Edit your confirmation email, its buttons and your reminders

All automated emails to your customers are edited in one place: Settings in the left menu, then the Emails tab (it used to be called Email Settings). You need a role that can change settings, such as account owner or account member. Viewers don't see this tab.

The templates belong to the whole account. Locations don't have an email tab of their own. You can still send different emails per location, by choosing locations on each email (see "Different email text per location" below).

Where the emails are: Default emails and Your emails

The Emails tab has two lists.

Default emails, described in the admin as "(Standardized messages that are partially pre-created by Rentalbuddy)". This list has two emails, and a third if you sell memberships:

The booking confirmation. Its Trigger reads When the booking is created.
The payment email. Its Trigger reads When an invoice is created. It goes out when you send the customer a payment link for a booking, and it shows the amount of that open link.
The membership confirmation, sent when a customer buys a membership. It only appears once memberships are switched on.

You can edit the text and blocks of the default emails. You can't switch them off, limit them to certain locations, duplicate them or delete them. Their Active and Actions columns are empty on purpose, and the confirmation always applies to All locations.

Your emails, described as "Create your own automated messages that are sent based on different events in the system." This list holds reminders, thank-you emails and anything else you create. If you sell memberships, the membership reminder (7 days before expiry) is here too. Each row has an Active switch and three icon buttons: settings (gear), duplicate (copy icon) and delete (bin).

Each row shows Subject, Trigger, Location and, on your own emails, Active. A row has no name of its own, so it is listed by its subject line. To find the confirmation, look for the trigger When the booking is created.

New accounts normally start with one reminder already in Your emails: "{{name}}, it is 30 minutes left on your booking", sent 30 minutes before the booking ends to customers who have picked up. When you switch on memberships, a membership confirmation and a reminder 7 days before expiry are added for you (see the memberships guide).

Edit the confirmation email text

Go to Settings → Emails.
Under Default emails, find the row whose Trigger is When the booking is created.
Click the row (on a phone, tap Email content). The editor opens on the left, with a live Email preview on the right.
Make your changes and press Save at the bottom of the editor.

The editor contains, from the top:

A translate button (only when customers can book in more than one language). Its left part shows the direction, for example EN → All. Click it to choose From (the language to translate from; by default your main language, but you can pick any language you offer, for example if you wrote the Swedish text first) and To (All languages or one language). Then press Translate. It overwrites the text in the chosen languages; translating from another language into your main language warns "Replaces the English text, your main language." (with your main language's name). If the From language has no text yet, you get "No Swedish text to translate" (with that language). Before translating, Rentalbuddy checks for text typed into the wrong language field and, if it finds any, asks you in Some texts seem to be in another language (see the customer flow guide). Check the result, then press Save. Your From choice is not remembered between visits.
Email subject, with a language selector and a + Variable dropdown that inserts placeholders.
Logo, an on/off switch. The image is the logo you uploaded under Settings → Account (the field is labelled Logo (Image URL), but it is an upload). Use PNG or JPEG. SVG is accepted but shows as a broken image in most email programs, and some programs also have trouble with WebP. With no logo uploaded, the email shows a grey placeholder.
Messages: two text blocks, each with its own switch and language selector. Introduction text is the paragraph at the top, which is usually what operators mean by "the confirmation text". Closing text is the paragraph at the bottom. Both have a + Variable menu in the text toolbar.
Buttons: one row per button, with a text field (the label customers see) and a switch. A language selector at the top of the section changes which language's labels you are editing. See the next section: the row names are misleading.
Blocks without text: switches only, for Customer details, Order ID, Booking details, Directions – Location and Contact details – Location. Membership emails show Membership details instead of Booking details.

Buttons in the email: Start booking, End booking, Extend booking

Customers don't get their PIN code in an email. The confirmation has no code in it, and no separate "code email" is sent before the booking. Customers press the Start booking button in the confirmation, and it opens their booking page, where the code is shown. The PIN code guide covers when the code appears there. So on a self-service location, this button is how customers get into the lock.

Go by the text field, not the row name. In the Buttons section, the row called Before booking holds the button customers see as Start booking. The row called Start booking holds a button that customers see as Before booking. Whatever you type in a row's text field is exactly what customers see on that button.

