Bilingual messaging — Servicio docs

Servicio is bilingual by design, not as a retrofit. Every template renders in English or Spanish (Portuguese and French on the roadmap). The right language is picked automatically per recipient.

The precedence rules

When the system needs to pick a language for an outgoing message, it walks this list:

Client's preferred_locale (if set)
Tenant's default_locale
Hard-coded fallback of English

Once a locale is chosen, the renderer looks for the template in that locale. If no template exists (e.g., you have not created a Spanish version of a specific trigger), it falls back to the tenant default and eventually English.

Setting client language preference

On the client detail page, the "Preferred language" field takes any locale you have enabled. Most shops offer en and es. Set this during client onboarding — do not guess from last name.

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When you first migrate a client book, every client defaults to tenant default. Spend an hour going through the list and setting Spanish preferences where you know — it is the highest-ROI hour of configuration you will do.

Staff language preference

Each owner and technician user has their own locale. The owner's locale drives which language the dashboard renders in. Techs see the tech app in their own language. Notifications sent to staff (e.g., "new booking request") use the staff member's locale.

The inbox and translation

For inbound messages (SMS replies, inbound emails) in a language the reader does not speak, the inbox has a per-message translate button. See The unified inbox.

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Deleting a locale from your supported set does NOT update existing clients with that preference. They will fall back to the default on their next message. To avoid confusion, update your affected clients' preferences first, then remove the locale from the supported list.