Automations — Help

Some things should happen like clockwork. A month before the wedding, invite the couple to book their final planning call. A week out, send the arrival and parking details. The day after, drop a thank-you and a feedback link. When a quote goes out, follow it up a few days later if you have not heard back. And in the background, spin up the checklist of jobs your team works through for every booking. These are the notes and tasks you always mean to handle and sometimes forget in the rush. An automation handles them for you, on a schedule or the moment something happens. You set it up once, and it quietly does the rest.

Automations have grown well beyond a single "email the client before the event" rule. This article covers the two halves of the Automations page (the system emails 1pm sends for you, and the automations you build yourself), the shape of a custom automation (a trigger and its actions), the triggers and actions on offer, the review queue that lets you check client emails before they go, and where replies land. New triggers and actions are added over time, so this focuses on how the pieces fit rather than listing every one exhaustively.

The two halves of the Automations page

Open Automations in the sidebar and you will see two groups:

System emails. The transactional emails 1pm already sends on your behalf: the crew invite, the quote and invoice and confirmation emails, the "booking confirmed" note, the crew request emails, and so on. These are always on. You do not switch them off, but you can rewrite the wording to sound like you, and reset any of them back to the original if you change your mind.
Your automations. The rules you build yourself. Each one is a trigger and the actions it runs. These start off, so nothing sends until you arm it, and you can turn them on and off, edit them, or delete them freely.

Below both groups sit Sending soon (client emails waiting in their review window) and Recent activity (what has already gone out). More on those further down.

System emails: editing what 1pm already sends

Every account gets a set of ready-made emails so the app is useful out of the box. They cover the moments that already send an email today: inviting a crew member or portal contact to their link, sending a quote, invoice or confirmation, confirming a booking after payment, emailing the invoice PDF when a client generates one to pay by bank transfer, thanking a crew member when they finish their requests, prompting someone to re-upload an expiring document, telling them an upload was rejected, and welcoming someone who self-registers.

Alongside those sit the scheduled chases: an outstanding requests reminder a set number of days after an invite, a document expiring reminder before a dated file on record runs out, a document expired reminder after it has lapsed with nothing sent in, and a rejected upload reminder for a file you sent back that has never been replaced. All four are switched off until you turn them on, and each carries a day count you set.

Each shows as a card in the System emails group. To change the wording, click Edit, rewrite the subject and body (the same editor and merge fields as any other email action, covered below), and save. Your version is used from then on. Changed your mind? Reset puts the original wording back.

A few things to know:

Most are always on. A system email tied to a real moment in the app (you send a quote, a crew member finishes their requests) has no on/off toggle and no delete, because the moment happens whether you like it or not. Editing the wording is the control you have. The four scheduled chases are the exception, below.
Some fill in extra details automatically. The document prompt drops in the file name and its expiry date. The upload-rejection email drops in your reason. The invite carries the crew member's private link. You position these with a merge field and 1pm fills the rest in when it sends.
Which ones you see depends on your account. If your account does not use the Leads funnel, the quote/invoice/confirmation emails are hidden. If your account is portals-only, you see the portal invite rather than the event crew invite.

Four system emails are the exception to "always on", and they all start switched off. Each is a chase you might not want sent in your name without deciding to, so each is opt-in: turn it on and set the number of days when you are ready.

Outstanding requests reminder, a set number of days after you invited a crew member, if their requests are still not done. Starts at 7 days, and it fires once per person.
Document expiring reminder, a set number of days before a dated document you hold runs out. Starts at 30 days.
Document expired reminder, a set number of days after it lapsed with nothing sent in to replace it. Starts at 7 days.
Rejected upload reminder, a set number of days after you rejected a file, if no replacement has arrived. Starts at 7 days, and it repeats your original reason so they do not have to go and find it.

The three document ones run per document, not per person, so a crew member holding three dated certificates gets three independent chases. Replacing a file re-arms the ladder, because the replacement is a new upload. Between them, these are the difference between a compliance list you have to work by hand and one that works itself; Chasing expiring documents covers the manual side.

The Invoice generated email works a little differently too. It sends when a client confirming by bank transfer clicks "Generate an invoice", and it always attaches the invoice as a PDF so their accounts team has a file to work from. You can switch it on or off, and you can limit it to one lead type (so, say, only wedding enquiries get it), the same filter custom automations use.

The shape of a custom automation

Everything in the Your automations group is built from two parts:

A trigger is when it runs. You pick one.
One or more actions are what happens when it runs. You can stack several, and they run in the order you list them.

Read together they make a sentence: "X days before the event, send this email and create these tasks", or "when a quote is sent, wait three days, then email the client a nudge". Change the trigger and the timing shifts; change the actions and the outcome does. Everything else in this article hangs off that one idea.

