Creating and managing bookings

Any staff member can create a booking. Open the wizard from Bookings → New Booking, or start from a customer's or pet's profile — the Book action there pre-fills the customer and pet for you.

The wizard walks through five steps: Location → Pets → Service → Schedule → Review. You can click back to any completed step to change it, and each step validates before you can continue, so you can't submit a booking the system would reject.

Step 1: LocationCopy Anchor Link

Each location card shows what you need before you commit: a cover photo, whether the facility is open right now, its opening hours, and today's load — the number of bookings today, how many are checked in, and how many are still pending — against its capacity. Pills on the card list the service categories offered there.

If your organisation has only one location, this step is skipped and the location is pre-selected.

Step 2: Customer and petsCopy Anchor Link

1. Search for the customer, or create a new one inline.
2. Select one or more of their pets. You can register a new pet without leaving the wizard.
3. Booking for two or more pets? You can optionally give each pet its own service and its own schedule instead of sharing one.

Once you pick the customer, any active customer alerts appear above the step, most serious first, and stay in view through Review. They're staff-only notes and are never shown to the customer.

Step 3: Service and extrasCopy Anchor Link

Pick the service type — cards show a "from" price and flag your most popular service — then add any extras per pet. Extras that allow multiples let you set a quantity. A live summary rail shows the running total as you build the booking.

Step 4: ScheduleCopy Anchor Link

Pick dates and times. The wizard checks them against the location's opening hours and tells you inline if the facility is closed that day, or if your times fall outside opening hours.

• Single-day services — pick one date, or select several dates on the calendar to create the same booking across all of them at once.
• Boarding — pick a start and end date for the stay.
• Transport — if the location offers pickup or drop-off, you can add it per day with the pickup and drop-off addresses.

Recurring bookingsCopy Anchor Link

Turn on the recurring toggle to repeat the booking:

• Weekly — pick the days of the week it repeats on, and how often (every week, every 2 weeks for fortnightly, and so on).
• Monthly — repeat on a day of the month (e.g. the 15th) or an nth weekday (e.g. the first Monday).

Every recurring booking needs either an end date or the ongoing option. You can skip individual dates from the preview before confirming — handy when the customer mentions a holiday. Recurring bookings can't be combined with per-pet schedules; choose one or the other.

Step 5: Review and paymentCopy Anchor Link

The review step shows the full order — customer, pets, service, schedule, and a cost summary with subtotal, any voucher discount, and the total including GST — next to the payment method:

• Pay by Card — the customer is sent to a secure online payment page after you confirm.
• Use Package Credit — spend credits from one of the customer's purchased packages. One credit covers one booking (see Package credits below).
• Pay Later — create the booking now; it's paid at the time of service or marked paid by staff.

DepositsCopy Anchor Link

Deposits are configured per service type — your facility sets either a fixed amount or a percentage, or no deposit at all. When a service takes a deposit, the schedule step shows the estimated deposit before you reach checkout, so there are no surprises at the till.

VouchersCopy Anchor Link

Enter a voucher code in the Voucher Code field at review. A voucher applies once to the whole order, not once per booking, and only to bookings made while the voucher is valid — never to a booking made before the voucher was issued or after it expired.

Missed it at the time? A Manager or above can still add the code from the booking's detail page, in the Voucher card, as long as the booking hasn't been paid or invoiced yet. Once it has been invoiced, the card explains the route instead: refund and cancel the booking, then make a new booking with the voucher.

For a booking paid in full by card on its own invoice, a Manager or above can do this from the same card with Refund and rebook with voucher. Pick the voucher, read the warning and confirm: the booking is cancelled and refunded under your cancellation rules, with a credit note against its invoice, and once the refund has landed the new booking opens filled in with the same customer, pet, location, service and dates and the voucher applied. Check it and finish the booking. If the refund is still being processed, come back to the cancelled booking later: the link to make the new booking appears in its Voucher card once the refund shows as refunded. The new booking must use the voucher chosen when the original was refunded.

