Texts

Mist texts your customers for you: some texts go when you press a button, and some go on their own. This page lists both, says where a customer's reply ends up, and explains the monthly allowance.

Texts that go on their own

Each of these has its own switch in Settings: Quotes & invoices for the invoice, quote and receipt texts, Booking & jobs for the reminders and the review requests.

• Day-before reminder. Between 3pm and 8pm Perth time, a customer with a job booked for tomorrow gets a reminder text. They can reply Y to confirm, and the job then shows "Customer confirmed by SMS" on Today. If you are closed tomorrow, only the jobs you chose to keep are reminded. You choose when it goes, under Day-before reminder on the Booking the work card: every visit, only if they haven't confirmed, or off. A customer has confirmed when they picked the time themselves or replied Y.
• Quote follow-up. A quote with no answer gets one follow-up at 9am: the morning after the customer opens it without accepting, or five days after you sent it if they do not open it. It goes by text, or by email when a text cannot go, and never once they accept or say no, or you mark it lost.
• Overdue invoices. Reminders at 3, 7 and 14 days overdue go by email. The third also goes by text, and a customer with no working email address is texted from the first.
• Review requests. After a job is marked complete or paid, by email when the customer has one and by text when they do not, with up to two reminders if it is not opened.
• Payment receipts. Off until you turn it on, unless you had thank-you texts on. Then a customer who pays online, or whose payment you record, gets a short receipt with what is still to pay, by email when we have one. A payment you record waits 10 minutes first, so an Undo stops it. A receipt text goes only between 8am and 8pm. You choose whether it goes by email, text or both, and who sends it: with Sent by set to MYOB, your bookkeeper sends receipts and Mist sends none.

Two more go on their own because you set them up: a maintenance nudge you put on a job, and the second message of a campaign you approved. Both are explained on Work that repeats and Campaigns.

Texts you send by pressing a button

On way, sending a quote or an invoice by text, confirming a booking, a follow-up to a lead, a customer's account link, a campaign and a membership invite all go when you press the button. When a text to one customer cannot go, the screen says why.

When you first give a job a day, Mist asks whether to tell the customer they are booked in, by text or email, and shows the text and how many texts you have left this month. A text you send between 8pm and 8am waits until 8am; an email goes straight away. If the visit is on the day the text would arrive, it is not offered as a text: send an email or ring them instead.

The number they come from

Your texts go from Mist's own number, which a number of businesses share. The texts Mist writes for you name your business.

With a Business number of your own (Settings → Texts & alerts), texts go from your number instead, every reply lands in your Inbox, and you answer it from there. A STOP sent to your number stops texts from your number only.

When a customer replies

When a customer answers a text Mist sent them for you from the shared number, Mist works out which business they are answering. If yours is the only business that texted them in the last 30 days, the reply is yours:

• You get an email with the whole message, and a link to any picture they sent.
• It shows in your Inbox, on their customer record under "Texts they sent", on their job's history, and in the bell.

To answer, call or text them from your own phone. If more than one business texted them, Mist cannot tell whose customer they are, so the reply comes to Mist's team instead of being guessed.

STOP and START

A customer who replies STOP gets no more texts from that number, from you or from any other business using it. They can reply START to have texts again. A plain "yes" only restarts texts for someone who had replied STOP; from anyone else it is an ordinary reply, and to a day-before reminder it confirms the job.

If you press a button that would text someone who has opted out, Mist tells you, and you reach them another way. The automatic messages above go by email instead where the customer has an email address.

Texts that ask for work, like a quote follow-up, a review request, a maintenance nudge or a campaign, end with "Reply STOP to opt out." Texts about a job that is already on, like a reminder or On way, do not.

How many texts you have

Each plan includes texts to your customers every month: Starter 100, Pro 200, Team 600. A free trial counts as Pro. A long text counts as two or more, the way phone companies count them, and a text with a picture counts as more than one.

• When a fifth or less of the month's texts is left, you get a warning by email and in the bell.
• When the month's texts and any top-up credits you hold are all used, ten more still go, so a text for a job already under way is not the one that fails.
• After those ten, texts to customers stop until the 1st of next month, Perth time, or until a top-up is added. You get an email and a note in the bell, and the screen says so when a text did not go. Emails keep going as normal.

Billing shows how many texts you have used this month.