WhatsApp Business: Inbox, Templates, Notices and Automatic Replies
Connect your WhatsApp Business number to answer customers and residents from one team inbox, send estimates, invoices and notices, and set automatic replies written from your own business details.
Connect your WhatsApp Business number to Seayora and every conversation with your customers, residents and applicants is in one inbox your whole team can answer — with estimates, invoices, notices and reminders sent from the same place, and automatic replies written from your own business details.
Connecting your number
Open WhatsApp on the website (it is in Communications) and choose Connect WhatsApp. A window from Meta opens and you sign in with the Facebook account that manages your business. You pick — or create — your WhatsApp Business account and the number to use, and Meta asks you to confirm what Seayora may do. When the window closes, Seayora checks with Meta that you granted access to exactly that account, then subscribes to its messages.
- Keep using the WhatsApp Business app: if your number is already on the WhatsApp Business app on your phone, choose "Keep using the WhatsApp Business app". You scan a code in the app, your recent chat history comes across, and anything you send from the phone also appears in Seayora.
- Seayora only: a number that is not on WhatsApp yet, or that you want answered only from Seayora, is set up and registered with a six-digit PIN Seayora keeps sealed.
- Connecting is done on the website, because Meta’s sign-in window only works in a browser. Once connected, the inbox, replies, templates and notices work on both phone apps.
- Seayora never sees your Facebook password. It keeps a business access token from Meta, encrypted, and you can disconnect at any time.
- Meta’s sign-in for Seayora lasts 60 days. Two weeks before it ends, the Setup checklist asks the account owner to press Connect WhatsApp again — your conversations, templates and settings stay as they are.
The Setup tab shows a checklist — connected, a number registered, templates approved, the display name approved by Meta — and Check connection asks Meta again whenever you want to be sure.
The 24-hour window
WhatsApp lets a business write freely to somebody for 24 hours after that person last wrote to it. Outside that window, the only thing a business may send is a template Meta has approved. Seayora handles this for you:
- Inside the window, your reply goes straight away — text, a photo, a PDF or another file.
- Outside it, your reply is kept as "Waiting for them to reply", and Seayora sends one approved message saying you have written to them. The moment they answer, everything waiting goes out, in order.
- Each conversation shows whether the window is open and when it closes.
Message templates
When you connect, Seayora submits a set of ready-made templates to Meta for approval in English, Spanish, French and Chinese. Approval usually takes minutes and can take a day. The Templates tab shows each one’s status, and you can add your own.
| Template | What it says (English) | Details you fill in |
|---|---|---|
| seayora_estimate_ready | Hello {{1}}, {{2}} has sent you estimate {{3}} for {{4}}. Tap the button below to read it, ask a question or accept it. | Their first name, Your business name, Estimate number, Amount |
| seayora_invoice_ready | Hello {{1}}, {{2}} has sent you invoice {{3}} for {{4}}, due {{5}}. Tap the button below to view it and pay online. | Their first name, Your business name, Invoice number, Amount, Due date |
| seayora_new_message | Hello {{1}}, {{2}} has replied to your message. Reply to this message to read the reply and continue the conversation. | Their first name, Your business name |
| seayora_appointment_reminder | Hello {{1}}, this is a reminder from {{2}}: {{3}} is scheduled for {{4}}. Reply to this message if you need to change it. | Their first name, Your business name, What it is, When |
| seayora_request_update | Hello {{1}}, here is an update on request {{2}} from {{3}}: {{4}}. Reply to this message with any questions. | Their first name, Request number, Your business name, The update |
| seayora_rent_reminder | Hello {{1}}, a reminder from {{2}}: rent of {{3}} for {{4}} is due on {{5}}. Tap the button below to pay it in Seayora. | Their first name, Your business name, Amount, Which month, Due date |
| seayora_payment_received | Hello {{1}}, {{2}} has received your payment of {{3}} on {{4}}. Thank you, and reply here if anything looks wrong. | Their first name, Your business name, Amount, Date |
| seayora_building_notice | Hello {{1}}, a notice from {{2}} about {{3}}: {{4}}. Reply to this message if you have a question. | Their first name, Your business name, The building or address, The notice |
Every template is a Utility message — it is about something the person is already doing with you. Meta can move a template to another category; if it does, Seayora shows the new category on the Templates tab.
