Why didn't my reminder send?

Sidebar: Business Settings → Notifications. Start on the Delivery Log tab — it answers this question faster than anything else.

Start with the Delivery Log

Every reminder Alaga tries to send is recorded, whether it worked or not. Open Notifications, then Delivery Log, and look for the client.

• The reminder is there and says sent — Alaga handed it to the email or text provider. The message left. Ask the client to check spam, and confirm the address on file is the one they actually read.
• The reminder is there and says failed — the row carries the reason. A bad address or a disconnected number shows up here.
• There is no row at all — Alaga never tried. That is what the rest of this article is about.

When reminders go out

Two reminders per appointment: one about 24 hours ahead and one about 2 hours ahead. A job runs once an hour and picks up appointments falling into those windows.

Two consequences catch people out:

• An appointment booked less than 24 hours ahead never gets the 24-hour reminder. There is no window left for it to fall into. It can still get the 2-hour one.
• Reminders go out on the hour, not at an exact countdown. A 9:00 am appointment gets its 24-hour reminder at some point the previous morning, not at 9:00 am precisely.

The times inside the message are shown in your business timezone, set under Business Settings, Business Profile.

Checks Alaga makes before sending

A reminder is skipped, quietly, if any of these is true. In rough order of how often each one turns out to be the cause:

1. The appointment status is not pending or confirmed. Reminders only go to live bookings. Anything completed, cancelled or marked no-show is skipped.
2. The client has no email address (for the email) or no phone number (for the text).
3. Reminders are switched off for your business. Notifications, Email tab, appointment reminders.
4. The client opted out. A client can turn reminders off for themselves, and that beats your business setting.
5. The reminder was already sent. Alaga records each reminder per appointment, so it never sends the same one twice — including after you edit the appointment.
6. The reminder email template is switched off for your business.
7. The pet is marked deceased. Reminders for that pet stop.
8. New accounts start with client email and texts switched off. This is deliberate, so a business importing three years of history does not send a mountain of mail on day one. If reminders have never worked, this is very likely why.

Text messages have extra gates

Texts are opt-in at every level, and all three must be true:

• You have turned reminder texts on — Notifications, Text Messages tab. This is off by default, separately from the email switch.
• The client has agreed to texts. Consent is legally required. If they ever replied STOP, they are opted out until they reply START, and nothing you change in Alaga overrides that.
• You have text messages left this month. Each plan includes an allowance; once it is used up, reminder texts stop until the month rolls over. Emails are unaffected.

Email and text are independent. Reminder emails can be working perfectly while texts are off, and vice versa — so "the reminder didn't send" nearly always needs pinning to one channel first.

Still nothing?

If the Delivery Log shows no row, every switch above is on, and the appointment is genuinely 24 hours out and confirmed, that is not a settings problem — send us the client name and the appointment date and time through Support and we will trace it.