Disconnecting
WhatsApp Settings, then the Setup tab, then Disconnect or change number. It asks you to confirm.
What goes: our connection to the number. Messages stop arriving in ServiceM8 and the Setup tab offers “Connect WhatsApp” again.
What stays: everything else. Your business details, your knowledge notes, the Chat Assistant’s setup, every conversation, and every link between a conversation and a job. Connecting again picks up where you were.
What happens to the number depends on how it was connected.
A number used only through the add-on is released from WhatsApp’s business platform as well, so you can connect it here again straight away. It stays listed in your WhatsApp account at Meta, though, and the WhatsApp Business app won’t take it while it is: see moving your number onto the WhatsApp Business app.
A number on the “keep my app” route keeps working in the WhatsApp Business app. WhatsApp only lets the app itself end that link, so finish it there: open the app, then Settings, Account, Business Platform, Disconnect Account. The add-on notices and clears its side.
Connecting again
Same steps as the first time: connecting your number. The same number is fine. This is also how you get the chat-history offer back if it was missed the first time, because the offer only appears in the 24 hours after a connection is made.
Moving your number onto the WhatsApp Business app
If you connected a number for use through the add-on only and now want it on the WhatsApp Business app as well, you can have both. Press Disconnect or change number and choose I want this number on the WhatsApp Business app on my phone: the screen takes you through these steps, with a button straight to the right page in WhatsApp Manager.
- Disconnect it here, as above. That releases it.
- Delete it in WhatsApp Manager: Meta Business Suite, WhatsApp Manager, Phone numbers, then the bin icon beside the number. Check every WhatsApp account listed there. Meta won’t delete a number that has sent a paid message in the last 30 days; if it refuses, it shows the date you can.
- Set the number up in the WhatsApp Business app on your phone. Type it without the 0 at the start, after the country code (in the UK, after +44). Ask for the code once: if the text doesn’t come, choose a phone call rather than asking again. Each try during WhatsApp’s “try again in 1 hour” makes the wait longer.
- Use the app for a few days, then connect again here and choose Connect a WhatsApp Business app from the WhatsApp account dropdown. That’s the option that keeps the app working alongside the add-on.
Don’t disconnect and reconnect repeatedly while you sort this out. Meta allows a number only a few registrations in three days, and going over locks it for three days more.
Moving to a different number
Disconnect the old one, then connect the new one. Conversations from the old number stay in the add-on and on their jobs.
Using another WhatsApp system on the same number
WhatsApp now lets one business number work with more than one system at once, for example ServiceHQ Chat and a marketing tool. Meta is moving every business onto this in stages from 23 September 2026, so it may not be on your account yet.
If your number is connected to another system as well, tick This number is also connected to another WhatsApp system on the Setup tab, under your number. Then:
- Disconnecting removes ServiceHQ only. Your number stays registered, so the other system keeps working. Without the tick, disconnecting here releases the number at WhatsApp, which would cut the other system off too. That’s why the disconnect step asks whether anything else is connected to the number. Answer yes and it removes ServiceHQ only.
- You choose who replies automatically. Both systems get every message a customer sends. Choose the Chat Assistant or the other system, so customers don’t get two answers. Either way, messages still come into ServiceM8.
Replies the other system sends don’t show in ServiceHQ Chat. A number shared with the WhatsApp Business app can’t be connected to another system as well yet.
One number, one ServiceM8 account
A WhatsApp number belongs to one ServiceM8 account at a time. If you connect a number that is already connected to another of your ServiceM8 accounts, it moves. The old account keeps its settings and conversations but stops receiving on that number.
Two ways a “keep my app” connection lapses by itself
Both are WhatsApp’s behaviour, and neither gives any warning.
Changing phones, or re-registering WhatsApp Business. The connection drops and comes back within a few minutes. Give it five before doing anything.
Not opening the WhatsApp Business app for 14 days. WhatsApp treats the connection to ServiceM8 as a linked device, the same as WhatsApp Web, and linked devices are signed out if the phone app is not opened for a fortnight. Messages stop syncing and nothing tells you. If your connected phone is a spare that lives in a drawer, open the app on it once a week. If sync has stopped, opening the app is usually all it takes to restart it.