Who you may message, and STOP
WhatsApp’s rules require a person to have agreed to hear from you before a business starts a conversation. Somebody who writes to you first has agreed for that conversation. To message somebody first, you confirm in Seayora that they agreed, and Seayora records it with the date and who confirmed it, in these words:
“This person agreed to receive messages from us on WhatsApp, and they can reply STOP at any time to stop them.”
- Anybody can reply STOP, STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT (or the same word in Spanish, French or Chinese) at any time. Seayora confirms it once, with the reply you set on the Replies tab, and sends them nothing further — not a reply, a template or a notice — from any of your numbers until they write START.
- Blocking somebody from a conversation stops them reaching your inbox and stops your team writing to them.
Notices to a building or a list
On the Notices tab you can send one approved template to many people at once — everybody at a building, a list of conversations you choose, or everybody who has agreed to hear from you. Seayora shows how many people it will reach before you send, leaves out anybody who replied STOP or never agreed, and sends at a pace Meta accepts.
A notice reaches at most 1,000 people at a time. Notices are for things your residents and customers need to know — a water shut-off, a reminder, a change of office hours. Seayora’s own templates are all Utility. A template you write yourself as Marketing can be sent as a notice too — WhatsApp charges more for it, and the template picker says so before you send.
Estimates and invoices on WhatsApp
An estimate or an invoice has a Send on WhatsApp button beside Send by email. Seayora sends the customer a message with a link to read, accept or pay it. If they have written to you in the last 24 hours, the PDF goes too; otherwise the approved estimate or invoice template carries the link. The send is recorded on the document’s history exactly like an email.
Automatic replies
On the Replies tab you decide what Seayora answers by itself. In order, for each new message:
- A greeting, the first time somebody writes.
- Keyword answers: up to 20 rules, each a set of words and the answer to send when a message contains one.
- Seayora AI, if you turn it on (below).
- An away message, outside the opening hours you set.
| Seayora AI | What it does |
|---|---|
| Off | No AI. Greetings, away messages and keyword answers still run. |
| Suggest a reply | AI drafts an answer for your team to read, change and send. Nothing goes until somebody presses Send. |
| Answer for us | AI answers right away from your business details, opening hours, answers to common questions and listings. It never quotes a customer’s records; it says your team will follow up. |
- AI writes only from what you give it: your business summary (up to 1,500 characters), your opening hours, up to 40 answers to common questions, and your published listings. It never quotes a balance, a lease, a repair or anything else from a customer’s records, and it never promises a price, a date or a decision — it says your team will follow up.
- Every automatic answer ends with "Automatic reply", in the person’s language, so nobody mistakes it for a person.
- It answers at most 3 times an hour in one conversation, and stops for that conversation as soon as somebody on your team replies.
- You can switch automatic replies off for one conversation from its menu.
- Conversations with people who wrote to you are never used to train AI.
The inbox
| View | Shows |
|---|---|
| Open | Open conversations. |
| Unread | Unread conversations. |
| Waiting for a reply | Conversations where your reply is waiting for the person to write back. |
| Assigned to me | Assigned to me conversations. |
| Archived | Archived conversations. |
| Message status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Received | They sent it to you. |
| Sending | Seayora is handing it to WhatsApp. |
| Sent | WhatsApp has it. |
| Delivered | It reached their phone. |
| Read | They opened it (if they share read receipts). |
| Not delivered | WhatsApp could not deliver it. The conversation says why and what to do. |
| Waiting for them to reply | Outside the 24-hour window; it goes when they reply. |
- Assign a conversation to a team member; with "Whoever the conversation is assigned to" chosen in Setup, only they are notified.
