Message Templates
Message templates are your own ready-made texts and emails -- a payment link, directions to the garage, a parts-arrived note. You write one once; then in any customer message box you click Use template, pick it, and it drops in already filled in for that customer. You read it, change anything you like, and send it the usual way.
Front desk and garage admins can write, change and use templates. Technicians can't -- only the desk sends messages to customers.
Writing a template
Go to Settings -> Messages and open the Templates tab; under Your templates click New template.
- Name -- what you'll see in the picker, e.g. Payment link. Each name can be used once.
- Use for -- SMS & email (offered in both), SMS only or Email only.
- Email subject (optional, not for SMS only) -- the subject line when it goes by email.
- Message -- the text. Click a placeholder under the box to put it where your cursor is.
The Preview underneath shows how it reads for a sample customer, with your garage's own name and phone. If you type a word in curly brackets that isn't a placeholder (a typo like {frist_name}), the preview says so -- it would be left out of the message. For SMS-able templates the preview counts the characters; past 160 it says how many texts it would go as.
Click Save template. Every template has Edit and Delete on its card.
Don't ask the customer to reply. Your texts go out from your sender name (no number behind it), and email replies don't come back into MechIQ, so a template that says reply, text us back or reply YES is not saved -- the form says why. Ask them to call instead ({garage_phone}).
Every garage starts with one example, Payment link:
Hello {first_name}, here is your secure payment link from {garage_name}: {payment_link}
Change it or delete it -- it is an ordinary template.
Placeholders
| Placeholder | Filled with | Empty when |
|---|---|---|
{customer_name} |
The customer's full name | -- |
{first_name} |
The customer's first name | -- |
{garage_name} |
Your garage name | -- |
{garage_phone} |
Your garage phone (Garage Profile) | no phone saved |
{reg} |
The registration | no car, or a no-reg item |
{vehicle} |
Make, model and reg -- Toyota Corolla (191D12345) | no car |
{job_number} |
The job number | no job |
{invoice_number} |
The invoice number | no invoice |
{amount_due} |
What is still owed on the invoice -- €245.60 | nothing owed |
{payment_link} |
Where the customer pays (see below) | no payment link saved in Settings -> Payments, or nothing left to pay |
{booking_date} |
The job's booked date -- Wed 14 Oct 2026 | not booked |
{tracking_link} |
The job tracking link | job tracking is switched off, or no job |
The payment link is the same one the checkout screen shows: if your garage takes payments through a connected account (Settings -> Payments), it is the payment request for that invoice -- the invoice is marked paid automatically when the customer pays. Otherwise it is the plain payment link saved in Settings -> Payments -- even if your Card Payment Method is Manual terminal (that setting decides what checkout offers at the desk; picking a template with the link in it is asking for the link). With neither, the message gets [paste payment link here] where the link goes -- it is not dropped. Make the link in your card provider's portal, paste it over the marker, then send.
- An amber note under the box says: Paste the payment link over [paste payment link here] before sending.
- Send stays greyed out while the marker is still in the message, and says why. MechIQ also refuses to send a message that still has the marker in it.
Using a template
Use template sits in every customer message box:
- a customer's Messages tab (the composer above the timeline);
- a job's Messages (the tab, or the Message customer panel), once you've started a message (Write a message or a Progress update);
- the Ready to collect banner on a finished job;
- the mobile app's Message customer sheet on a job.
It lists the templates for the channel you're on (an email-only template isn't offered while you're texting). Pick one and the message box is replaced with it, filled in -- and on email the subject too. Nothing is sent: check it, edit it, then press Send as normal.
Where the details come from:
- On a job -- that job, its car, and its latest invoice.
- On a customer's Comms tab -- the customer, their car if they have only one, and their most recent invoice that still has money owing (and that invoice's job and car). A line under the picker says which invoice it used -- Filled in from invoice INV-0815 (job J-1042) -- so you can check it's the right one before sending.
If a placeholder can't be filled there -- say {amount_due} on a customer who owes nothing -- it is left out of the text, and an amber note says what was left out and why (Amount still owed (nothing owed)). Read the message before you send it; reword it if the gap shows. The payment link is the exception: it is never left out -- you paste it over the marker (see The payment link above).
Templates aren't offered over an approval request, a feedback request or a message MechIQ already prepared ("Draft -- not sent") -- those messages exist to carry a link MechIQ made, and swapping the text would drop it.
Tips
- One template can do both channels: keep it short enough to read well as a text, and give it a subject for email.
- The wording of MechIQ's automatic messages (booking confirmations, online booking replies, appointment and NCT/MOT reminders) is on the same tab, below your templates, under Automatic messages. Front desk and garage admins can both change it; whether each one is sent, and when, is a garage admin setting on What your customers receive -- see Messages Settings. The garage's name is
{garage_name}in every message. - In the mobile app, the Message customer sheet on a job shows your templates as buttons under the message (not on an approval request). Writing and editing templates is done on the web. The app asks you to paste the payment link over the marker too, and holds Send until you do.