SMS Messaging
Send SMS to clients, handle their replies, understand what each message costs, top up your SMS wallet, and configure automated appointment reminders — including when they send and how to word them.
SMS Messaging
Daobook sends SMS through Twilio for three things — manual messages you send from a client's profile, automated appointment reminders, and two-way conversations where you can see and reply to what a client sends back. Everything comes out of your SMS Wallet, which you top up with credit like a prepaid phone plan.
This tutorial covers the whole surface — sending, replies, notifications, costs, top-ups, automated reminders, templates, and opt-outs.
Step 1: Send an SMS to a Client
Open a client's profile and find the Contact Information section. If the client has a mobile number on file, you'll see an SMS button next to it.
Click SMS. A conversation modal opens with any previous SMS history with that client and a compose box at the bottom.
As you type, a live character counter and Estimated cost update below the compose box. Press Enter or click Send to fire the message — it goes out within a few seconds.
If a client doesn't have a mobile number saved, the SMS button won't appear. Add a mobile number to their profile first.
Step 2: Receiving Replies
Replies land straight back in the same conversation view — inbound on the left, outbound on the right. If you have the SMS modal open, it polls every few seconds and new replies appear live without refreshing the page.
The dashboard also shows a Recent Conversations summary. Unread replies get an amber highlight and a badge, so you can see at a glance which clients are waiting on you.
Step 3: Get Emailed When a Client Replies
Most practitioners want to know about a reply without having to keep the app open. Go to Settings → My Notifications and find the Incoming SMS replies option.
It's on by default. When a client replies, you'll get an email with the message content. The same reply also goes to the clinic's main email and any receptionists who have the same setting turned on — no one misses it.
The email looks like this:
Clicking Reply in Daobook takes you straight to that client's profile with the SMS modal already open on their conversation — no hunting for the client, no extra clicks, compose box ready to go. Handy when you're triaging replies on the go.
If the modal and dashboard are enough for you, turn the email off here.
Step 4: What an SMS Costs
Each SMS costs $0.10 AUD. That covers one standard-length message — up to 160 characters of regular English text.
A few things to know:
- Messages over 160 characters split into multiple segments, each charged at $0.10. So a 180-character message costs $0.20 ($0.10 × 2).
- Emoji and special characters (accented letters, curly quotes, some symbols) switch the message into Unicode encoding, which drops the per-segment limit to 70 characters. A single emoji in a 100-character message can double the cost.
- Inbound replies from clients are free — you only pay for what you send out.
- Rough rule: $10 = around 100 standard messages.
The compose box shows the estimated cost live as you type, so you can see the impact before sending.
Step 5: Top Up Your SMS Wallet
Go to Settings → Billing & Payments → SMS Wallet.
Enter an amount in the Top-up Amount field (minimum $10) and click Add Credit. The charge goes to your saved default card — the same one your Daobook subscription uses. A receipt emails to you automatically.
Your current balance is shown at the top of the page. If it falls below $10 you'll see a low-balance badge.
Step 6: Auto Top-Up
To avoid ever running out mid-workday, enable auto top-up on the same page.
Set a threshold (e.g. top up when balance falls below $10) and an amount to add each time. When you next try to send an SMS and you're below the threshold, Daobook silently tops up the wallet before the message goes out — no interruption to you or to automated reminders.
Step 7: Sharing SMS Credits Across a Clinic Team
If you're the clinic owner and have other practitioners in your clinic, the SMS Wallet page shows an SMS Credit Sharing section with two options:
- All team members use your wallet — every SMS anyone in the clinic sends (manual or automated) comes out of your balance. Team members see a read-only wallet view and don't need to top up themselves.
- Everyone uses their own SMS wallet — each practitioner tops up and pays for their own SMS.
Pick the one that matches how you handle team costs. Most owner-led clinics choose the first option for simplicity.
Step 8: Automated Appointment Reminders
This is where SMS earns its keep — sending reminders on your behalf so clients don't forget their appointments.
Go to Settings → Client Communications, then the Reminder Timing panel.
Tick any combination of:
- 24 hours before — one day before the appointment
- 48 hours before — two days before
- 7 days before — one week before
In the Notification Channels table further down, make sure the Reminders row has SMS ticked. Both the timing box and the channel tick need to be on for an SMS reminder to fire (email reminders are a separate tick in the same row).
