Scheduling your Services

Doggy Logs can track appointments for your clients and help you keep your team organized. Consider using the schedule if you want to:

  • Manage client and pet sitter schedules
  • See your appointments in the app or in your calendar
  • Allow clients to request services online

Service Types

Start by creating the Service Types for your business. Service Types are the services you offer, and by default you have two already in the system: "Walk" and “Visit”. You can edit these or add as many new ones as you like.

Service types include information such as the price, duration, and whether or not you should track the GPS route. Service types are important if you are using Invoices because they provide the default price and description for the service that will be included on your invoices.

How you use Service Types will depend on your business and what you offer. Some examples are shown in the screenshot.

Appointments

You can create a new appointment on the Schedule page and it will appear in the calendar and on the schedule in the app. As the manager for your business, you will see every appointment in the calendar for you and your team. Use the filters on this page to see appointments by Pet, Pet Sitter, Service Type or Status. Pet sitters will only see their own appointments.


Booking Page

The Booking Page is a customized web page with your branding and messaging that allows new and existing clients to request appointments.

Your Booking Page link is unique to your business, and you can link to or embed the booking page directly into your website.

Using the Booking Page is optional. To use it, turn on the setting Allow Clients to Book Online under the Schedule Settings. Here you can customize the title and text that will appear on the Booking Page. Your Service Types will automatically appear on your Booking Page. You can limit which items are included in the list by editing the Service Types. When someone fills out the Booking Page and submits a request, you will be notified through the Doggy Logs App and also receive an email with the booking request details.

The typical flow of a booking request looks like this:

  1. A new or existing client submits a booking request for a service on a particular date.
  2. A new appointment is created in the calendar with a status of “Requested" and will appear as Yellow.
  3. The business Manager is notified and reviews the booking request. They can adjust the time, assign a pet sitter, adjust details, and approve or decline the request.
  4. The client receives an email confirmation of the appointment with any notes you want to include.
  5. When it comes time to perform the service (for example, a dog walk), the assigned pet sitter can start tracking the walk directly from the calendar in the Doggy Logs app, and the service will be linked with the appointment for invoicing purposes.
  6. If you or your Pet Sitter complete a service but start it from the Pets list in the app instead of the calendar, that service can be linked to the appointment later. Simply go to the appointment on the website, and if a matching service is found, you will see an option to link it.

Synching Appointments to Your Calendar

You can add your Doggy Logs Appointments to the calendar on your phone and computer. You will need to set up your calendar to sync with a remote calendar. The instructions depend on your calendar app, and are available in Schedule Settings under Calendar Sync.