Find the heading that matches what you are looking at. Every entry here is either a message the add-on shows or something that has happened to a real business.

Signed up, but nothing arrives

The most common one. The number is connected but not registered, which are different things. On the “keep my app” route the last step happens on your phone: WhatsApp Business gets a message from Facebook Business, and you tap Connect to the Business Platform and confirm. Until you do, nothing arrives. Then open WhatsApp Settings and press Check again.

Also: test from a different phone. A message from the connected phone to its own number is a chat with yourself and never reaches us. Checking it works.

“Messages can’t reach this number yet”

The banner in WhatsApp Settings. It says one of two things.

  • The last step happens on your phone and hasn’t been done. See above. Finish it, press Check again.
  • This number is still in use in WhatsApp on a phone. You connected it as a new number, but it is still live in an app somewhere. Either use the “keep my app” route instead, or delete the WhatsApp account on that phone (Settings, Account, Delete my account), wait three minutes, and press Check again.

Below the banner, “Meta says:” is WhatsApp’s own reason, in its words. If neither fix works, disconnect from the Account tab and connect again.

Photos are not attaching to jobs

Usually a permission. The conversation screen says “Reconnect needed” when that is the case. WhatsApp Settings, Setup tab, Reconnect ServiceM8, ten seconds. One reconnect needed.

If the conversation is a new enquiry not yet on a job, the photos are waiting for a job to go on. Convert it, then open the conversation once.

“WhatsApp withheld this message”

Text arrives, photos do not, and a grey notice sits where each photo should be. On the “keep my app” route this is almost always a linked device that has signed itself out.

Open WhatsApp Business, then Linked Devices. If a laptop or computer is listed, sign back in on it. That alone has fixed every case we have seen, and photos come through again straight away.

Two devices never sync, whatever state they are in: WhatsApp for Windows and WhatsApp on a smartwatch. If either is in your list, unlink it and use web.whatsapp.com in a browser instead. WhatsApp Web and WhatsApp for Mac are both fine.

Linked Devices is not the same screen as Connected platform. Connected platform is the ServiceHQ connection itself, and if it is showing, it is working. Linked Devices is the list of computers and watches signed in to your WhatsApp.

Messages stopped after a couple of weeks

On the “keep my app” route, if the WhatsApp Business app is not opened for 14 days the connection lapses, with no warning. Open the app on the phone. If the phone is a spare in a drawer, open it once a week. Disconnecting and reconnecting.

You can only send templates

The 24-hour window has closed. Send a template, or reply from the WhatsApp Business app if you connected using the “keep my app” route. This is not a fault. It is WhatsApp working as designed, and it happens to every business on the platform.

Nothing sends at all

Three things stop sending, and it is almost always one of them.

  • Your free trial has ended and no subscription was started. The Account tab says so.
  • Your ServiceHQ subscription is past due. Update your card from Manage billing.
  • Your WhatsApp Business account has no payment method, so Meta has stopped your messages. That is in WhatsApp Manager, not here.

None of them stops messages arriving. Incoming messages keep working and keep being saved, so nothing is lost while you sort it out.

The booking assistant is not booking

Three messages on the Chat Assistant’s Settings tab, each with a fix.

  • “Booking is off until you reconnect ServiceM8.” It needs permission to create jobs and write to the board. Setup tab, Reconnect ServiceM8. Until then a “Book it” service takes details and hands over instead.
  • “ServiceM8 has no opening hours set for this account.” It cannot offer times without hours. Set them in ServiceM8 under Settings, then reload the tab.
  • “Couldn’t load these settings.” Reload the page. If it persists, email us with the time.

If none of those show and it is still handing over, check the services list: anything not on it goes to a person, and a service with a length longer than any of your windows is offered as whole days only.

The assistant stopped answering a customer

Somebody on staff typed in that conversation, or pressed Stop. That is by design. Hand back to assistant at the top of the conversation gives it back. Taking over.

If it stopped everywhere at once, the monthly allowance is spent. AI credits.

A template was rejected

The Messages tab says why. The common ones: it starts or ends with a merge field, or it reads as marketing. Fix the wording and resubmit. Templates. “INVALID_FORMAT” in an email from Meta was a fault of ours, now fixed; email us if you see it.

Facebook’s window will not open inside ServiceM8

It never will. The connection has to run in its own tab. Use the Open in a new tab link on the screen, or the Connect WhatsApp in a new tab button in Settings.

The connection link is only good for a short while. Reopen WhatsApp Settings in ServiceM8 and press the connect button again.

“Signup wasn’t finished, so nothing has changed”

Facebook’s window was closed before the end. Nothing was changed. Start again.

“Something went wrong finishing the connection”

Email us with the time it happened. When this has happened before it was a fault of ours, fixed the same day. It is not something you can fix from your side.

The wrong person is being messaged

A job with several contacts shows a Messaging selector at the top of the conversation. Choosing who you are messaging.

“N messages didn’t reach ServiceM8”

The message is not lost. It is in WhatsApp on your phone, and WhatsApp declined to pass it to us. Almost always the linked-device problem above.

A message shows as unsupported

WhatsApp does not pass every message type to business systems. Polls, live locations, view-once photos, edited messages and a few others do not come through, not to us and not to any other tool. The conversation says which one it was, so you know something was said. On the “keep my app” route the message itself is on your phone.

Still stuck

Email admin@onspecsoftware.com with what you see on screen and roughly when it happened. A person who knows the product will answer, and we would rather fix something properly than have you work around it for months.