Set up auto reminders — appointments, payments, renewals, birthdays, follow-ups

🎯 Goal

Reminders that go out at the right time — and stop by themselves when the customer pays, replies or the date changes.

🧰 What you need

What you can remind about

Open Automation → Auto reminders.

Type	Sent	Examples
Before / after a date	A set time before or after a date on the contact or deal	Appointment 24 h + 2 h before · payment due 3 days before, on the day, then every 3 days · renewal 30 / 7 / 1 day before · birthday every year
Repeating	Every N days / weeks / months, or a fixed day of the month	Monthly fee on the 5th · weekly class reminder
No-reply follow-up	When the customer has not answered your team’s message	24 h and 72 h after a quote
After an event	When a tag is added or removed, a deal reaches a stage, or your system sends an event	Abandoned cart 1 h + 24 h · feedback 2 h after a visit · documents pending every 2 days

Click New reminder. Pick a recipe — or Start from scratch.
- Ten recipes: appointment, payment due, EMI, renewal, birthday / anniversary, fee / class, no-reply follow-up, abandoned cart, after-visit feedback, document pending.
The recipe says what it needs — usually a date on the contact (for example payment_due) — and suggests a template.
- Your approved template: pick one of yours.
- Or use the Suggested template: check the name and click Submit to Meta. Approval usually takes minutes to a few hours; you can finish the reminder now and turn it on once it is approved.
- The badge shows the category (utility or marketing) and the estimated cost per message.
Click Continue. The editor opens with the recipe filled in.

Further down the editor:

Message — the template and what fills each {{1}}, {{2}}: the customer’s name, the reminder date or time, any contact or deal field, or fixed text. Free text works only inside the 24-hour window; outside it that reminder is skipped. You can also start a chatbot instead.
Stop when — the customer replies, taps Already paid (they are asked for the UTR / transaction reference and tagged payment_claimed), a payment link is paid, a word you choose, a tag is added or removed, an event arrives, the deal reaches a stage, or the deal leaves this stage (the reminder only sends while the deal is in the stage you pick; moving the deal on stops it at once, and every send checks again). Changing or removing the date stops the old reminders and plans new ones.
Moving a deal stops the reminders its earlier stage started, and a won or lost deal stops every reminder about it. The deal’s timeline says what was cancelled.
Who gets it — your numbers, tags to include or leave out, only contacts who opted in, and whether quiet hours apply.

Click Save and turn on (or Save as draft).

A date reminder needs the date on each contact (or deal):

Contacts — open a contact and fill the field, or Import CSV with a date column. Dates like 2026-11-02, 02/11/2026 (day first) and 02/11/2026 15:30 or 3:30 pm are read; the import tells you which ones it could not read.
A chatbot question — a Question step saving the answer as appointment_at.
Your own system — the Developer API sets the date with the contact, schedules one-off reminders, or sends events like cart_abandoned.

Reminders also always respect STOP — a customer who opted out never gets one — and slow down on their own near your number’s messaging limit.

Beside a chat, Reminders shows what is scheduled for that customer.

The Payment due recipe chases everyone on time: 3 days before the payment_due date, on the day, then every 3 days (up to 6 sends), and stops when the customer taps Already paid, pays your payment link, or gets the tag paid.
The Payment reminder chatbot from the chatbot templates starts when you add the tag payment_due: pay link, Already paid with the reference, or a person.
Both together: in the reminder’s Message, choose Start a chatbot and pick your payment chatbot (it must be published). Each reminder then opens the full conversation instead of a single template. The chatbot opens with your approved template, so it also works outside the 24-hour window.

Your billing software, CRM or booking system can run reminders through the Developer API with an API key from Developer:

Set the date with the contact (for example payment_due) and your reminder rules plan the sends.
POST /v1/reminders schedules a one-off reminder for a contact (template or free text), with your own external_id. GET / PATCH / DELETE by id or by-external-id read, move or cancel it.
POST /v1/reminders/events sends an event such as cart_abandoned for After an event rules.
Webhooks reminder.sent, reminder.failed and reminder.skipped tell your system what happened. Outgoing webhooks

A marketing text in a utility template. Meta re-categorises promotional templates as marketing — and charges them as marketing. Keep reminders factual: the date, the amount, what to do.
The date field is empty or in another format. The reminder simply has nothing to plan from — check the contact, or the import’s list of unreadable dates.
Free text for a reminder days later. The customer’s 24-hour window has usually closed by then; use a template.
Two rules for the same thing. The daily limit protects the customer, but the second rule’s reminders are pushed to the next day.

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