Row name in the admin	Text customers see (unless you change it)	Where it leads	On new accounts
Before booking	Start booking	The customer's booking page with the code	On
Start booking	Before booking	The same booking page	Off
End booking	End booking	The return step	On
Extend booking	Extend booking	Extending the rental	Follows the location (see below)
Move start time	Move start time	Moving the start time	Follows the location (see below)

The first two buttons open the same page. They differ only in look: the first is filled with your theme colour, the second is outlined. Most operators keep just one of them.

Self-service (unmanned) locations: keep the button that customers see as "Start booking" switched on. That is the row named Before booking. If both of the first two rows are off, customers have no way to reach their code from the email.
Staffed (manned) locations only: the confirmation is shared by the whole account and doesn't know which locations are staffed. If none of your locations is self-service, switch off the rows named Before booking, Start booking and End booking. Otherwise your customers get buttons that lead to a page with no lock to open.
A mix of staffed and self-service locations: the buttons also appear in emails from your staffed locations. Keep them on for the sake of your self-service customers, and consider a button label that works for both, such as "Your booking".

Extend booking (called Prolong booking before) and Move start time follow each location's own setting, not the switch here. The settings are Show extend booking button and Show move start time button in the Key settings card of Customer flow, either on the location or account-wide. When the location has the setting on, the button appears in that location's emails even if you switched it off here. When the setting is off, the button never appears. Extend booking is also left out of bookings that include an event. The preview only shows your switches here, so it can differ from what a given location's customers receive.

The payment email has a Pay button instead. Its default label is "Click here to pay" followed by the amount.

Blocks without text: customer details, booking details, directions, contact

These blocks have no text for you to write:

Customer details prints the customer's name, address, postcode, city, country and phone.
Order ID prints the booking number.
Booking details prints the start and end times (for product bookings), each product with quantity and price, any discount code, the VAT and the total.
Directions – Location is a button with a fixed "Directions" label in each language. It opens a map at the location's coordinates, or at its address and city if no coordinates are set.
Contact details – Location prints "Location:" with the location's city and address, then "Contact:" with its phone "or" email. These come from the Location & Contact Details card on the location's Location settings tab (Location phone, Location email). The card reminds you: "Your customers see the location email and phone in the booking and in their confirmation emails."

If the location has no phone or email saved, customers literally see "[Site Phone]" or "[Site Email]" in their email. Locations can no longer be saved without them, but older locations may still lack them; the admin flags those. The guide about customers contacting Rentalbuddy instead of you covers why this matters and what else to check.

The button and accent colours in emails follow the location's Booking theme color on its Booking experience tab.

Variables you can use

Insert variables with + Variable in the subject or in the message texts. You can also type them into button labels. They are filled in when the email is sent:

[Company name], [Site name], [Site phone], [order id], [First name], [Customer name], [Customer surname], [Customer email], [Customer phone], [Customer Adress], [Booking Date], [Booking start time], [Booking end time], [Custom checkout fields].

[First name] and [Customer name] both give the first name only. For the full name, use [Customer name] followed by [Customer surname].
[Custom checkout fields] inserts the customer's answers to your own checkout questions as a small list. It covers checkout questions only, not the before-unlock or return questions. Put it in a message text, not in the subject.
[Site phone] is left empty if the location has no phone saved.
Dates and times follow the account's Time display setting (12hr or 24hr, under Settings → Account): a date with a time reads 2026-07-04 14:30, or 2026-07-04 02:30 PM with 12-hour times (always two digits, so 09:05 AM). [Booking Date] gives the start date with its start time; [Booking start time] and [Booking end time] give the time alone.

Email languages, including Finnish, Portuguese, Italian and Croatian

Each text has one version per customer language. The languages offered are the account's Default booking languages (account) on Settings → Language. Customers can book, and receive emails, in twelve languages: the nine admin languages (including Finnish) plus Portuguese, Italian and Croatian. Each email text can be written in all of them. Portuguese is European Portuguese.

