Customizing appointment reminder templates

You can customize the email, text, and voice messages sent to your clients for appointment reminders. To learn more about customizing telehealth reminders, see Using telehealth appointment reminders.

Note: For group practices, reminder settings are set practice-wide. Only Account Owners, practice managers, and clinicians with entire practice access can edit reminders. For more on team member roles, see Clinician roles available for team members and Administrative roles available for team members.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• Customizing email reminders
• Customizing text reminders
• Customizing voice reminders

Important: Trial customers can't customize templates for email, voice, and text reminders without a credit card on file. You can add a payment method at Settings > Practice > Plan info.

Customizing email reminders

Email appointment reminders can be customized with the specific message you’d like to send to your clients. To customize email reminders:

1. Navigate to Settings > Client notifications > Email.
2. Scroll down to Reminder emails.
   • Check that the toggle for reminders is on.
   • Select whether you want email reminders sent 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours, or 72 hours before an appointment.
3. Click the pencil icon next to a reminder type.

4. Type in your custom message in the Message field.

5. You can include macros to automatically populate information into the message from your practice settings and appointment details by:
   • Placing your cursor where you want to add the macro.
   • Selecting a specific field from the dropdown options.
     • For example, anywhere you add the {client_first_name} macro from the Client drop down, the client's first name will appear in the message so that the reminder is tailored to the individual client.

6. Click Save.

Note: To learn more about using macros, see Explaining client email and reminder macros.

To customize email reminders sent to contacts of clients or couple clients:

1. Navigate to Settings > Client notifications > Email.
2. Select Contact and couple emails.

3. Click the pencil icon next to a reminder type, and repeat the above steps to customize the reminder content.

Important: Appointment reminder emails are sent to clients from yourprovider@simplepractice.com, which is a no-reply address. If a client responds to these emails, you won’t be notified. They'll receive an autoresponder email asking them to reach out to you directly. You can customize your reminder email message to include a note about reaching out to you via phone or email for questions or concerns.

Customizing text reminders

The text reminder template makes customizing your messages simple, while populating the necessary appointment details.

Note: For group practices, the text reminders are set practice-wide. Only Account Owners, practice managers, and clinicians with entire practice access can edit the template. At this time, only the practice phone number can be included in the reminder.

Appointment reminder texts

To customize appointment text reminders:

1. Navigate to Settings > Client notifications > Text.
   • Enable text reminders by switching the toggle on.
   • Select whether you want text reminders sent 24 hours, 48 hours, or 72 hours before an appointment.
2. Begin typing your custom message in the Customize text reminder field.

Note: Each message can be up to 500 characters long.

3. Click Add information and choose information you’d like to auto-populate.

You can choose to add:

• Appointment date
• Appointment time
• Client first name
• Client full name
• Client first name formatted
  • This will add ‘s to the client’s name. For example, “Jamie’s appointment”.
• Client full name formatted
• Clinician full name
• Location
• Practice name
• Practice phone

4. You can also click Add confirm / cancel link to add links that allow clients to confirm or cancel their appointment.

5. You’ll see a preview of your customized message on the right.

Important: Text appointment reminders are sent to clients from an unmonitored, no-reply number. While clients have the option to confirm or cancel through text reminders, you won’t be notified if a client responds directly to these texts with other information. We encourage you to customize your text reminder message to include a note about reaching out to you directly via phone or email for questions or concerns.

Document reminder texts

You can set up a text reminder for clients to complete documents sent to them in the Client Portal. To customize this reminder:

1. Navigate to Settings > Client notifications > Text.
2. Select the Document reminders tab.

3. Repeat the steps above to customize the reminder content.
4. A link to sign into the Client Portal will be included by default, but you can click Add client portal link to add the link back if it’s deleted.

Cancellation message texts

You can set up and customize cancellation messages through text to notify clients when an appointment has been cancelled. To do this:

1. Navigate to Settings > Client notifications > Text.
2. Select the Cancellation message tab.

3. Click Add information and choose the information you’d like to auto-populate.

Note: You can also update the message sent when an appointment series is cancelled by clicking Cancellation of a series.

Customizing voice reminders

Voice reminders will call the client’s phone number with an automated voice message speaking the contents of your customized voice message. If the client doesn't answer, a voicemail will be left for them.

To customize voice reminders:

1. Navigate to Settings > Client notifications > Voice.
   • Check that the toggle for reminders is on.
   • Select whether you want voice reminders sent 24 hours, 48 hours, or 72 hours before an appointment.
2. Click Edit.

3. Type in your custom message in the Message field.

4. You can include macros to automatically populate information into the message from your practice settings and appointment details by:
   • Placing your cursor where you want to add the macro.
   • Selecting a specific field from the dropdown options.

5. Click Save.

Note: You can also customize cancellation voice reminders by clicking Edit next to Cancellation message.

To customize voice reminders sent to contacts of clients or couple clients:

1. Select Contact and couple message.
2. Click Edit, and repeat the steps above to customize the reminder content.