A booking paid in full by one counter payment, such as cash or EFTPOS at the desk, uses the same route. Cancelling issues a credit note for the whole bill straight away. Hand the money back, then record it with Record counter refund on the payment in Payments, including the method, date and reason. The new booking becomes available once the whole amount is recorded as refunded. A booking paid partly by card and partly at the counter isn't offered the route: cancel and refund it the usual way, then make a new booking with the voucher.

The same route supports a booking paid only by a refundable deposit on its own invoice. It returns the deposit and credits the whole cancelled bill, including the unpaid balance. For example, a $120 invoice with a $30 deposit gets a $120 credit note and a $30 refund. The original invoice stays as issued. A counter deposit needs the money handed back and recorded with Record counter refund on the payment in Payments, including the method, date and reason. The replacement stays unavailable until that record exists. A pending, failed or unconfirmed card refund also keeps the replacement unavailable.

A booking billed on an invoice it shares with other bookings, such as a consolidated invoice, works the same way, but the credit note covers only that booking's own line. For example, if Biscuit's $120 booking and Pepper's $150 booking are on one $270 invoice, refunding and re-booking Biscuit credits $120 and leaves Pepper's $150 line billed. The route is offered only when the booking still matches its line exactly. If a booking on the invoice was repriced, or a pet or location renamed, after the invoice was issued, use the usual cancellation and refund process instead.

Cancelling releases the original place, and it is offered to the next customer on the waitlist for that day. The original slot stays rebookable for this customer even if the day fills, as long as the new booking keeps the same pet, service, location, date and times. Changing any of them makes it an ordinary booking that needs a free place. The new booking's Activity Log notes which cancelled booking it replaced. That note is for staff only and never appears on an invoice.

Package creditsCopy Anchor Link

Choosing Use Package Credit lists the packages this customer has bought that still have credits left, haven't expired, and cover a service in the order. A package restricted to one service type only appears if that service is in the order.

Credits are spent one per booking, not one per order. An order for two pets on one day is two bookings and costs two credits; a pet booked across five recurring dates is five bookings and costs five credits.

If the order needs more credits than the customer has left, the wizard doesn't refuse it. Credits go to the bookings the package can actually pay for — a booking with something to charge, using a service the package covers — in the order those bookings appear: pets in the order you added them, dates earliest first. The ones no credit reached are created as Awaiting Payment instead of confirmed, so they show up in Bookings → Needs Action and still get billed. A booking that comes to $0 (a full discount, for example) consumes no credit and isn't left awaiting payment; a booking the package doesn't cover consumes no credit either, so a later covered booking can still get one.

A package restricted to one service type only pays for the bookings using that service. On a mixed-service order, the other bookings land as Awaiting Payment.

If the package has no usable credits left by the time you confirm — someone else spent them, or it expired while the wizard was open — and the order has at least one booking with something to charge, the whole order is refused with "No valid credits available for this purchase" and nothing is created. Pick another package or another payment method and confirm again. An order where every booking already comes to $0 needs no credit, so it goes through regardless.

Vaccination check at reviewCopy Anchor Link

If a pet's verified vaccination records aren't current, the wizard acts on your organisation's vaccination policy: it warns you, requires an override reason before you can confirm, or blocks the booking outright. Your facility sets which of these applies. Only verified records count — an uploaded-but-unverified certificate won't clear the gate.

Cancelling the rest of a seriesCopy Anchor Link

Only Managers and above can cancel bookings. To end a recurring series:

1. Open any booking in the series from Bookings.
2. Choose Cancel Future Bookings.
3. The sheet lists every upcoming booking in the series with its date, pet, location and amount. All are selected by default — untick any the customer is keeping.
4. Confirm. Paid bookings are refunded automatically.

If a batch only partially completes, the sheet stays open with just the bookings that couldn't be cancelled still selected, so you can retry exactly those.

What's next?Copy Anchor Link

• Booking statuses, check-in rules and payments
• Using the scheduler
• Booking cut-offs and date blocking