Which language a customer gets: the one they had selected in the booking window when they booked.
Missing translations: if a text has no version in the customer's language, the English version is used, and if there is no English either, whichever language exists. The same goes for the subject, so fill in the subject for every language you offer. The fixed labels in the email (Start, End, VAT, Total price, Location, Contact) are translated into all twelve booking languages.
Portuguese in the standard texts: the email texts Rentalbuddy fills in for you come with Portuguese wording. A text you rewrote yourself has no Portuguese version until you add one (by hand or with Translate); until then Portuguese customers get your English text.
Bookings you create in the admin get their emails in the language the booking window was showing when you finished the booking. The window normally opens in your own admin language if customers can book in it, otherwise in your browser's language or English. Switch the language at the top of the booking window to the customer's language before you complete the booking.
Copies to your own team (see below) arrive in the customer's language.

Create a reminder or follow-up email

Go to Settings → Emails.
Under Your emails, press Create email. The dialog is called Create booking email.
If you sell memberships, first choose What is this email for?: Booking or Membership.
Fill in Email subject for each language.
Choose When should the email be sent?: When booking confirmation is sent, Before booking start, Before booking end, After booking start or After booking end. Membership emails offer Before membership expiry and After membership expiry.
For the timed options, set How long before or after? with Amount and Time unit (Hours, Minutes or Days).
Leave All locations on, or switch it off and pick Locations.
Set Booking status. Don't skip this step (see the next section).
Set Booking type: Product booking, Event booking, or both.
Leave Active on and press Save.
Click the new row in the list and write the actual content. The create dialog only sets the rules, not the text.

To change the rules later, use the gear on the row. It opens Booking email settings, where you can change everything except the subject; you edit the subject in the expanded row.

Timed emails are calculated in the location's time zone, from the booking's start or end.

Booking status: the setting that stops reminders from sending

This is the most common reason for "I set up a reminder and it never went out".

Booking status is a filter on who receives the email. The email only goes out if the booking's status, at the moment of sending, is one you selected. If you leave Booking status empty, the email is never sent for product bookings. Empty doesn't mean "any status" here. That's the opposite of Locations, where leaving it empty (or keeping All locations) means every location.

The choices are:

Not collected - pre-flow required: not picked up yet, at a location where customers must complete a step before collecting.
Ready for pickup: booked and not collected yet. This is the normal status of a future booking.
Picked up: the customer has collected.
Returned: the rental is finished.

Match the status to the moment:

Before booking start: tick Ready for pickup, plus Not collected - pre-flow required if the location uses a before-unlock step. With only Picked up, the email can never go out, because nobody has picked up yet.
Before booking end: usually Picked up.
After booking end (thank you, review request): usually Returned. Add Picked up too if your customers don't always finish the return step.
A "please return" nudge after booking end: only Picked up, so it reaches customers who collected but never returned.

Booking type works the same way: with no type selected, the email matches no bookings. Bookings that contain an event count as Event booking, everything else as Product booking. The create dialog selects Product booking for you but leaves Booking status empty. That's why the warning above matters.

Two more things stop an email:

The Active switch. Its tooltip puts it plainly: "If Active is turned off this email will not be sent out to customers."
Locations: if the booking's location isn't selected, the email doesn't go out for that booking.

Send an extra email together with the confirmation

The option When booking confirmation is sent sends your email right after the booking confirmation, with no delay. It's useful for house rules, location-specific instructions or a second language.

It ignores Booking status, because the customer can't have picked up yet.
It follows Active, Locations and Booking type.
It goes out once per booking. Sending the confirmation again later doesn't send it a second time.
It is not sent for membership purchases.

What happens to reminders when bookings or emails change

Reminders are planned when the booking is made. If the send moment has already passed at that point, the email is simply not planned, and nothing is shown for it. A "2 hours before start" reminder does nothing for a booking made 90 minutes before start. This is by design.
A new email applies to existing bookings that are active and whose start time is still in the future when you create it. It doesn't attach itself to rentals that are already running.
Saving a change to a reminder (including switching Active) replans it for bookings that haven't started yet. Rentals already running lose that reminder's pending send, and it isn't planned again. Avoid changing a "before booking end" reminder in the middle of a busy day.
Moving a booking or changing its times with Full edit moves its pending reminders. If the new moment has already passed, the reminder is marked Failed.
Extending a booking (by you or by the customer) does not move them: a reminder timed before the booking's end is still sent relative to the original end time.
A cancelled booking still shows its planned reminders. They turn Failed when their time comes, and nothing is sent.
Deleting an email removes its pending sends.
Membership reminders are planned per membership. A membership reminder you create or change may only reach memberships that are bought or changed afterwards.