An automation is a rule for your whole account, not something you set up event by event. Once it is on, it applies automatically to every event (or lead, or crew member, depending on the trigger) that matches.

Triggers: choosing when it runs

The trigger is the first thing you pick, from a short wizard grouped by what the trigger fires off. You will see the groups that apply to your account.

Events (tied to the event date). These are swept daily and only ever touch confirmed events:

X days before the event, for the lead-up: reminders, prep, a pre-event chat.
X days after the event, for the wrap-up: thank-yous, feedback requests, follow-up jobs.

Type the number of days into the sentence that follows. Use 0 to land on the event day itself.

Leads (tied to a lead moving through your pipeline). These fire the instant it happens, straight to the lead, with no review hold:

Enquiry received, the moment a new lead is captured. Paired with the lead-type filter (below), this is what kicks off a form-specific welcome or nurture sequence.
Quote sent, Quote opened, Quote accepted, Agreement signed, and Booking confirmed, each firing as the lead crosses that step. Use these for a timely nudge, a thank-you, or an internal heads-up.

Requests (tied to a crew member acting on their link). These fire off a specific crew member, so their emails and merge fields are personalised to that person:

Requests completed, when a crew member finishes everything you asked them for.
Self-registration, when someone joins via a self-registration link or QR code.
Requests not completed, a scheduled chase that fires a set number of days after their invite if their requests are still outstanding (it fires once per person, and stops if they finish partway through).
Document expiring, a set number of days before a dated document you hold for them runs out.
Document expired, a set number of days after it lapsed, if nothing has replaced it.
Rejected upload not replaced, a set number of days after you rejected a file, if they still have not sent a new one. Stacking two or three of these at 7, 14 and 21 days is the intended way to build an escalating chase.

The first two fire the instant they happen. The last four are swept daily and carry a day count you set in the sentence beneath them.

The built-in system email for these moments still sends. A custom Requests automation is additive: it lets you layer on your own drip, task creation, or an internal notification.

Invoices and payments (tied to a document rather than an event or a lead). These address the invoice's bill-to contact, which is what lets them work on a from-scratch invoice with no event behind it. They send immediately, with no review hold, because a reminder that an invoice falls due tomorrow is wrong by the time a day's hold expires:

Payment received, any time a payment is recorded against an invoice or a confirmation.
Paid in full, when a payment settles the whole balance. It fires in addition to Payment received, so if you have both wired up, write the two so they read sensibly one after the other.
Invoice due soon, a set number of days before an invoice falls due, if it is still owing.
Invoice overdue, a set number of days after it fell due, if it is still owing.

Appointments (tied to a booking's start time). One trigger, X minutes before an appointment, sends a reminder to either the Space contact or the client who booked, a set time before the appointment. Because it needs to know exactly when each appointment starts, it only works once you have set your calendar time zone, and it only fires for booked appointments.

We add new triggers over time, so you may see more choices than these. Whichever you pick, the rest of the setup works the same way.

Running an automation for one lead type only

The event and lead triggers can be scoped to a single lead type with the Only for this lead type picker. Leave it on "Any" to run for every enquiry, or pick one to give that form its own workflow: a wedding enquiry can kick off an entirely different sequence than a general event enquiry. On a date-based schedule, this matches the lead type the event's original enquiry came in on.

Actions: choosing what happens

Actions are what the automation actually does when its trigger fires. Add one with Add action, pick its type, and fill in its details. Add more than one and they run top to bottom, so order them the way you want them to happen. Drag to reorder, and each action has a Remove control.

The actions available (which ones you can pick depends on the trigger):

Send client email. Emails the event's client contact. Every client email waits in a 24-hour review queue before it sends, so you always get a last look. More on that queue further down.
Send crew email. On a Requests automation, emails the crew member the automation fired off, personalised to them and carrying their private link. Use it for a thank-you, a welcome, or a chase.
Send organizer email. Emails the event's organizer contact rather than the client. Set the organizer on the event itself (the Organizer picker sits next to the Client one). It stays in-house, so it sends straight away with no review queue.
Send account email. Emails the account owner (your own login email). Use it for internal heads-ups to yourself, for example "a booking just confirmed" or "chase the final numbers". Sends straight away, no review queue.
Send appointment reminder. On an appointment automation, emails either the Space contact or the client who booked, ahead of the appointment.
Send bill-to email. On an invoices and payments automation, emails the invoice's bill-to contact: a receipt, a due-date warning, an overdue chase. Sends straight away, no review queue.
Create planner tasks. Turns one of your saved workflows into work on the event: its steps become a single task named after the workflow, with a step for each item, for your team to tick off. Created right away, no review step. Workflows live on the Tasks page, and editing one there applies to future runs.
Wait. A pause, not a send. Drop a Wait between two actions and everything below it is delayed by that long, so you can build a drip: "email now, wait three days, email again". Set the pause as a number plus a unit (minutes, hours, or days), though on a date-based schedule, which is swept once a day, a wait is rounded to whole days. This is what turns a trigger that fires instantly, like Quote sent, into a spaced-out sequence.

