Creating an Automation
Pick a ready-made recipe, then set the business, channel, timing, approval, and message for a new automation.
From Settings > Automations, the New automation button opens a popup that walks you through it in two steps: first you choose what to automate, then you fill in the details.
Step 1: Choose What to Automate
The first screen shows a set of ready-made recipes. Picking one fills in sensible defaults — the trigger, a suitable channel, a starting message, and a timing that makes sense for that job — so you only need to adjust the wording and a few numbers.
- Remind a customer before a job is due: emails or texts the customer a set number of days ahead of their appointment. Starts at 7 days before, at 9am.
- Message a customer when a job is completed: sends a thank-you or follow-up once you mark the job complete.
- Message a customer when a job is missed: lets the customer know as soon as you mark a job missed, including the reason you picked. It runs the moment the job is marked, so you do not have to submit the worksheet first.
- Send each new invoice to the customer: emails a customer their invoice as soon as it is made, such as when a worksheet is submitted, with the invoice attached as a PDF. It runs automatically. An invoice you have already emailed is not sent again, and customers set to Don’t send invoices automatically are left out.
- Chase an unpaid invoice: reminds a customer once an invoice has been unpaid for a number of days. Set to wait for your approval by default. Cancelled customers and invoices brought in by an import are left out.
- Thank a customer for a payment: emails or texts a customer each time they pay, whether on a worksheet once it is submitted, by hand, by card or a pay link, or by Direct Debit once GoCardless pays it out. It runs automatically. Its email starts as your Payment thank-you email template, with your logo, the payment’s details and your contact details. Everything a customer pays on one worksheet comes as one message, with any tip they paid, and payments from before you set it up are never thanked for.
- Chase an aged debt: messages a customer when their outstanding balance is older than a number of days. Also waits for your approval. Only current customers are chased, as the Debts screen shows by default.
- Charge a GoCardless customer when a job is completed: collects what the customer owes through GoCardless once the job is done. Needs GoCardless connected and waits for your approval.
- Notify a user when a worksheet is assigned to them: emails the team member a worksheet has just been assigned to.
There is also an Advanced option if none of the recipes fit and you want to build the automation from scratch. That path is covered in its own article.
Step 2: Fill in the Details
After you pick a recipe, the form opens with everything pre-filled. Work through it top to bottom and change what you need.
- Business: when your account has more than one business, a Business tab appears while creating so you can choose which one this automation belongs to. Choose carefully — the business is locked in once the automation is created and cannot be moved later.
- Name: a label for your own reference, such as "7-day job reminder". This is what you will see in the list.
- Send via: how the message goes out. Alongside Email and SMS you can pick "All available" to send both, or a "first available" option that tries one channel and falls back to the other depending on the contact details you hold for the customer. "First available" tries the customer’s preferred way first if they have one, and no automation emails or texts a customer who has asked not to be contacted that way.
- Run when the job is marked: shown for the "marked complete or missed" trigger. Choose whether it should run for both outcomes, only completed jobs, or only missed ones. Most people set up a separate automation for each, because the wording is so different.
- Leave out invoices already paid in full: shown for the "invoice is created" trigger, and ticked to start with, so a job paid for on the day doesn’t get an invoice emailed after it. Untick it to send every new invoice.
- Timing: reminders before a job ask how many days ahead to send; chasing automations ask how many days after the invoice or debt to act. You can also set an optional time of day so messages go out at a tidy hour rather than whenever the check happens to run.
- When this triggers: choose "Run automatically" to send as soon as it matches, or "Require my approval first" to hold it in the approvals list until you accept it.
- Email and Text: shown when the automation messages customers. Choose one of your email or text templates to send, or Write it here to write the wording in the automation. An invoice automation can also use your invoice templates, such as Invoice email, and a payment one your Payment thank-you email. A template is filled in for each customer as it is when you send it yourself, and changing the template in Settings, Document Templates changes what the automation sends. If the template is deleted, the automation goes back to its own wording.
- Email subject: shown when the automation can send email and the email is written here. This is the subject line the customer sees.
- Message: the body of the email or text, when it is written here. Write it as you would to the customer. If the email uses a template and the text does not, or the other way round, this is the wording for the one written here.
Personalising the Message
Below the message you will see a row of insertable variables. Click one to drop it into the message, and Work Planner swaps it for the real value when it sends. For example {first_name} becomes the customer's first name and {due_date} becomes the job date. {today} and {tomorrow} are the day the message is sent and the day after, such as Saturday 17th October, and days can be added with a plus, such as {today+2}.
- Customer details: first name, last name, full name, and company.
- Job details: service name, job reference, due date, and next due date.
- Marked jobs: on the "marked complete or missed" trigger you also get whether the job was marked Complete or Missed, the reason it was missed, and the date you marked it.
- Money: the customer's balance and the amount owed, which only count a worksheet once it is submitted. For a message sent as soon as a job is marked, use Customer balance with unsubmitted worksheets to give them their new balance: their balance, less each job marked complete on a worksheet that hasn’t been submitted yet, plus anything paid on one. Like the balance, it is negative when they owe. To ask them to pay, use Amount owed with unsubmitted worksheets, which is never negative and shows nothing owed when they are in credit.
- Invoice details: on the invoice triggers, the invoice reference, date, due date and total, what is left to pay, and its Pay now link when you add those to your invoices.
- Payment details: on the "customer pays" trigger, how much they paid, how they paid, and the date they paid. When one payment covers several jobs, the job details are left blank.
- Your business: your business name, handy for signing off.
Charges Are a Little Different
The GoCardless charge recipe has no message channel because it collects money rather than sending a message. Instead of a subject and body you set a Payment description, which is what shows against the payment. The customer must have an active Direct Debit mandate set up through GoCardless — if they do not, the charge is quietly skipped rather than failing.
Charges start on Require my approval first, so each one waits in your approvals until you accept it. The GoCardless charge recipe is set up that way, and choosing Charge via GoCardless as the action in an advanced automation switches When this triggers to it as well. You can still change it to Run automatically once you are happy with it.
Saving
Give the automation a name before saving, or you will be prompted for one. Once saved it appears in the list straight away, ready to run. Remember it only looks forward from the moment you create it, so it will not act on jobs or invoices that already matched in the past.
Related articles
- Automations: the list screen where your saved automations live, and how the engine runs them.
- Advanced Automations and Conditions: build a custom automation and narrow exactly when it fires.
- Automation Approvals: what happens to automations set to require your approval.
- Email Settings: how your emails are sent and branded.
- SMS Settings: what you need in place for text messages to send.