Practice Better allows you to send SMS reminders to clients to help reduce no-shows and improve appointment adherence.
Depending on your plan, you may be limited in the number of messages you can send each month.
- Professional Plan and up: You can purchase credits to enable SMS or add to your monthly limit.
- Plus Plan: Includes up to 750 SMS reminders/month.
- Team Plan: Includes 2000 SMS reminders/month per practitioner.
Enabling SMS Reminders
- Go to My Schedule > Booking & Cancellation Settings.
- Click the checkbox to enable Session Notifications.
- Optionally, Enable confirmation and reminder notifications for uninvited clients.
By default, confirmation and reminder notifications are not sent to uninvited clients. Enabling this option will pre-select the "Send confirmation and reminder notifications" checkbox when scheduling sessions.
- Configure your session reminder settings to include an SMS reminder.
- Click Done on the pop-up and then Save Changes near the top right.
- You can either Add another to include an additional reminder cadence (Professional plan and up), or Edit to update your reminder settings.
- Changes to your session reminders will be reflected for newly booked or updated sessions.
Customizing SMS Notifications
You can customize client-facing notifications on the following plans:
- Professional
- Plus
- Team
This includes SMS messages for:
- Upcoming Session Reminders
- Invitation to Book Notifications
Learn more about how to customize SMS alerts in your notification settings.
Supported Countries for SMS Reminders
Practice Better currently supports SMS reminders for mobile numbers in the following countries:
- Australia
- Canada
- France
- Greece
- India
- Ireland
- New Zealand
- Portugal
- Puerto Rico
- Spain
- United Kingdom
- United States
Reach out to our support if you're looking for SMS support in a country not listed.
Formatting Client Phone Numbers
To ensure proper delivery, client phone numbers must be formatted correctly depending on their profile settings.
National Format
Use the national format (without the country code) only if the client’s Country field is populated in their Basic Information > Mailing Address.
International Format
Use international format if the client’s Country field is not populated.
New Zealand
Include the (64) country code to send SMS reminders to New Zealand mobile phones.
For example, 02 160 0909 becomes 64 021 600 909 or +64 2160 0909.
Australia
Include the (61) country code to send SMS reminders to Australian mobile phones.
For example, 0411 234 567 becomes 61 0411 234 567 or +61 411 234 567.
India
Include the (91) country code and 10-digit phone number to send SMS reminders to Indian mobile phones, e.g. 91 8234 123456.
How Clients Can Opt In or Out of SMS Reminders
Clients can opt out of receiving SMS reminders by replying with any of the following one-word replies:
- STOP
- UNSUBSCRIBE
- CANCEL
Clients can opt-in again by replying with "Start" to the same number they received the SMS from.