Every business has worn the cost of a no-show. You load the van, drive across town, and there is no one home. That is fuel, a time slot you could have sold to someone else, and an hour or two of a crew’s day gone, with nothing to invoice for it.
The frustrating part is how preventable it is. Most no-shows are not people dodging you, they just forgot, or wrote down the wrong day. A simple reminder the evening before fixes the large majority of them. The catch is that remembering to send those reminders, every night, for every job booked the next day, is its own job that nobody has time for.
So let us hand that job to Axiom Blue. This automation is a little different from the others: instead of reacting to an event, it runs on a schedule. Every evening it looks up tomorrow’s jobs and texts each customer a reminder, all on its own. Let us build it.
What we will set up
- Run an automation on a schedule instead of an event
- Have it fire every evening at 6pm
- Find every job booked for the next day
- Send each of those customers a reminder text
- Switch it on and let it run every night
Workflows -> New Automation -> Add node
Open a blank automation
Open Workflows from the sidebar, choose New Automation, and click Add to open the node palette.
Up to now you have used Event triggers, the "when this happens" kind. This time, look at the Schedule trigger instead. It is the "every day at this time" kind, and it is what lets an automation run on its own timetable with no event to kick it off.
Concept
Not every automation waits for something to happen. This one uses a Schedule trigger, which runs the workflow on a clock rather than in response to an event.
Advantage
It means you can automate the recurring nightly chores, the things that need doing on a timetable, not just the ones that react to a customer action.
Schedule Trigger node -> Cron and timezone
Run it every evening at 6pm
From the palette, under Triggers, add a Schedule trigger. Set its cron expression to 0 18 * * *, which reads as "at 6pm, every day", and set the timezone to your own, for example Australia/Sydney.
Do not let cron put you off. You only need this one pattern, and the field tells you what it means. This is the heartbeat that wakes the automation up each evening.
Concept
A Schedule trigger runs on a cron expression, a compact way of writing "when". The value 0 18 * * * simply means every day at 6pm, in the timezone you set.
Advantage
You pick a time that suits your customers, the early evening, when a reminder for tomorrow actually lands, and the automation shows up at that time, every single day, without anyone setting an alarm.
AQL Query node -> Iterate per job
Find every job booked for tomorrow
From the palette, under Data, add an AQL Query node. The query asks for tomorrow’s jobs, using a relative date so it always means "the day after today", no matter when it runs.
The important switch here is Iterate, run downstream nodes once per row. Tick it, and the next step runs separately for every job found, so each customer gets their own text rather than one message trying to cover everyone.
Concept
An AQL Query node looks up data. Here it finds every job scheduled for the next day. With Iterate switched on, the steps that follow run once for each job it finds.
Advantage
One automation covers ten jobs or one without any extra work. The iterate option turns a single workflow into a loop, sending a separate, personal reminder for every booking.
Send SMS node -> Per-job message
Text each customer a reminder
From the palette, under Actions, add a Send SMS node. Write a short, warm reminder, and notice the placeholder for the customer name uses the current row, meaning the specific job being processed in this loop.
Keep it human: a quick note that you will be there tomorrow, and an invitation to reply if the time no longer suits. That single reply path saves a wasted trip far more often than it costs you.
Concept
A Send SMS node sends the text. Because it runs inside the iteration, it can use the current job’s details, so each message is addressed to the right customer with the right booking.
Advantage
Every customer gets a short, friendly heads-up the night before, with an easy way to reply if they need to move the time. Fewer locked gates, fewer empty driveways, fewer wasted trips.
The finished automation
Switch it on and let it run nightly
Connect the chain: the 6pm schedule, the lookup of tomorrow’s jobs, then the reminder SMS. Drag from each node’s handle to the next to join them.
Name it, Save, and use Test to run it through once. New automations start Paused, so flip it to active when you are ready. That is the whole thing: a quiet nightly routine that protects your calendar while you are at the pub or asleep.
Concept
Connect the three nodes in order, give the automation a name, Save, and switch it from Paused to active. From then on it runs every evening with no input from you.
Advantage
Tonight at 6pm, and every night after, every customer with a job tomorrow gets a reminder. Your no-show rate drops and your crews spend their days on jobs that are actually there.
No-shows feel like bad luck, but they are mostly just a memory problem, and memory problems are exactly what automation is good at solving.
A reminder that goes out every evening, to every customer booked for the next day, without anyone having to think about it, turns a recurring source of wasted days into a non-issue. Build it once, and it quietly protects your calendar for as long as you run the business.
Try it in Axiom Blue
Want your calendar to protect itself?
Explore the live demo or start a free trial to build this automation yourself, then see how Axiom Blue ties scheduling, jobs, invoicing and customer messaging into one system, all without code.