need a new template, your practice's WhatsApp administrator will need to create and submit it for approval in Meta's platform.

After making changes, a "You have unsaved changes" banner appears at the bottom of the page with a Save button. Click Save to apply your changes. If you navigate away without saving, you will be prompted to confirm.

Before saving, Lupa checks that every enabled reminder's templates only use placeholders it can fill in for appointment reminders. If a template contains an unsupported placeholder, an alert highlights the affected reminder and the save is blocked until you fix it. Similarly, if an SMS message would exceed 140 characters once placeholders are expanded, saving is blocked — use Live Preview to check the expanded length before saving.

Changes take effect immediately after saving — the next appointment notifications will use the updated settings.

✅ Best practices for appointment reminders: