When a borrower misses a loan due date or forgets to redeem a pawned item before the deadline, the usual fix is a staff member manually calling or texting them one by one. That doesn’t scale past a handful of accounts, and it’s easy for a reminder to slip through the cracks entirely.
The Collection Problem Every Pawnshop and Lending Business Knows
Loan due dates, redemption windows, and pickup deadlines are all time-sensitive. Miss one and it usually means a late fee for the customer, an item moving toward forfeiture, or a payment that just never comes in. Most small lenders and pawnshops in the Philippines handle this with phone calls or manual texts sent one at a time from a personal phone, which eats staff hours and still leaves gaps.
GoHighLevel can automate that reminder sequence through workflows, but the SMS side of it only works well if the cost and delivery reliability make sense for Philippine mobile numbers.
Why Twilio and International SMS Don’t Fit This Use Case
GoHighLevel’s built-in SMS routes through providers like Twilio, which charge roughly $0.20 (about ₱9 to ₱12) per message sent to a Philippine mobile number, plus close to $120 a month just to keep a phone number active. Send a few hundred due-date reminders a month across a loan book and that adds up fast.
There are two other problems specific to this kind of message. International routes aren’t always reliable on local PH carrier networks, which matters when the text is reminding someone their collateral is close to forfeiture. And Twilio-style numbers can’t easily carry a branded Sender ID, so the reminder arrives from an unfamiliar international number instead of your business name, which makes it look exactly like the kind of text people are trained to ignore.
A Native Send SMS Action Inside GoHighLevel
NOLA SMS Pro is a native GoHighLevel integration built for this exact problem. It routes messages through local Philippine SMS infrastructure instead of international carriers, which brings the cost down to roughly ₱1.00 per SMS segment. Send SMS becomes a first-class action you drop straight into a workflow, no custom code or outside platform required.
Once your Sender ID is approved by the telco, reminders go out under your actual business name instead of a random number, which matters a lot for a message asking someone to pay or pick up an item. You manage the Sender ID, API keys, and settings from a web dashboard, and once a loan or ticket is in the Conversations inbox you can see the message history alongside the rest of the customer’s record. It’s worth noting this is one-way SMS for now — great for reminders and notices, not yet a two-way texting thread.
What a Reminder Workflow Actually Looks Like
A typical setup for a lending business is a short sequence tied to the loan or pawn ticket’s due date, something like:
- A reminder SMS 5 days before the due or redemption date
- A second reminder on the due date itself
- A follow-up notice if the item moves toward the grace period or forfeiture window
- A “ready for pickup” or “payment received” confirmation once it’s resolved
Every step runs automatically from the ticket or loan record, with no one at the counter needing to remember to send anything.
Getting Started
Setup takes four steps:
- Install NOLA SMS Pro from the GoHighLevel Marketplace
- Apply for your branded Sender ID and wait for telco approval
- Add the Send SMS action to your due-date and pickup workflows
- Let reminders go out automatically from there on
If you’re running a pawnshop, lending business, or any operation where missed due dates cost you money, it’s worth seeing whether local-rate SMS changes the math. You can check out NOLA SMS Pro to see current pricing and what’s included.
This post is brought to you by Norwin Lacson, a GoHighLevel Certified Admin.