When creating a new email template

The first choice you have to make is the type of template, there is a list of a dozen choices including Booking, Payment, etc

Seems like all email templates are the same, except that depending on the choice you make you might get some helper text, such as in the subject line for the Payment email template.

Just want to confirm that any choice will work as long as we configure the subject line and content as we want them to be, right?

This confused me when I first started, too. There actually is a difference. If you do some dummy templates you'll notice the choices of who to send an email to under "Blocked Off Time" are different than under "Booking". There are other options also that would affect your ability to send emails to guests. Normally, if what I'm doing involves a message to a guest I always choose "Booking." Seems to work the best for me.

Booking templates usually pertain to anything to do with booking. You may want to define those for property and booking (guest) specific communications such as Welcome email, Door codes etc.

Payment one pertain to payments.

Most of your templates will be centered around booking.

Yeah, so for I've never used anything except for the booking template. I'm still curious if OR considers them different in any way under the covers... I suspect there is no difference, meaning that I could choose any template as a starting point, and then after modifying all the information (email addresses, subject and body) and it would be indistinguishable from any other template I might have chosen as a starting point.

The difference between the types of templates is what fields are available and what events they can be triggered on. Booking type works for all of the custom booking triggers. But if you want to create a template for a payment receipt, that's got to be a Payment type of template so that those fields are included and can be referenced. And conversely, if you go to set a template for a payment receipt, only the Payment type of templates will be available there.

Chris - I see what you mean, when I look at a 'refund' type of email template there is a special grouping (under insert fields) for refunds which doesn't appear otherwise.

Could y'all create an email template that has all possible insertable fields? That's the only one I'd ever want to use... For instance, when I'm playing around with a template it would be a shame if I were looking for a particular kind of field and I didn't see it just be I always start with the 'booking' template.

Not a huge deal now that I know it.... And another question, as long as I know what the shortcode is, will any field work in any template? I would imagine it does, and that the 'insert field' menu is just a convenience.

Well, it's a matter of whether the triggering event has the information for that type of fields. If you have a Refund type template, say, then you can't fire it on a Booking type trigger like "booking created". Because there would be no Refund available in that context to render into the template.

Booking is the standard type with most of the fields you'll use and then the others are relevant to specific items like payments/refunds etc. and add fields related to those specific things.