Everyone knows the moment a reservation is made. The customer gets a confirmation, your team gets an alert, and from there the app keeps both sides informed without anyone writing an email: ready to collect, about to come back on sale, cancelled. This guide covers every message Reservo sends and how to route them, including per-location staff alerts, the deposit emails, and editing the wording of customer emails.
Everything here works on every plan. The deposit emails only apply if you use deposits, which are part of the In-person & Online and Automation plans.
Staff notifications
The shop-wide address
- In Reservo, go to Settings, General tab.
- Check Send email notifications to staff is on (it is by default).
- Enter the address alerts should go to. A shared inbox works well.
Staff alerts fire the moment any reservation is created, online or at the till, with the customer, the items, the location, and the collection deadline. The working rhythm: alert arrives, item comes off the sales floor, gets labelled with the reference, waits in the back.
Staff are also told when a reservation expires or is cancelled, so held items go back on the shop floor, when a reservation is marked complete manually, and, if you use the confirmation workflow, when an online request is waiting for approval.
Route alerts by location
One inbox for every store means every store reads about everyone else's reservations. Since May, each location can have its own recipients:
- Go to Settings, Online reservations tab, and find the Locations table.
- Click the envelope icon on a location.
- Add up to five recipient addresses for that location.
A location with its own recipients stops using the shop-wide address; locations without one carry on with it. Each shop hears about its own reservations, not everyone's.
Customer emails
Customer emails are on by default and cover the whole life of a reservation:
- Confirmation, the moment they reserve.
- Request received and, if you don't approve in time, request not confirmed. These two only apply if you've turned on the confirmation workflow for online reservations, where you approve each request before stock is held.
- Ready for collection, when items reserved against incoming stock are allocated. The subject line tells them which store: their items at your location are ready for collection. This is the email that brings waitlist customers back (see the waitlist guide).
- Expiration, when a hold lapses and the items return to sale. Sent per reservation, and for individual items when only part of a reservation expires.
- Cancellation, if the reservation is cancelled, by you or by the customer.
- Completed, when the reservation is collected and completed.
Deposit emails
If you require deposits on some products, customers also get:
- Deposit request, with the amount, the deadline and a link to pay through Shopify checkout. Sent if they don't pay straight away from the confirmation screen.
- Deposit request (back in stock), when a sold-out item they reserved is available again.
- Deposit reminder, before the payment deadline. You choose how many hours before, or switch it off.
- Deposit not received, if the deadline passes unpaid.
Deposit emails are always sent, even if you switch off other customer emails, because without them customers wouldn't know how to pay. See the deposits guide.
Every one of them signs off with your store's name automatically. Nothing to configure, nothing reading "Reservo" where your brand should be.
Edit the wording
In Settings, General tab, open Email templates to change the subject and text of any customer email. Placeholders fill in the customer, items, location and dates for you. You can reset any template to the default.
Make replies come to you
In Settings, General tab, you can set a sender name and a reply-to address. Both are optional, but set the reply-to: when a customer replies to their confirmation asking to come a day later, that reply should land in your inbox, not nowhere.
What customers see between emails
Customers don't have to wait for an email to know where they stand. In their account on your storefront, each reserved item shows its state: reserved with its collection deadline, or, for items against incoming stock, awaiting stock with a note that they'll be notified when it's ready. The status flips to ready for collection the moment stock is allocated. If a deposit is due, the reservation shows awaiting deposit with a Pay deposit button.
Common questions
Do you send SMS?
Not currently. All notifications are email. If text messages would matter for your store, tell us at support@unitedapps.io.
Is there a reminder before a hold expires?
Not currently. Customers get a confirmation with the deadline up front, and an expiration notice if it lapses. There is a reminder before a deposit is due, which you set in the deposit settings.
Can I edit the email templates?
Yes. Go to Settings, General tab, Email templates. You can change the subject and text of each customer email and reset it to the default at any time.
My staff aren't receiving alerts.
Check the toggle is on and the address is right in Settings, General tab. Then check whether the location has its own recipients set (the envelope icon in the Locations table on the Online reservations tab), because an override routes that location's alerts away from the shop-wide address. And check spam.
Can customers opt out?
There's no per-customer unsubscribe. These are transactional emails about a hold the customer asked for, not marketing. If you'd rather send nothing at all, the Send emails to customers toggle in Settings switches every customer email off shop-wide, though we'd advise against it: the ready-to-collect and expiry notices do real work. Deposit emails still send, so customers can pay.