Reminders only send between 9 AM and 6 PM in the practitioner's timezone — a 24-hour reminder for a 7 AM appointment won't fire at 7 AM the day before, it'll fire once the 9 AM window opens. No one gets woken up by a reminder.
If your SMS wallet is empty when a reminder is due, the SMS is skipped silently. The email reminder still goes out if email reminders are on, so your client isn't left hanging.
Step 9: Customise the Reminder SMS
In the same Client Communications page, scroll to Reminder Templates.
Edit the SMS Reminder Template text. To add a dynamic value (client name, appointment time, etc.), click the Insert Variable button below the editor. A menu opens grouped by:
- Client — Client First Name, Client Full Name
- Practitioner — Practitioner First Name, Practitioner Name
- Appointment — Time, Day, Date, Time Until, Appointment Type
- Clinic — Clinic Name, Clinic Address, Clinic Phone, Clinic Email
Clicking one drops a green pill into the editor at your cursor. Each pill is a single placeholder — you can click to select it, drag it around, or delete it like a character. At send time, each pill is replaced with the live value for that appointment.
Time Until is worth highlighting — it renders as tomorrow, in 2 days, etc. based on when the reminder fires, so the same template reads naturally for 24-hour, 48-hour, and 7-day reminders alike.
Keep the final interpolated message under 160 characters to stay in a single segment ($0.10). Every segment over 160 adds another $0.10.
Per-appointment-type overrides. If a specific appointment type needs different reminder wording, open that appointment type in Settings and set its own SMS Reminder Template — it takes priority over the clinic default for appointments of that type.
Use the Preview & Test Templates panel at the bottom of the page to see the final text with sample data, and send yourself a test SMS before you trust it with a whole week of appointments.
Step 10: Opt-Outs and the STOP Keyword
Daobook honours the standard SMS opt-out keywords. If a client replies with any of these as the entire message (case-insensitive), they're unsubscribed from SMS:
STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, OPTOUT, REVOKE
When one of these arrives, Daobook:
- Turns off SMS reminders on their client record
- Replies with: "You have been unsubscribed from SMS notifications. Reply START to resubscribe."
The match is whole-message only — sending "I'll stop by tomorrow at 2pm" will not trigger the opt-out. The client has to reply with just the keyword.
Once opted out, both automated reminders and manual SMS you try to send will be blocked — Twilio (the carrier layer) blocks opted-out numbers regardless, so Daobook matches that by refusing the send up front with a clear message in the SMS modal instead of letting it fail silently.
Re-subscribing
If a client later wants to resume SMS, they can text any of these back as a whole message: START, UNSTOP, or YES. Daobook re-enables their SMS preference and replies with a confirmation.
You can also re-tick SMS under Communication Preferences on their client profile, but if they'd previously texted a real STOP keyword, Twilio still blocks their number at the carrier level until they text START. The profile shows a warning when you re-tick the box explaining this — ask the client to text START to a past SMS from you, and the block lifts.
Step 11: Delivery Status and History
Inside the SMS modal, a red badge appears next to any message that failed or wasn't delivered (wrong number, phone turned off for too long, carrier block). Successful messages have no badge — keeps the conversation clean.
For the full audit trail:
- Client's Comms tab — every SMS (and email) you've ever exchanged with that client, date-grouped.
- SMS Wallet → Transaction History — the money side: an SMS usage view with monthly totals, plus a top-up receipts view for your accountant.
Step 12: Pausing All Client Notifications
At the top of Client Communications there's a Pause all client notifications toggle. Flip it on to temporarily freeze every automated SMS and email to clients — reminders, confirmations, cancellations, the lot.
The main use case is during a migration from another booking system: you want your new Daobook appointments loaded but you don't want clients to get a second reminder from Daobook when the other system is also still sending. Turn it on during the cutover, turn it off once you're fully on Daobook.
Tips
- The 160-character limit is the one to memorise. A single accidental emoji switches the whole message to Unicode and can double the cost.
- Always use Preview & Test Templates after editing a template — placeholder typos are silent failures (the placeholder text just appears literally in the SMS).
- Inbound replies are free. If your clients are chatty, that's fine for your bill; what matters is that you see and respond to them.