SMS notifications send appointment reminders and confirmations to clients automatically, helping reduce no-shows and ease admin for your team. They run on a prepaid credit system: you buy credits in advance, and messages keep sending as long as you have a balance.
In this guide, we'll explain how SMS notifications work, how pricing and credits are calculated, and how to recharge credits manually or set up automatic recharge.
How SMS notifications work
splose's SMS notifications are available to all workspaces and send appointment reminders and confirmations to patients automatically once set up. Messages are sent from a shared splose number, and clients are not able to reply.
If you want access to conversational messaging, which allows customers to respond, you can enable two-way SMS messaging. See how to use it here.
SMS notifications operate on a prepaid credit system. Credits must be purchased in advance and are charged per message segment. Longer messages may span multiple segments, increasing the cost, so it's best to keep message content concise.
Note: if you are on a trial in splose, you have 25 free SMS credits to use during the trial period. If you hit this limit you can purchase additional credits by following the steps outlined in the 'recharge SMS credits' section below.
You'll be automatically reminded when your credit balance is low and SMS notifications will automatically stop sending when your credits are exhausted.
A 'low', 'critical' or 'run out' balance warning will also show next to 'SMS settings' in the sidebar of your workspace settings.
You can set up an automatic credit recharge to prevent SMS notifications from not sending when your credits get low.
You can view a full history of outbound messages, including delivered, queued, and failed statuses, from the communications page in your workspace.
SMS pricing
Credits are purchased in advance and cost A$0.10 + GST per credit. Outbound SMS messages cost one credit per segment. SMS credits purchased get billed to the credit card attached to your splose account. Receipts will appear in your billing history.
Important: A standard SMS message contains 160 characters per segment. If a message has more than 160 characters, the message is split into segments, each consisting of 153 characters.
SMS messages which include special characters such as emojis require a different type of SMS. These messages are able to contain up to 70 characters (Messages with special characters longer than 70 characters are split into 67 character segments).
How to
Recharge SMS credits
Credits are purchased in advance and cost A$0.10 + GST per credit.
To purchase SMS credits:
Go to Settings, then SMS
You'll see your SMS credits balance and settings
Under Recharge credits, select the amount of credits you wish to buy and click Recharge
Set up Automatic recharge
Enable automatic recharging of SMS credits when the balance drops to a specific number.
To set this up:
Simply, tick the box next to Automatic recharge
Then specify the credit balance you'd like the automatic recharge to be triggered at
Finally, enter the amount of SMS credits to be purchased
When ready, click Save
Frequently Asked Questions
Can appointment reminders go to more than one phone number?
Can appointment reminders go to more than one phone number?
Yes. Add the additional number to the client's profile as a secondary contact number and enable SMS notifications for it. Reminders and confirmations will then send to both numbers. If a second number isn't receiving messages, check that it's saved in the client's contact details and that SMS is switched on for that contact.