Notification settings

Notification settings control which automatic messages your venue sends guests around their bookings, and which channels each one goes out on. You’ll find the panel per venue under Settings → Notifications.

Most of these are transactional messages that fire off the back of an action: a booking made, a check-in, a cancellation, a deposit request, and so on. The two timed reminders, the pre-arrival nudge and the no-show notice, are set up here too, in the same panel, so everything a guest hears from you lives in one place. They work a little differently from the rest: see Timed chat reminders below.

These emails always send from a no-reply address, whatever your marketing reply-to is set to. If a guest replies to one, they get an automatic note explaining the address isn’t monitored and pointing them to manage their booking or message your venue directly.

The channel matrix

The panel is a single table. Each row is a notification type; the columns are the channels it can go out on:

Channel	How it reaches the guest
Email	An email to the address on the booking.
App push	A push notification to the Sidedoor guest app, if they have it.
SMS	A text message. Requires the SMS add-on; without it, SMS rows have no effect.

Tick a channel to turn that notification on for that channel, or untick it to switch it off. Most types also have their own message you can edit, opened from the row’s gear icon, so the wording matches your venue’s voice. The No-show charge notification is the exception: it uses fixed system wording (which always states the amount charged and how to get in touch), so you only choose its channels, not its message.

Notifications are grouped by area, so related messages sit together:

Area	Covers
Reservations	New reservation, waitlist, pre-arrival reminder, no-show, no-show charge, confirmation request, check-in and cancellation messages.
Guest list	Guest-list booking, rejection, check-in and cancellation messages.
Events	Event booking confirmation and event-cancelled notices.
Policy	Deposit reminders and deposit requests.
Vouchers	Gift voucher purchases.

Email footers

Add a block of text to the bottom of your notification emails, such as your booking terms or deposit terms, without rewriting every message by hand. Footers live in their own library on this panel, so you can create several (for example, a Booking terms footer and a Deposit terms footer) and choose which one each notification uses.

Each footer is plain text with a little formatting: leave a blank line to start a new paragraph, wrap text in **asterisks** to make it bold, and paste a web address to turn it into a clickable link. For a link with its own wording instead of the raw address, write [label](https://example.com) - this also works for an email address or phone number, so guests can tap to get in touch.

Open any notification row’s gear (edit) icon and choose from the Footer dropdown: None, or one of your venue’s footers. The guest’s email for that notification shows the footer at the bottom, above the standard Sidedoor footer, styled in your venue’s colours. Footers only appear on email, not app push or SMS.

Note

Deleting a footer that’s in use asks you to confirm first. Once deleted, any notification that used it goes back to None rather than failing to send.

Tip

Copy from another venue on this panel brings over your footers along with the rest of your notification settings, so a group can keep the same wording everywhere.

Timed chat reminders

Two rows in the Reservations group are not fired by a one-off action. They are scheduled around each reservation’s own timeline: a pre-arrival reminder before the guest arrives, and a no-show notification if they don’t turn up. Both start off and are set per venue.

Set them up the same way as any other row: tick the channels each should use (Email, app push, SMS), then open the row’s edit (gear) icon to set any timing and edit the message. Everything saves with the page’s single Save notification settings button.

Every timed message is delivered through the guest’s reservation chat and recorded on that reservation’s chat thread, so you keep a record of what was sent. The guest is notified like any message from your venue, a push notification and an email linking back to the conversation, and each one is logged in the reservation’s History. Each reservation only ever receives each reminder once.

Pre-arrival reminder

A message sent a set time before the reservation starts. In the row’s editor, set Minutes before arrival (how long before the start time it goes out, in 5-minute steps) and write the message.

If a booking is created inside the pre-arrival window (for example, a guest books for 10 minutes from now while your reminder is set to 15 minutes), no reminder is sent: there was no lead time before the reservation for it to go out, so a “see you soon” nudge arriving seconds after they book would be wrong.

No-show notification

A courteous note sent when a guest is marked a no-show, letting them know they missed their reservation and the table has been released. In the editor you set the message only: it fires the moment the reservation is marked a no-show, with no delay to configure.

Caution

When a reservation becomes a no-show is controlled by the Table Access Profile, not this page. For the no-show note to ever send, turn on Automatically mark as a no-show and set a No-show threshold in the profile’s Late / No-Show section (Access Profiles, under Settings → Policies → Access Profiles). If no profile marks no-shows automatically, the no-show row stays greyed out and nothing is sent.

Essential emails you can’t switch off

A few notifications tell a guest that something has been cancelled and their money handled, so the email channel for these is always on and can’t be unticked:

• Reservation cancelled
• Guest-list booking cancelled
• Event cancelled

For these rows the Email box is fixed on; you can still choose whether to add app push and SMS. This guarantees a guest is always told, in writing, when a booking they made is cancelled or an event they hold tickets for is called off (and any refund is processed).

Note

Event cancelled is its own row, separate from the Event booking confirmation. Turning off booking confirmations does not stop the cancelled-event notice going out.

Sensible defaults

The panel ships with defaults you can adjust:

• Everyday confirmations (new reservation, guest-list booking, event booking) send by email and app push.
• Check-in messages default to app push only - a light touch as the guest arrives.
• The pre-arrival reminder and no-show rows start off. Turn them on by ticking a channel, then open the row’s gear icon to fine-tune it, as described under Timed chat reminders.
• SMS is off everywhere by default.

Only email if the push didn’t land

Below the matrix, a single venue-wide setting - “Only email if the app push wasn’t delivered” - controls how the email and app-push channels work together. It’s on by default.

An app push is the notification that pops up on a guest’s phone when they have the Sidedoor guest app installed. With this on, the matching email is only sent if that push didn’t reach their phone, so a guest who’s on the app isn’t notified twice about the same thing. Guests who aren’t on the app always get the email.

This applies to every notification on the page, not one row at a time. Turn it off if you’d rather always send the email as well as the push.

How it connects to the rest of your setup

• Confirmation request and Deposit reminder / request fire against your payment and booking policies - the policy decides the timing, this panel decides the channels and wording.
• Bookings made through your widgets and the guest app use the same matrix, so a self-serve booking is notified exactly like a staff-made one.
• This page is about messages your venue sends to guests. Alerts to your own team (a guest or staff member cancelling or editing a booking, the daily and weekly reports, business alerts) are each person’s own choice, made from their account settings, within whatever their role allows.

Set the rows you want, adjust each message, and your choices apply to the next booking.