Automatically message a contact on their birthday, renewal date, or any date that matters — using the guided setup wizard.
Before You Start, Make Sure You Have
- The Date (Reminders) add-on unlocked on your account — if it’s locked, you’ll see an unlock prompt the first time you open this page.
- At least one WhatsApp template already approved — see the Message Templates article if you haven’t created one yet.
- The name, phone number, and target date for at least one contact.
Faster Than a Blank Form – Click Ideas (top right of the Reminders page) before you start — it’s a library of ten ready-made starting points (Birthdays, Installments/EMI/SIP, Appointments, and more), and picking one carries its name, recurrence, and the Date (Reminders) add-on unlocked on your account — if it’s locked, you’ll see an unlock prompt the first time you open this page. At least one WhatsApp template already approved — see the Message Templates article if you haven’t created one yet. The name, phone number, and target date for at least one contact. Early-reminder timing goes straight into step 1 below. Everything is still editable; this just skips deciding those from scratch.
Follow Simple Steps
1. Start the Wizard
Go to Automation → Date (Reminders) and click Create Reminder (or pick an idea from Ideas first, per the tip above). Give it a name and choose how often it repeats — pick Yearly for something like a birthday.
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Leave Early Reminder blank to send exactly on the date, or set a number of minutes to send ahead of it. Leave Timezone on the account default unless this reminder’s contacts are elsewhere.
2. Add a Contact
The wizard asks for a contact before it lets you near a template — a Dynamic template’s variables can only map to fields that exist on a real contact. Pick one of three ways: Add one contact (type in a name, number, and date), Upload a CSV, or Connect Google Sheets. For a single contact, fill in their name, phone number (choose the country code first), and event date and time.
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Expecting a list that keeps growing rather than a one-off contact? Choosing Connect Google Sheets right here takes you into the same flow covered in Automating new contacts with Google Sheets below — you don’t have to finish the wizard first.
If The Same Number Needs Two Reminders –A phone number can only be added once per reminder list — a repeat is always rejected or skipped, so the same person never gets the same message twice by accident. If you genuinely need to message them more than once — say, a customer with two SIPs (recurring investments) renewing on different dates — don’t try to add their number twice to one list. Create a second reminder list instead (e.g. “SIP Renewal — 5th” and “SIP Renewal — 20th”) and add their number, with the right date, to each. This is exactly what the built-in Installments, EMI & SIP idea is for.
3. Pick a Template
Search for and select your approved template. GetGabs automatically detects whether it needs a Static or Dynamic setup based on whether the template has variables — you don’t have to choose this yourself.
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4. Map Variables (If Needed)
If your template has placeholders like {{1}}, connect each one to a contact field — e.g., map {{1}} to Name so every message opens with the right person’s name. If your template is Static, or has no variables, this step just confirms there’s nothing to map. Click Finish once it’s done.
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Common Mistake –An unmapped variable on a Dynamic template will leave that reminder flagged “Setup incomplete” back on the main list. Come back and finish the mapping via “Map Variables →” on the card if you didn’t complete it here.
What Happens Next
- Your reminder is active immediately. On the event date you set (or the early-reminder offset before it), GetGabs sends the message automatically
- Find it under the Contacts tab any time to see every contact across all your reminders, or click into one reminder’s own Upcoming, Completed, and All tabs with countdown badges.
- Check the Status tab to confirm messages are actually going out — Sent, Scheduled, Processing, or Failed.
- Need to add more contacts at once? Use Bulk Upload on the card with a CSV — name, number, eventDate as the three columns.
Automating new contacts with Google Sheets
Skip the repeat CSV uploads entirely — connect a spreadsheet once, and every new row becomes a scheduled reminder on its own.
1. Open Connect Google Sheets
Choose Connect Google Sheets — either right inside the setup wizard’s contact step, or from an existing reminder’s card. Paste the spreadsheet’s link, then click Connect with Google and approve the sign-in pop-up. GetGabs checks the link before starting sign-in, so a Google Doc or Drive link pasted by mistake is caught immediately instead of after you’ve gone through Google’s consent screen.
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2. Pick the Sheet Tab and Map Your Columns
Choose which tab holds your data, then map Phone and Event Date (both required) plus optional Name and Event Time columns. Your header names don’t need to match anything — this step is exactly where you tell GetGabs which column is which. A preview of the sheet’s first row confirms you’ve mapped the right ones before anything imports.
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Click Save & Import to pull in everything already in the sheet.
3. Turn on Automatic Sync
Back in the dialog’s management view, switch on Automatic Sync. From now on, GetGabs checks the sheet every few minutes on its own and imports any new rows as reminder contacts — no manual upload, ever again.
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Prefer Manual Control – Leave Automatic Sync off, and you’ll instead see a banner — “You have N new contacts in your sheet” — with a one-click Sync Now whenever you want to pull them in yourself.
Want to add another Extra Field mapping later, or fix one you got wrong? Click Reconfigure on the connected sheet any time — no need to disconnect first. A Reconfigure sync will even back-fill your new field onto contacts already imported, reported as “updated” alongside any newly “imported” ones.
What Happens Next
- Add a row to the connected sheet — from a form, another system, or just typing it in — and it becomes a scheduled WhatsApp reminder automatically, no trip back into GetGabs required.
- Every sync tells you exactly how many contacts were added or updated, and — separately — how many rows were skipped and why (already on the list, an unreadable date, or an invalid number).
- Disconnecting the sheet later doesn’t remove anything already
imported — it only stops pulling in new rows.
Getting Notified When a Reminder Sends
Get a WhatsApp message on your own number every time a contact actually receives theirs.
1. Turn on “Notify Me on Every Send”
Open a reminder for editing (or set this while creating one) and switch on Notify me on every send. Enter your own WhatsApp number, with country code and no + or spaces.
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2. Pick the Notification Template
Back on the reminder’s card, click Notification Template and choose the message you’ll receive — it’s a separate template from the one your contacts get, and it can map its own Dynamic variables from the same contact fields.
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Good to Know –Each notification to you is billed as its own WhatsApp template message, separate from the one sent to the contact.
