Date rules: move deals, add tasks and message clients on a date

A date rule does one thing to a deal when a date is reached, with nobody doing it. It can:

move the deal to another CRM stage,
create a task on the deal, or
send the client an email or SMS.

A typical use is a post-settlement review cadence: move each deal from 6 weeks to 6 months six months after its settlement date, add a "Review call" task for the deal owner, and text the client a check-in.

Date rules are set up by an owner or admin, one stage at a time.

Adding a rule

Go to Workspaces → Setup → Pipelines and pick a pipeline.
Expand the stage the deals will be in, then find Date rules and choose Add date rule.
Under When, pick the date to count from: one of the deal's key dates (settlement, finance clause, fixed rate expiry and so on), or the day the deal entered this stage. Then set how many days, weeks or months, and whether that is before or after.
Under Do, choose what happens:
- Move the deal to another stage: pick the stage. It can be in another pipeline.
- Create a task: give it a title, choose who it is for (the deal owner, a teammate, the deal admin or assistant, or the client) and, if you like, a due date a number of days after the task appears. Staff can also be emailed when it lands.
- Send the client an email or SMS: pick one of your email templates (you can change the subject), or write the SMS. Merge fields such as the client's first name work as they do in stage messages.
Choose Save rule.

A new rule is saved switched off. You are then asked whether to switch it on.

Switching a rule on

Before a rule goes live you see what it would do:

how many deals in the stage have already passed the date,
how many will reach it in the next 30 days, and
how many have no date in that slot (nothing happens to those).

Then pick one of two options:

From now on (the default): only deals that reach the date from today move. Nothing already past moves.
Also catch up: the deals already past are acted on too, at the next check. This is not offered for messages: a message is only ever sent on its date or the day after, never late. You confirm this a second time, and the count you confirm is checked again when you save. If deals changed in the meantime you see the new numbers first. Catching up covers only the deals in the stage at that moment. A deal that arrives in the stage later is treated as "from now on": it is acted on only if its date is today or in the last three days.

If the business's CRM is switched off, or the pipeline's pathways would not allow the move, the check says so: nothing moves.

Changing when a live rule fires, what it does, or where it sends deals goes through the same check. Changing only the wording of a task or message saves straight away.

When rules run

Rules are checked every 15 minutes, in your business's time zone:

Moves and tasks happen from 9am on the date. One that a check missed (for example during an outage) still happens within three days. Older dates never act by surprise: only if you chose to catch up.
Emails and SMS go out between 8am and 8pm, on the date or the day after. A message that has not gone by 8pm the day after is not sent at all, and the deal shows why.

What an automatic move does

The deal moves exactly as if a person had moved it, and Marketli records that a date rule made the move.
The new stage's auto tasks are created and its checklists are added. A task that would go to the deal owner when the deal has no owner is created unassigned, never dropped. Assignees get their usual notification, saying the deal moved automatically.
The new stage's communications are not sent. Nobody is there to review them, so an automatic move never messages your client.
Pathways still apply. If your pipeline enforces pathways and the move is not on one, or the deal would leave an enforced pipeline, the rule does not move it. There is no automatic override.

Tasks from a date rule

The task appears on the deal on the date, with its own due date if you set one. Each date gets its own task, so if the date moves later and the rule runs again, a second task is created.
The person it is for gets the usual task notification. If nobody can be found (for example a task for the deal owner on a deal with no owner, or a teammate who has left), the task is still created, unassigned, and the deal's history says so.

Messages from a date rule

Emails come from your business's verified email domain. Replies go to the deal owner, or to the sending address if the deal has no owner.
Texts come from your business's main phone number. They count towards the same daily limit as your automations.
Merge fields fill in as the deal owner, or as your business if the deal has no owner.
A message is skipped, with the reason shown on the deal, when the client has opted out or unsubscribed, is marked as declined on the deal, has no mobile number or email address, when your business has no phone number or verified email domain to send from, when the email template has been archived or deleted, or when the daily text limit is reached.
Messages go to the deal's main client only, not to co-borrowers.
Correcting a key date does not send the message again while the deal stays in the same stage. If the deal leaves the stage and comes back, the rule can message the client again.
Texts must use plain characters: a long dash, curly quotes or emoji can't be saved in a date-rule text. A text that comes out longer than 3 parts once the details are filled in is not sent.
If a send is interrupted part way, Marketli does not try again: a missed message is better than a double one.

Seeing what rules will do on a deal

Each deal shows a Date rules card when a rule applies to its stage or has run on it before. Coming up lists what each rule will do and when, or the plain reason it won't (for example no settlement date). History lists everything rules did to the deal and why anything was skipped.

When rules move deals, each deal owner gets one notification per check listing the deals that moved.

Safety limits

Rules can move deals round a loop, for example an annual review, as long as each lap takes at least a week. A lap is counted from the rules based on entering a stage (a month counts as 28 days); a rule based on a key date counts as no time at all, because the date can already have passed when the deal arrives. Marketli won't let you switch on rules that would move deals round faster than that, and tells you why.
A deal moves at most three times a day by date rules. A move past that waits for the next day rather than being dropped.
Each rule moves a deal once per date. If someone moves the deal by hand first, the rule does nothing.
Changing a key date so that a rule is due today, or was due earlier, does not trigger a move. Moving a date later sets the rule up for the new date. Saving a key date without changing it has no effect on the rule.
Rules on archived pipelines, or pointing into one, do nothing.

To stop a rule, switch it off or delete it. Anything it already did stays as it is.