- When Seayora recognizes the number — a resident, a customer, an applicant or somebody in your contact book — the conversation says who it is and links to them.
- Messages can be up to 4,096 characters. You can send a PDF, a picture, a Word or Excel file or a text file up to 16 MB; a picture over 5 MB goes as a document, because that is the largest picture WhatsApp takes. Files people send you are kept up to 100 MB.
- On a contractor account, your team sees only the last four digits of a customer’s number — you talk to them through Seayora.
| Who is notified of a new message |
|---|
| Everybody on the team |
| Whoever the conversation is assigned to (or everybody when nobody) |
| Only the account owner |
What it costs
Seayora charges nothing for WhatsApp. Meta bills your business directly for the messages it charges for, on the payment method in your WhatsApp Business account: replies inside the 24-hour window are free, and so are Utility templates sent inside it; templates sent outside it are charged per message at Meta’s rate for the person’s country. The Setup tab shows how many messages of each kind went out this month and links to Meta’s current rates. Seayora shows counts only — the bill is Meta’s.
Team access
On a team account, WhatsApp is its own permission (Communications → WhatsApp). Only the account owner connects and disconnects the number, changes settings and automatic replies, and adds or deletes templates. Team members with access read and answer conversations, assign them, and send templates and notices.
Disconnecting
Disconnect on the Setup tab stops Seayora receiving and sending on your number, cancels anything still waiting to go, tells Meta to stop sending us its messages and discards the access token. Your number stays yours, in your WhatsApp Business account, and your conversations stay in Seayora to read. To remove Seayora from your business completely, also remove it under Business settings → Integrations in Meta Business Suite.
Closing your Seayora account removes the connection, the conversations and every file Seayora stored from them.
On the phone apps
WhatsApp is in Tools on the iPhone and Android apps: the inbox, replying, templates, notices and the setup checklist. A new message is a notification on your phone, under its own WhatsApp category in notification settings.
What WhatsApp does not allow
- Joining or reading WhatsApp groups: the WhatsApp Business Platform has no way for a business to join a group, and Seayora does not automate the WhatsApp app to do it — that breaks WhatsApp’s terms and gets numbers banned.
- Posting to a WhatsApp Channel or Status: there is no way to do either through the platform.
- Messaging somebody who has not agreed to hear from you.
With an assistant
A connected assistant (Claude, ChatGPT and others through Seayora’s connector) cannot send WhatsApp messages. A WhatsApp message reaches a real person the moment it is sent and cannot be taken back, so it is sent by somebody on your team from the inbox.
Related features and guides
- Sending From Your Own Email Address — Documentation. Connect your business’s own mailbox — Gmail, Microsoft 365, Zoho, Yahoo, iCloud, Fastmail or any other — so estimates and invoices go out from your own address, and choose whether your customers’ replies also show up in Seayora.
- Voice Messages After Hours — Documentation. Have the voice messages residents and customers send you written out under the recording, let your automations act on the words, and answer a call that rings out with an invitation to leave a voice message.
- Writing Estimates — Documentation. How to keep your clients and their service addresses, build an accurate estimate with hours, your costs and discounts, get it approved inside your team, send it with Approve and Decline buttons and the PDF, forward it, answer your customer’s replies, plan and get reminded about the site visit, and turn an accepted estimate into an invoice or scheduled work.
- Private In-App Voice Calls — Feature. Voice and video calls that run inside Seayora between two accounts — no telephone number is used on either side, so landlords, tenants and service pros talk without exchanging personal contact details.
- QuickBooks Integration — Feature. Connect QuickBooks Online and bring the chart of accounts, customers, vendors, items, open balances and past transactions into Seayora — checked against QuickBooks’s own trial balance before anything is written.
- Invoicing, Estimates & Statements — Feature. Create invoices and estimates, send customer statements, and collect payment through the same rails as rent — with everything posting to the ledger automatically.