E-mail templates

By the end of this guide, you'll know which guest e-mails you can rewrite, how to edit one in each language, how to check it before a guest sees it, and which text a guest actually receives.

You don't have to do anything

Every guest e-mail already goes out with our default text in 34 languages. You only open a template when you want to say something your way — a warmer welcome, directions to the key box, a note about the sauna. Anything you don't touch keeps using our text.

Step 1: Open E-mail templates

Sidebar → Settings → E-mail templates. The page lists the e-mails Cabintale sends to your guests, grouped by moment:

• Bookings — Booking request received, Booking confirmation
• Payments — Balance received, Payment link, Payment didn't go through
• Orders — Order confirmation (only if you sell products or vouchers)
• Guest book — Check-in link, Check-in reminder (only if a place has the guest book switched on)

Groups for what you actually sell come first. If you sell more vouchers and products than you take bookings, Orders moves to the top.

What each card tells you

• When it's sent — e.g. "Right after a booking is confirmed, and again when the deposit or the full price is paid." The check-in cards read your real place settings, e.g. "3 days before arrival (place setting)" or "Off — you send or copy the link from the booking".
• Language chips — up to three language codes where you've written your own text, then +N. Click +N to see every language with your own text and when it was last edited. Default text means you haven't changed this e-mail yet.
• Not sent for N places — on the booking e-mails only. These places or services have Send confirmation email to guests turned off, so this e-mail doesn't go out for them at all. Click it to jump to the first one.

Which e-mails you can edit

Text for means you can write a different text for a place booking, a service booking, a voucher or a product — a service has no check-out or address, so its text usually reads differently. Versions means one e-mail has several texts for different moments: the booking confirmation, for example, says something different when nothing is paid yet than when the guest has paid in full.

Subjects aren't editable — they're set per language, e.g. "Payment for your booking — Cabin Under the Oak".

Step 2: Open a template

Click a card (or its arrow, Open template). The editor opens with:

• The title and, when the e-mail has more than one, a version menu. Under the title, a "Sent when…" line for the version you're on.
• Text for — switch between Place, Service, Voucher and Product. Only the kinds you actually use are offered; the editor opens on the one you have most of.
• Language tabs — named in their own language (Čeština, Deutsch). A tab marked · default still shows our text.
• The text itself, drawn inside the real e-mail — the listing name on top, the footer at the bottom — so you edit it the way the guest will read it.

Step 3: Write your text

Click into the text and type. The toolbar has Bold, Italic, Link and Bullet list — nothing else, so the e-mail looks right in every inbox. Link opens a small dialog for a web address or an e-mail address. Pasted text arrives as plain text.

Insert booking details

Use Insert detail to drop in something that changes per booking. Click a detail to insert it where the cursor is, drag it into the text, or type { to search.

For a service, the Stay group becomes Service (no address, stay dates or check-out — Check-in date becomes Date). For vouchers and products it becomes Product, and Booking becomes Order (Order number instead of Booking number, no Balance due).

Your e-mail is your account e-mail — guests' replies go there anyway, but it's handy in a sentence like "Write to me at …".

The blocks we add for you

Grey cards marked Added automatically hold the parts we fill in from the booking:

• Booking details — dates, guests, booking number
• Price and payments — the price breakdown, what's paid and what's left
• Pay button — the amount to pay and a Pay now button
• Check-in button — the check-in button and the short note about why it's needed
• Order items — voucher codes, value and expiry

Every block has to stay in the e-mail — it holds what the guest needs, and in a confirmation, what the law requires. You can move a block up or down: drag it, use Move up / Move down, or select it and press Alt+↑ / Alt+↓. Your text can sit above, between and below the blocks.

Step 4: Add a language

Click + next to the tabs. Your widgets' languages are listed first, then Other languages. A new tab starts with our default text in that language, ready to rewrite. Up to five tabs show at once; the rest go under N more.

The Check-in link and Check-in reminder go out only in Czech, English, German and Polish, so those are the only languages you can add there.

To remove a language, hover its tab and click ×. Guests in that language get our default text again.

Step 5: Preview and send yourself a test

Click Preview in the header. You see the e-mail exactly as it's sent — subject on top, your unsaved changes included — filled in with a sample booking (guest Jana Nováková, your own first place or product). Click Editing to go back.

In Preview, Send test e-mail sends that version to your own account e-mail (subject starts with [Test]). It never goes to a guest.

Step 6: Save

Click Save. Every language, version and text-for you changed is saved at once, and from then on guests get your text. Saving never sends an e-mail to anyone.

If you close the editor with unsaved changes, you're asked whether to Save or Discard them.

Going back to our text

On a tab with your own text, click Reset to default text in the footer, confirm, then Save. That language goes back to our default; your changes are deleted.

Which text a guest gets

A guest gets the e-mail in the language they booked in (the language of your widget):

1. Your text in that language, if you wrote one for that kind (place, service…) and version.
2. Otherwise our default text in that language.
3. Otherwise English — the whole e-mail, subject included.

Your text in one language is never used for another. If you wrote only Czech, a German guest gets our German default.

Bookings you enter by hand have no widget language, so their e-mails go out in your account's language.

Check-in e-mails use the language you picked in Send by email, otherwise the booking's widget language, otherwise yours.

How your e-mails look

• Your business name sits in bold at the top, above the place, service or product name — and signs the footer. If your account has no business name, only the listing name shows.
• Pay and check-in buttons take your colour — the primary colour you use most across your widgets, with white text. A colour too light to read on is darkened in the same shade until it's easy to read.
• From shows the place, service or product name; Reply-To is your account e-mail, so a guest who hits reply writes straight to you.
• The footer says the e-mail was sent on your behalf through Cabintale.com.

Switches that decide whether an e-mail goes out

The templates decide what an e-mail says. Whether it goes out is set elsewhere:

• Send confirmation email to guests — place or service → Notifications. Off means no booking request, confirmation or balance e-mails for that place. The templates list shows these as Not sent for N places.
• Send confirmation email to customers — product settings. Off means no order confirmation for that product.
• Send the check-in link and Remind if details are missing — place → guest book settings. See Guest check-in.

Troubleshooting

Related guides

• Email notifications — Email notifications
• Guest check-in — Guest check-in
• Guest book — Guest book
• Languages and currencies — Languages and currencies
• Widget look & feel — Widget look & feel