Services
In Time To Pet, a service is any activity that you provide for your clients. An example would be “Dog Sitting – 30 Minutes” or “Dog Walking – 45 Minutes”. All scheduled appointments/events are linked to one or more services.
IN THIS ARTICLE
Accessing The Services Page
- Login to your Dashboard.
- Using the sidebar navigation, click on Services, then select “Services & Holidays”.
Creating A New Service
- Click the button labeled “New Service”.
- A new form will be displayed.
- Fill out the service's details.
- Click the button labeled “Save Changes”.
- You will be taken back to the list of services. Your new service will be added to the end of the list. You can change the order that services appear in. See: Re-Ordering Services.
After creating a new service (or editing an existing service), you will see four tabs. These include "Setup", Scheduling", "Auto Fees", and "Frequency Discounts". The Setup tab is where you can configure all of the general settings about the service (like the name and the default cost). The Scheduling tab is where you can limit the service to specific Schedule Blocks. The Auto Fees tab is where you can enable certain fees that can be automatically applied to the service (like After Hours or Weekend fees). Frequency Discounts are where you can create custom rules to provide discounts when this type is service is scheduled multiple times each day, week, or month.
Above these four tabs, you will also see a warning that states that services can be disabled or renamed but not deleted once they have been created.
Setup Tab
A service consists of the following configurable items:
Service Name: The name of the service. Best kept short and descriptive, i.e., Cat Sitting – 30 Minutes.
Default Duration: How long the service will be scheduled for. You can override this on an event-by-event basis.
Mobile App Timer: If time tracking is enabled, this is the time the event timer will count down from on the App when an event is started.
Selectable by Client?: Whether or not the client can request this service from their portal.
GPS Route Tracking: Only available when GPS is enabled on the Mobile Settings page. GPS Route Tracking will track your staff member's coordinates for the duration of the event. This might make sense for a 15-minute walk but probably does not make sense for an Overnight Pet Sit. If disabled, GPS coordinates will only be collected at the start and end of the service.
Late Reminder: You can create a Late Reminder notification for this event. If the scheduled service has not been started or marked as completed by the sitter within the provided time, we will notify the sitter and all admins/office managers that the event is late. Only applies if set as primary service.
Description: More details about the service. This is visible to the client in their Client App or Client Portal.
Private Note: A private note is not visible to the client
Color: Adjusts the color of this service displayed on your Scheduler. Set the default display (Color By Staff, Color By Status or Color By Service) for the Scheduler in Company Settings - Scheduler.
Pet Required: Whether or not a client is required to select a pet to be scheduled as part of the event when requesting services through their portal.
Next up is the Rates section. Each service also includes:
Cost: How much this service costs the client
Taxable: Whether or not this service is taxable.
Default Staff Rate: How much the staff member who performs this service is paid. Can be a percentage or a flat rate. This is the default rate. You can define a custom rate on a staff by staff member basis.
Extra Pet Rates: Time To Pet can automatically add extra pet rates to your client's invoice. When enabled and multiple pets are selected, the Extra Pet Rates will come into effect. Extra Pet + applies to the extra pet plus all additional extra pets (if set to $2, each additional pet will be billed for $2). Extra Pet (without the "+" sign) applies to only one additional pet. For a scenario where you would like the first extra (second total pet) pet to be free, the second extra pet (third total pet) to cost $5, and all additional pets after to be free, arrange your Extra Pet Rules as follows:
Staff Extra Pet Rate: How much you will pay your staff for each additional pet.
Scheduling Tab
In the Scheduling tab, you can choose whether or not this service is restricted to specific Schedule Blocks for when your clients are submitting new service requests. For example - you may have a Boarding service that you only want your clients to be able to request in your "Overnight" schedule block. Check out our help doc on Limiting Services to Specific Schedule Blocks for more information here.
Briefly, your services can either be "Not Limited to Specific Blocks" or "Limited to Specific Blocks". If you choose the latter, you can check all of the schedule blocks and days of the week your clients can request this service.
Auto Fees Tab
Time To Pet currently supports two specific types of Auto Fees that can be applied to each service. For detailed information related to each fee, please review the Automatic After Hours Fee and the Automatic Weekend Fees help articles.
Frequency Discounts Tab
Frequency Discounts allow you to offer special pricing when clients book the same type of service multiple times. For a complete breakdown of this feature, check out the Frequency Based Discounts help article.
Updating an Existing Service
Updating an existing service is even easier than creating a new one. Navigate to the services page and find the relevant service in the list. Click the “Edit” button for that item. The same form used for creating a service will be used but your existing service's details will automatically be populated for you. Make sure to click the “Save Changes” button to persist your changes.
Disabling an Existing Service
It's possible to disable a service to remove that service from your Services List and move it to your Disabled Services list. To disable a service, navigate to your Services List, and locate the service you would like to disable. On this same screen, click the drop-down arrow to the right of the "Edit" button. There, the option to "Disable" the service will appear. Similarly, if you need to re-enable a service, you can scroll down on the Services List to the Disabled Services section and select the drop-down menu again, this time selecting "Enable".
When you disable a service, it makes the service not selectable by clients, and you won't be able to schedule clients for this service. Clients with this service already on the Scheduler will not be affected, and reporting around this service will still be available.
Re-Ordering Services
The display order of services can easily be modified by dragging and dropping the services to their desired location. Time To Pet also supports the ability to "Group" similar services. Please review our help article on Grouping Services for more information.