Working examples/Booking reminders

Booking reminders for a dog groomer

Prairie Paws Grooming is made up for this example. The code is real and open: read it or run it.

The problem

Clients call to book while the groomer’s hands are full, so calls go unanswered, and the ones who do book sometimes forget and don’t show.

What it does

• A confirmation the moment someone books online, with a link to move or cancel
• A reminder the day before and another 2 hours before, never at night
• A moved booking gets a new confirmation and new reminders; a cancelled one gets none
• The day’s schedule in the owner’s inbox every morning

The messy parts it handles

• JORDAN PRICE in capitals becomes Jordan Price; Ana.Lima@Gmial.com is fixed
• The same booking sent twice by the booking tool is confirmed once
• A 9 a.m. appointment’s 2-hour reminder would land at 7 a.m.: skipped, the day-before one already went
• A booking with no usable email goes to the owner to confirm by hand

The week, line by line

• 2bookings
• 1moved
• 3confirmations
• 4reminders
• 1morning schedule
• 0reminders at night

Speed: 5,000 bookings confirmed and checked for reminders in 1.4 seconds on a desktop PC (npm run bench). A small business’s whole year fits in under a second.

For your business

Most booking tools (Square, Acuity, Vagaro) have confirmations and reminders built in: those are switched on and set up first. This runs where they don’t, from the booking tool’s webhook.

More examples

• Lead follow-up for a plumberA plumber on a job can’t answer email or the website form. Inquiries sit for hours, and the customer books the next plumber on Google.
• Invoice reminders for a cleaning companyInvoices go out, a few go quiet, and chasing them is awkward and easy to forget. Money sits unpaid for weeks.
• Review requests for a salonHappy clients mean to leave a review and forget, and asking in person feels awkward.