So you want to send your patients details about that appointment they've booked—great! Cliniko will allow you to send unique appointment reminders and confirmation emails for all of your different appointment types.

We do offer more in-depth tutorials on each item:

In this article, though, we'll give you the basic run-down of how it all works. There are two main components of how confirmations and reminders work. You'll need to:

First things first, you'll want to create your templates. These are going to be the main structure of your reminders and confirmations.

You'll have the ability to set up templates in Settings, and then Appointment confirmations or Appointment reminders:

Depending on which one you choose, you'll be able to select a new confirmation template:

Or a new reminder template (email or SMS):

The main difference to note is that appointment confirmations are only email, and will be sent a couple of minutes after an appointment is booked. Appointment reminders can be email or SMS, and will be sent up to one day before the appointment occurs.

Your appointment confirmation template will look something like this:

You'll be able to customise all the text to your clinic's needs, and we recommend making use of placeholders to ensure that all appointment-related information populates the confirmation correctly!

You'll also be able to see a full list of all your confirmation templates in your appointment confirmation settings:

Appointment confirmations are discussed more in-depth here.

One of the most important things to note with the reminder templates is going to be the reminder period and reminder time:

The reminder period specifies when the reminder should go out—such as 1 day prior to the appointment. Reminders can be sent anywhere from 1-9 days before the appointment takes place.

The reminder time specifies at what time of day the reminder will be sent—such as between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.

After setting the period and time, you'll then be able to edit the actual content of the reminder.

Email reminders will look almost exactly like appointment confirmations:

SMS reminders will be a bit different—they're generally going to be a lot shorter than email reminders:

Again, we recommend making use of placeholders to ensure that the reminders accurately pull in the relevant appointment information.

You'll be able to see a full list of all your reminder templates in your appointment reminder settings:
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You can learn how to set up email reminders here, and SMS reminders here.

So you've set up your templates—awesome! 🙌 The next step is going to be to link those templates to your appointment types.

Head to Settings, and then Appointment types:

Select the appointment that you want to link your templates to.

When in the appointment type settings, you'll see different areas where you can select to add a reminder email, a reminder SMS, or a confirmation email:

Select any of those menus, and you'll be able to choose which template you want to link to the appointment type:

There are a few things to remember here!

All of these things are discussed more in-depth in additional tutorials:

If you have any questions on anything, though, our support team is here to help! 🤗