Sending messages: SMS and email

Send one-off SMS or email, reply in the two-way SMS inbox, track delivery in the logs, and manage templates and SMS credits.

The Communications hub (Communications in the dashboard) is where your team sends messages and reviews everything that has gone out. Only Managers and above can open it.

The SMS inbox

The Inbox tab is a two-way SMS inbox. Every conversation is tied to a customer's phone number:

The left-hand list shows each customer with a preview of the latest message and how long ago it arrived. Arrows distinguish inbound replies from your outbound messages.
Select a conversation to see the full thread, with your messages and the customer's replies in one view.
Reply from the box at the bottom of the thread — the customer gets a normal SMS.

Use the inbox for back-and-forth conversation. For a message you start, use Compose.

Compose: one-off SMS and email

The Compose tab has three forms:

Compose SMS — pick a customer, write the message (up to 1,000 characters, with a live counter) and send.
Compose email — the email equivalent, beside the SMS form.
Manual record — log a communication that happened outside WagDay so it sits in the same history as everything else.

SMS opt-in is enforced at the point of sending. Customers who have opted out are badged Opted out in the recipient list, and customers without a number are badged No phone. If you select someone you can't message, the send button stays disabled and the form tells you why — "This customer has opted out of SMS" or "This customer has no phone number on file."

Delivery logs and threads

The Logs tab is the delivery history for the whole organisation. You can:

Filter by channel (Email or SMS).
Filter by status — Queued, Sent, Delivered, Failed or Bounced.
Search by text.
Page through older results, twenty at a time.

The Threads tab gives a grouped, conversation-style view of message threads across the organisation.

Message templates

Automated messages — booking confirmations, reminders and the like — are built from templates at Settings → Templates. Only Admins can edit templates.

Templates are per event and per channel, so an event like a booking confirmation can have its own email and SMS wording.
You edit them with a live preview, so you see exactly what the customer receives.
Events covered include booking confirmed, 24-hour and 48-hour booking reminders, check-in and check-out, vaccination expiry, deposit due, payment reminders, incident notices and more.
Every organisation starts with system-default templates for each event; your edits override the default for your facility only.

SMS credits

SMS sending draws on a credit balance measured in segments — the unit carriers actually bill. A short plain-text message is one segment (up to 160 characters); longer messages split into multiple segments, and messages with emoji or other special characters fit fewer characters per segment (70 for a single segment). Every send path draws on the same balance — composers, the two-way inbox, bulk sends, campaigns and automated reminders. Emails don't use credits.

As you type in a composer you'll see a live estimate of how many segments the message needs, and the send is blocked with an explanation if your balance can't cover it.

Your balance has two sources:

Monthly included quota — each billing cycle your plan grants an included allowance of segments automatically. Unused quota doesn't roll over.
Paid top-ups — the SMS credits card offers segment packs you can buy by card through Stripe checkout; they're credited as soon as payment completes. All prices are in AUD and include GST.

The SMS credits card shows your remaining balance and a recent-activity ledger that records each Monthly included quota grant, Top-up, SMS sent and Adjustment with its date. When the balance drops below 20 you'll see a Low balance badge — top up before your next reminder run, because SMS sends start failing at zero.

The card sits at the top of the Communications hub, above the tabs, so the balance is visible from every messaging surface.

Opt-ins and do-not-contact

WagDay respects customer contact preferences everywhere a message can be sent:

The customer's SMS opt-in flag gates one-off SMS, as described above.
Customers marked do-not-contact are excluded from call lists, campaigns and marketing syncs.