Appointment Reminders, Confirmations & Cancellations

Daobook can do more than just remind your clients about an appointment — it can let them reply to that reminder to confirm or cancel, and update your calendar automatically. This tutorial covers the whole picture: what Daobook sends, when it sends it, and how to turn on the two-way replies.

Everything here lives in one place: Settings → Communications → Client Communications (labelled Patient Communications if that's your terminology setting).

Two companion tutorials go deeper on the parts this one only touches on:

SMS Messaging — the SMS wallet, per-message costs, top-ups, and the STOP opt-out keywords.
Customising Notification Templates — rewording any of these messages and setting per-appointment-type overrides.

What Daobook Sends, and How Clients Can Reply

There are two kinds of client notification:

Automatic messages Daobook sends — appointment reminders, booking confirmations, and cancellation notices.
Two-way replies your clients can send back — replying YES to confirm, or NO to cancel. These only work over SMS, and only when you've switched them on.

Both live in the Notification Channels grid near the top of the Client Communications page.

The Notification Channels grid showing rows for Reminders, Booking Confirmations, Ask Clients to Confirm, Allow Clients to Cancel by Replying NO, and Cancellations, each with SMS and Email checkboxes

Row	SMS	Email	What it does
Reminders	✓	✓	A reminder before the appointment
Booking Confirmations	✓	✓	Sent when an appointment is booked (online or by staff)
Ask Clients to Confirm	✓	—	Adds "Reply YES to confirm." to SMS reminders
Allow Clients to Cancel by Replying NO	✓	—	Adds "Reply NO to cancel." to SMS reminders
Cancellations	—	✓	A notice sent when an appointment is cancelled

Step 1: Turn On Appointment Reminders

The two-way replies are added to your SMS reminders, so reminders need to be running first.

In the Reminder Timing panel, tick when you'd like reminders to go out — you can pick any combination:

24 hours before the appointment
48 hours before
7 days before

Then, in the Notification Channels grid, make sure the Reminders row has SMS ticked.

Reminders only send between 9 AM and 6 PM in the practitioner's timezone, so an early-morning appointment's reminder waits until business hours rather than texting your client at dawn. For SMS costs and topping up your wallet, see the SMS Messaging tutorial.

Step 2: Let Clients Confirm by Replying YES

Confirmations tell you a client is definitely coming — useful for spotting no-shows before they happen.

In the Notification Channels grid, tick SMS on the Ask Clients to Confirm row. This appends "Reply YES to confirm." to your SMS reminders.

When a client replies, Daobook acts on the reply automatically:

The reply must be the whole message — YES, Y, or CONFIRM (any capitalisation). Free text like "yes please, see you then" won't trigger it, so nobody is confirmed by accident.
Their appointment is marked confirmed on your calendar.
The client gets a short acknowledgement back: "Thanks Sarah — your appointment on Tuesday 12 August at 2:00 PM is confirmed. See you then."
The practitioner gets a notification: "✅ Sarah Chen confirmed their appointment on Tuesday, August 12 at 2:00 PM."

A repeat YES on an already-confirmed appointment does nothing — no double-charge, no duplicate notification.

Booking Confirmations vs. Ask Clients to Confirm. These sound similar but do different jobs. Booking Confirmations is the message Daobook sends the moment an appointment is booked ("You're booked in for…"). Ask Clients to Confirm is the reply prompt on the reminder that lets the client confirm they're coming. You can use either, both, or neither.

Step 3: Let Clients Cancel by Replying NO

This lets a client cancel from the reminder text without phoning, while still giving you control over last-minute cancellations.

Tick SMS on the Allow Clients to Cancel by Replying NO row. This appends "Reply NO to cancel." to your SMS reminders, and reveals two policy settings.

The Allow Clients to Cancel by Replying NO row expanded to show a Minimum notice required dropdown and two radio options for what happens inside the notice window

Minimum notice required

This is the least notice a client must give to cancel themselves by text. Set it to 12 hours and a NO sent more than 12 hours before the appointment cancels cleanly and frees the slot — while a NO any later than that counts as a last-minute cancellation, handled by the setting below. The options are No minimum, 12 hours, 24 hours, or 48 hours; choose No minimum to let a NO cancel at any time, right up to the appointment.

What happens inside the notice window

Pick what a NO does when it lands inside your minimum-notice window — i.e. a genuine last-minute cancellation:

Ask them to call the clinic — the appointment stays booked, and the client is asked to phone you. Your staff are notified of the attempt so you know to expect the call.
Accept it as a late cancellation — the appointment is marked as a late cancellation. It deliberately stays on your calendar and the time remains unavailable for online bookings (a last-minute slot usually can't be refilled online), and your cancellation policy may apply. Staff can free the slot manually if they find a taker.

What the client experiences

The reply must be the whole message — NO or N (any capitalisation).
When the appointment is cancelled, they get a confirmation: "Hi Sarah, your appointment on Tuesday 12 August at 2:00 PM has been cancelled. If this was a mistake, call us on 03 9000 0000." If your clinic has online bookings switched on, a rebook link is included so they can grab a new time.
If they're inside the notice window and you chose Ask them to call, they're told to phone instead, and the appointment stays booked.

What your team sees

Every NO — whether it cancels, is asked to call, or can't be cancelled — notifies the appointment's practitioner, your active receptionists, and the clinic email address (both in-app and by email). When a cancellation actually frees a slot, the notification also tells you how many clients on your waiting list might want it.

An in-app staff notification reading Client Cancelled by SMS, showing that the client cancelled their appointment by replying NO to their reminder

When a NO can't cancel automatically

If an appointment has been paid for (for example a prepaid or deposit-paid booking), a NO won't cancel it automatically — the client is asked to call the clinic so you can handle any refund. A repeat NO after a successful cancellation is ignored, so nobody gets a second charge or a confusing double message.

Step 4: Why "NO" and not "CANCEL"

You might expect the cancel word to be "CANCEL" — but CANCEL is a carrier-level opt-out keyword. Like STOP and UNSUBSCRIBE, a client texting "CANCEL" is unsubscribed from all SMS by their phone carrier before Daobook ever sees it. That's why the cancel reply is NO (or N) instead.

As with confirmations, the match is whole-message only — "no worries, see you then" won't cancel anything. The client has to reply with just NO.

For the full list of opt-out keywords (STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, and friends) and how re-subscribing works, see the SMS Messaging tutorial.

Step 5: Save and Test

Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

To try it end to end, use the Preview & Test Templates panel to send yourself a test SMS reminder, then reply YES or NO from your phone and watch the appointment update on your calendar. (Testing against a real appointment on your own mobile number is the surest way to see the whole loop.)

Tips:

The two-way replies ride on your SMS reminders — if the Reminders row doesn't have SMS ticked, there's nothing for the client to reply to.
Ask Clients to Confirm and Allow Clients to Cancel can both be on at once; the reminder then invites "Reply YES to confirm or NO to cancel."
Use Accept it as a late cancellation if you charge a late-cancellation fee — the slot stays on the calendar as a record, and your policy applies.