See planned and sent emails on a booking

Open the booking and press Messages at the top. The Sent Messages list shows every email for that booking, including reminders that haven't gone out yet. Those have the status Pending and an empty Sent at. The Type column says what each row is and when it goes out:

Booking Receipt: the booking confirmation.
Payment: the payment email.
Membership confirmation.
When booking confirmation is sent: one of your emails sent together with the confirmation.
A line such as Reminder 30 minutes before booking end: one of your timed emails.
A row ending in (resent): a copy sent again from this list, with its own delivery status.

The To column shows who each email goes to. A pending reminder shows its rule (for example Reminder 30 minutes before booking end), not a clock time: work out when it is sent from the booking's start or end time.

What each delivery status means, and how to resend, is covered in the guide on customers who say no confirmation email arrived.

Different email text per location

The Locations setting on an email doesn't change its wording. It only decides which locations the email applies to. To give one location different wording on one of your own emails:

On the email under Your emails, press the copy icon (Duplicate). The copy gets "(copy)" added to its subject and starts switched off.
Open the copy with the gear, switch All locations off and pick only the special location.
Open the original, switch All locations off and pick all the other locations.
Edit the copy's text and switch it Active.

Don't leave both emails covering the same location, or that location's customers get both.

The booking confirmation can't be duplicated or limited to locations. Its per-location parts are automatic: directions, contact details, colours and the location name in the subject. For extra text at only some locations, create an email under Your emails with When booking confirmation is sent and pick those locations. It arrives right after the confirmation.

Which emails go out when a booking is changed or extended

The customer extends or moves the booking and pays the difference: they get the booking confirmation again, showing the new times and amount. There is no separate "booking changed" email.
You create, edit or extend a booking in the admin: nothing is sent automatically. When nothing is left to pay, you are asked Send Confirmation Email with Yes and No. You are also asked after you register or skip the payment in that same flow. Yes sends the confirmation, the copies to your team, and any When booking confirmation is sent emails the booking hasn't had yet. No sends nothing.
Reminders of a moved or edited booking are moved to the new times automatically. After an extension they keep their original times.
A payment email can only be sent while the booking has an open payment link. Under Messages → Send new message, Payment email is greyed out with "Create a Stripe payment first" when nothing is left to pay, and so is Resend on payment-email rows. To send one, register a Payment link Stripe under New payment in the booking's Payment section; that sends the payment email itself.

Test bookings: only the confirmation

A booking made with Make a test booking (in the top bar of the location page, next to Save) gets its confirmation email and nothing after it: no reminders, no When booking confirmation is sent emails. The confirmation's subject starts with [TEST] ([PRUEBA] in Spanish, [TESTE] in Portuguese, [TESTI] in Finnish), and the email opens with a line saying it is a test booking made by the business itself, which is cancelled automatically and keeps no money. The copies to your team go out as usual, so you see exactly what customers get. How the test booking itself works is in the setup checklist guide.

Sender name and replies

You can't change the sender. Emails arrive from Rentalbuddy's no-reply address, noreply@rentalbuddy.io, with RentalBuddy as the sender name, not your company name. They carry no reply-to address either, so a customer who presses Reply writes to that no-reply address, and you never see it.

Give customers a real way to reach you: keep Contact details – Location switched on and the location's phone and email filled in. You can also add your contact details to Closing text. The guide about customers contacting Rentalbuddy instead of you goes through every place your contact details should be.

What emails can't do: attachments, terms, receipts, SMS

No attachments. You can't attach a PDF of your terms, house rules or anything else.
No terms block. The Terms & Conditions your customers accept at checkout never appear in emails. For house rules, put the text or a link to your website in Introduction text or Closing text, or in a When booking confirmation is sent email. To make customers actively accept rules before unlocking, use the before-unlock step in Customer flow (see the customer flow guide).
No separate receipt. The booking confirmation, with its Booking details block, is the booking document. Card payment receipts come from Stripe, not from Rentalbuddy (see the guide on what is done in Rentalbuddy and what in Stripe).
No SMS. Email is the only channel.

