Automations

Automations are Sollos doing the remembering: confirmations, reminders, review asks, invoice sends, team alerts. There's a fixed set with on/off switches — no automation builder, no custom triggers, no editable email templates. You choose from the list; Sollos runs them on schedule.

The switches

The client-journey switches live at Settings → Client automations; the machinery moved next to what it acts on — invoicing automations on Settings → Invoicing, the recurring-invoice switch on Settings → Recurring invoices, and payroll/timesheet automations (including the clock-out auto-cap thresholds) on Settings → Payroll & timesheets. One master switch on the Client automations page still governs all of them, wherever they live — flipping it off pauses everything, invoice auto-send included. Everything starts off. Two one-click presets get you going: The essentials (8 core automations) and Full service (19). Presets only ever turn things on; they never disable what you've chosen.

The page has two permanent sections:

• Client automations — every message a client can receive, in the order of their journey: winning the work (estimate follow-ups, expiry), when a job is booked (confirmations, reschedule notices, crew assignment), the day before (24h reminder), job done & getting paid (review ask, overdue reminders, receipts), growing the business (Google review asks, rebooking nudges).
• Team alerts & housekeeping — internal notifications and background bookkeeping that never reach a client: crew schedules, digests, training reminders, auto-complete and auto-archive timers. (Payroll, PTO, and invoicing machinery live on their own settings pages; the two website lead alerts live on Intake forms.)

Who actually receives a client message

Turning a toggle on never spams anyone by itself. Every client message passes a chain:

1. The org toggle turns the message type on.
2. The house default (Default client notifications: email / text / both / none) sets the baseline.
3. The client's own setting wins over the house default — follow it, customize per category (booking / billing / reviews), or do-not-contact.
4. Texts additionally require the client's SMS opt-in (double opt-in; STOP always wins). No opt-in, no text — ever.

An org that wants nothing sent to unconfigured clients sets the house default to "No notifications" and opts clients in one by one.

Texting in the US. US carriers block business texts until the business is registered with them. A US business turns texting on from Settings → SMS / Texting by filling in the registration there once: legal name and EIN, business address, website, an owner or officer as the contact (with an email on the business's own domain), and where customers get help. Sollos submits it, checks on it every hour, and as soon as the carriers approve it buys a local number in the business's area code and turns texting on by itself. Approval usually takes one to three weeks, and the carriers charge a registration fee and a monthly fee. If they ask for changes, the page says what and the registration can be fixed and sent again. A business without a privacy policy or texting terms page can use the ones Sollos hosts for it. Canadian businesses don't register; Enable SMS gives them a number straight away.

Asking rarely: the cadence knobs

Two automations have an "At most" cadence dropdown right beside their toggle, because asking too often is worse than not asking:

• Internal review request — after every clean (30-day minimum gap), 4× a year, 2× a year, or once a year, per client. A client who already left a review inside that window is never re-asked. Clients can always volunteer a review from their portal — every finished visit carries a link — so asking can be rare without reviews being rare.
• Rebooking nudge — same options. It only ever targets clients with no future booking, 14+ days after their last clean, and never someone whose last visit was over 6 months ago.

Google review asks are separate and even more restrained: one ask 48 hours after a client's first completed job, a reminder a week later, then monthly to a cap — and it stops the instant they click. Needs your Google review URL in Settings → Branding.

Invoice auto-send lives elsewhere

Auto-sending drafted invoices is configured at Settings → Invoicing, not here. When it's on you pick a send time and a rhythm, and the page states the result back to you in a sentence — "Invoices go out every Friday at 5:00 PM." Three rhythms:

• The day after the job — the default, and what everyone had before.
• After a set number of hours — 24, 48 or 72 hours of review, then the next time the clock reaches your send time.
• On one day each week — everything drafted since the last send goes out together on your chosen day. A draft raised less than an hour before the deadline waits for the following week rather than slipping out unreviewed.

This governs per-job invoices — "everyone else". Clients you've put on a weekly, biweekly or monthly billing cycle keep their own schedule; the separate "Also auto-send biweekly / monthly invoices" switch is their opt-out.

Every draft still has Hold and Send-now escape hatches, and the Morning invoice review digest toggle (here, under Job done & getting paid) emails you each morning what's going out later that day.

The fine print that keeps you safe

• Settings → Thresholds holds the housekeeping timers (auto-expire, auto-void, auto-complete, auto-archive). A blank field disables that timer.
• Marketing-style emails (rebooking nudges, Google asks) carry their own one-click unsubscribe — unsubscribing stops only those, never booking confirmations or invoices.
• Manual Send buttons always work, automation settings or not. Same for shift-offer texts: owner-clicked is always allowed.
• Offer shift on a booking texts a claim link to your own subcontractors (paid their usual rate) and the on-call pool (paid the flat amount on the offer) at once — first tap claims it.