One automation holds up to 20 actions, which is more sequence than most drips need.

As with triggers, the list of actions grows, so you may see more types than these. Each one explains itself as you add it.

Writing an email action

When an action sends an email, you are writing a short message: a Subject and an Email body.

Merge fields personalise each email. Click into the subject or body first, then click a field to drop it in. They fill from the client and event (or the crew member, for a Requests automation) when the email goes out, for example the person's name, the company or couple name, the event name and date, and the guest count. A crew email also offers the crew member's private link. Anything you do not recognise is left exactly as typed.

The body also takes light formatting: wrap a phrase in *asterisks* for bold, and use Link to add a button or link (handy for pasting your booking-page link so clients can grab a slot).

Attach a file to an email action with Attach, which opens your Files library. Attachments come from the library rather than an upload here, because an automation fires indefinitely and the file has to keep existing: an induction pack, a site map, a menu. Attaching the same file twice does nothing.

Two buttons help you check an email before you commit:

Preview renders the email against a sample contact and event, so you see the merge fields filled in.
Send test to me emails the finished version to your own account address, subject-tagged as a test, so you can read it in a real inbox.

Setting one up

In the Your automations group, click New automation. Give it a Name for your own reference (for example "Pre-wedding consultation invite"), pick a trigger and its timing, then add the actions you want. The Active (running) toggle arms it; new automations start off, so you can check the wording and preview an email before switching it on.

Save with Create automation. Back on the list, each automation shows an On or Off badge and a one-line summary, with Turn off / Turn on, Edit, and Delete to hand. Deleting keeps anything it already did (emails sent, tasks created) in place.

The "Sending soon" review queue

The client email does not send the instant an event qualifies. This is the safety net worth understanding, and it applies to the client email only. The crew, organizer, and account emails, appointment reminders, and task creation all happen immediately.

When an automation's client email matches an event, 1pm prepares the email (recipient, subject, and body all filled in) and parks it in a Sending soon queue for 24 hours before it actually sends. That section sits on the Automations page, listing every pending email with when it will go, which automation and event it is for, who it is to, and its subject.

The point of the hold is simple: what you see there is exactly what will be sent, and you have a full day to catch anything you would rather did not go. If an email looks wrong, or the situation has changed, click Cancel on its row. You are asked to confirm, and once cancelled that email will not send, and the automation will not try to queue it again for that event.

The email is a frozen snapshot taken when it was queued, so editing the automation afterwards does not change one already waiting in the queue. The timing is worked out so the email still lands the right number of days from the event, review window included.

Below the queue, a Recent activity history shows what has gone out, each marked Sent (or Done, for tasks created) or, if something went wrong, Failed with the reason. Nothing retries silently, so a failure is always visible rather than lost.

Where replies go

A client email is sent as part of the event's Leads conversation, from your account reply address. So when the client hits reply, their message threads straight back into your Leads inbox, alongside everything else you have said to them. You are not starting a separate conversation that lives in some other inbox, it is all in one place.

If the event came from a lead, it already has that thread. If you created the event directly (typed it in, or imported it), 1pm quietly sets up a matching lead for the client so the reply has a home. That lead shows under the Converted tab in Leads.

Turning it off

For a custom automation, there are two levels of control. To stop it running at all, Turn off the automation (or flip its Active (running) toggle). To stop one specific client email that is already lined up, Cancel it in the Sending soon queue. An automation that is off is skipped entirely, so nothing new gets queued while it is paused.

System emails are the exception: they cannot be turned off, because they are tied to something you did in the app. If you do not want the wording to say anything at all, keep it to a minimal, neutral message, or reset it to the original.

Tasks and checklists is your own private to-do list, and the source of the checklists a "Create planner tasks" action turns into work on an event.
Replying to leads covers the Leads thread that automation email replies land in.
Capturing enquiries with a form covers the lead types the "Enquiry received" trigger and the lead-type filter work off.
Event confirmations covers getting an event to confirmed, the point at which the date-based automations start running against it.
Asking crew for documents and info covers the requests a crew member completes, which the Requests triggers fire off.
Appointments and the booking page covers the appointments an appointment-reminder automation runs against, and the booking link you might send from an email action.