Copies of the confirmation to your own team

Only the booking confirmation is copied to you, and copies are on by default. The addresses are under Settings → Account → Account Contact E-mail ("Add one or more addresses. Booking confirmation copies are sent to each address when enabled."). Use Add contact email or Remove contact email to manage them. The switch below the addresses is Send booking confirmation email copies to Account Contact E-mail.

Each address gets its own copy, with "Copy:" in front of the subject. Copies also go out when you send a new confirmation from a booking. Reminders, payment emails and membership emails are never copied. There is no separate notification address per location.

Emails Rentalbuddy sends to you, not to customers

Problem alerts, in English: when a lock can't create PIN codes or a lock unit is offline, and a booking on it starts within 12 hours, Rentalbuddy emails your Account Contact E-mail addresses (or, if none are set, the users who can manage users), for example "Lock 12 at Beach cannot create PIN codes: a booking starts soon". At most one such email per account per day. Problems without a booking that soon are not emailed for now, and neither is a broken Igloohome connection: they are shown on Home and on the Locks tab. The details are in the guide on connecting and managing locks.
Sauna heater emails: if you use Harvia heaters, the heater reminders and failure alerts are described in the Harvia guide.
User invitations and role changes are described in the users and roles guide.

The email preview

The right side of the editor is a live Email preview that updates as you type, before you save. It has a language selector and two width buttons, Desktop width and Mobile width. On a phone, press Show preview to see it.

The preview uses example data: an example company, customer and booking, and a placeholder instead of your logo. It shows the buttons as you have switched them here. Remember that Extend booking and Move start time follow each location's setting in the real email.

Common questions

My reminder never went out. Why? Open its settings and check Booking status first, because empty means never. Then check Active, Booking type and Locations. If the booking was made after the send moment had passed, no reminder was planned.

Will the reminder still be sent if the customer books less than 2 hours before start? No. A "2 hours before start" reminder is only planned if that moment is still in the future when the booking is made.

The customer extended their booking but the "30 minutes left" reminder came at the old time. Extending a booking does not move its planned reminders, so a reminder timed before the booking's end still follows the original end time. Moving a booking does move them.

Where do I edit the confirmation text? Settings → Emails → the row with the trigger When the booking is created → click it → Introduction text.

The Start booking and End booking buttons do nothing at our staffed location. The confirmation is shared by all your locations. If none of them is self-service, switch off the rows named Before booking, Start booking and End booking.

I switched on "Start booking" but customers still see "Before booking". The admin row names are swapped. The row named Before booking is the one customers see as "Start booking", so check the text field next to each switch.

How do I get my phone number into the confirmation? Fill in Location phone and Location email on the location's Location settings tab and keep Contact details – Location on. Otherwise customers see "[Site Phone]".

Can I send a different confirmation per location? Not a different confirmation. Add an email with When booking confirmation is sent, limited to that location, and it arrives right after the confirmation.

Why does the email come from RentalBuddy and not from us, and where do replies go? The sender is always Rentalbuddy's no-reply address, and replies don't reach you. Put your contact details in the email instead.

I made a test booking and got the confirmation but no reminder. That is by design: test bookings made with Make a test booking only get the confirmation, with [TEST] in front of the subject.

Why is "Payment email" greyed out under Send new message? The booking has nothing left to pay, so there is no open payment link to send. Create one with New payment → Payment link Stripe; that sends the payment email.

Can customers get their emails in Portuguese? Yes. Portuguese is one of the twelve booking languages. Switch it on under Languages to show in booking view, and add Portuguese versions of any email texts you wrote yourself.

When will the reminder be sent for this booking? Open the booking and press Messages. A pending reminder shows its rule, such as Reminder 30 minutes before booking end, not a clock time; count from the booking's start or end time.

Why are dates in my emails written like 2026-07-04? Emails write dates as year-month-day in every language. The time after it follows Time display: 14:30, or 02:30 PM with 12-hour times.

How do I show the start time without the date? Use [Booking start time] (or [Booking end time]). [Booking Date] gives the date together with the start time.