Writing an order confirmation template Meta will approve

You may not need to write one

Before the rules, the shortcut. With your WhatsApp number connected, CreaScale submits a ready-made order confirmation to Meta on your behalf, under one template name, in French, Arabic and English. It follows every rule on this page — utility category, three variables numbered without gaps, one example per variable, valid language codes — and it carries two quick-reply buttons, Confirm and Cancel:

Meta's documentation says the review can take up to 24 hours. The three languages count as one template toward your plan's cap, because they share a name. Keep it, edit the wording, or write your own from scratch using the rules below — the ready-made one is a default, not a constraint.

Category first: utility, not marketing

Meta sorts templates into utility, marketing and authentication, and the choice decides what consent you need before you may send.

A utility message follows from something the customer did — they placed an order, so telling them about that order is expected. The purchase is the consent.

A marketing message needs its own, separately recorded permission. And here is the trap that costs numbers: the fact that a customer once messaged you is not marketing consent. Systems that treat any inbound message as blanket permission end up promoting to everyone who ever asked a question, which is the fastest known route to a blocked number.

So keep the confirmation strictly transactional. The moment you add a discount code to it, it is a marketing template, and it needs marketing consent.

Variables: the two rejections everybody hits

Placeholders are numbered {{1}}, {{2}}, {{3}}, and Meta substitutes them by position. Two rules follow, and breaking either gets the submission bounced:

• One example per distinct number, not per occurrence. A confirmation that greets the customer at the top and thanks them by name at the bottom uses {{1}} twice — that is still one variable and one example value. Sending two produces an example-count mismatch.
• No gaps in the sequence. If your body uses {{1}} and {{3}}, the submission fails. The fix is to renumber to the smallest free integer, not to add the next one above the highest.

CreaScale counts variables exactly the way Meta does, in the editor, before you submit — which is the difference between a template approved on the first try and three rejections in a row.

Language codes, and the Darija question

A template is registered against one language code, and Meta accepts about thirty. Your store may need several: one approved variant per language you sell in. The ready-made confirmation is submitted in fr, ar and en under one name, so a store that sells in all three starts covered.

Moroccan Darija is not one of the codes. This is the single most common blocker for Moroccan sellers, and the answer is not to give up on Darija — it is to write the Darija text inside a template registered as ar. The customer reads Darija; Meta sees a valid Arabic template. The same applies to other dialects without their own code.

Which variant a given buyer receives is then resolved per recipient: an Arabic-script name selects Arabic, then the locale the store recorded, then the destination country, then your store default.

What a working confirmation contains

Keep it factual, keep it short, and make every claim verifiable from the order:

• who is writing — your business name, so the message is not mistaken for a scam;
• the order reference, so the customer can match it to what they did;
• what was ordered and the total, in the order's own currency;
• the delivery address, which is what turns the message into a checkpoint rather than a receipt;
• one clear thing to do if something is wrong — replying is enough, and their reply opens a 24-hour window in which you can fix it in plain text.

What to leave out: discount codes, upsells, star ratings, urgency. Each one converts a utility template into a marketing template and changes the consent you need.

After approval: the checks that still apply

An approved template is permission to send, not an obligation. Before each message goes out, CreaScale verifies that the merchant switch is on, that the template is still in the approved state, that the category matches the consent on file, and that neither the daily nor the monthly cap has been reached. A contact that fails any of these is skipped rather than messaged.

Frequently asked questions