Release Notes: Q1 2021

As the BusyPaws platform grows it's extending its reach across the administrative functions within a dog training or pet care business and morphing into a business management platform. Not all features are relevant to all businesses and as we're rapidly developing new features some that are relevant to your business may go unnoticed. Here's a synopsis for the most important changes that are relevant to the majority of our clients.

Series Group Bookings

Most training businesses offer group classes of either a drop-in or series style which may continue for 4-6 weeks. In BusyPaws you can now support either type, a drop-in class can be created at any recurring frequency when adding it to your calendar, and a Series can be created as a template for your multi-week/day classes. A Series can include any number of classes, be composed of several different types of Services (ie. Puppy Training Level 1 and Puppy Training Level 2), and have its own capacity and pricing.

When a client registers for a Series they'll automatically be registered for every class and you'll be able to track their attendance in each. Roughly half of BusyPaw's clients are using Series to operate their dog training businesses.

Credits

A common issue in dog training businesses is tracking which clients have paid for which services and who you may still need to collect from. Add credits to an account manually, by sending an invoice for services, or when your clients book online through the widget integrated into your website. You can easily identify if a booking has been paid for via a credit, reserve a credit for a currently unpaid booking, and see how many credits have been used or are available for all of your services. Credits are a flexible way for you to manage your clients and pre-pay for future services.

Packages

More common among doggie daycares is the need to allow a client to buy a package of multiple services at a discounted rate (Like 10 days of daycare at 10% off). Packages can now be added to your account in any denomination that you'd like. When your client is booking a service, any packages that are applicable will be presented to them as an option to purchase prior to check-out. Services purchased via a package are added to the client's account as credits.

If you have a special group of clients that you want to offer a unique package to, associate the package with a membership and only members of that group will be able to purchase.

Client Portal

The client portal has been extended to cover more than access to your online courses. Your clients are now able to book services, view the schedule, edit their pets, view their invoices, view the status of the credits on their account, and book additional services using those credits.

Using the portal greatly reduces administrative burden for mid-to-large training and daycare facilities. The login can be integrated directly into your website by using our login buttons.

Memberships

In addition to enabling access to your online courses, Memberships can now restrict access to bookable services. A common use is if you assess/approve clients and their dogs before allowing them into your training classes or daycare. You may keep your assessment service public, but your training/daycare service locked behind an "Assessed/Approved" membership. Those clients can then book those services through the client portal!

Report Cards

We're on a mission to eliminate all paper-based process in pet care businesses. We've now added report cards to bookings so that you can update your clients on the progress of their dogs. Create as many card templates as you'd like using the same form builder used for our Intake Forms, and view completed cards via the client profiles. Now it's easy to gather all of your client information in one place and quickly get up to speed before you see their pets again.

‍

Our future development path continues us on a journey of reducing the number of services a dog training business requires. Feature updates and improvements are released daily, summary release notes of major features will semi-frequently be