This guide follows an appointment from booking to payment and beyond. An appointment usually moves from Pending to Confirmed, In Progress, Ready to Review, Ready to Pay and Paid. It can also end as Declined or Cancelled, and a card payment that fails shows Payment Declined until a retry succeeds. See Appointment Statuses for what moves a booking from one status to the next.

The page has these tabs:

On a wide screen, the appointment header stays on screen as you scroll. Switch Sticky Header off to let it scroll away while the tabs stay.

The button beside the status changes with the status, and the rest sits in Manage.

A few details by status:

Manage, at the top of the page, groups everything the booking offers besides the main button.

The menu shows only what applies to the booking's status and services:

On the calendar, right-click a card on a computer for the most common actions without opening the page. The right-click menu is not available on phones. See Calendar Views & Navigation.

To check what the pet owner sees before you reply, open their view of the booking.

The dialog shows the pet owner's own appointment page, and nothing you tap in the preview changes the booking.

Optional: to text the owner a quick login link to that booking, select the button that reads Text, their first name and their card. If the profile has no mobile number, add one first.

With Drag Lock off, you can also drag the card to a new time on the calendar. A move made by dragging is silent by default. On a computer, Reschedule Appointment in the card's right-click menu lets you pick the new time on the calendar itself.

When Magic Availability Check is on, the form only offers times the team member and resources are free. Switch it off to set a time yourself: Petboost warns you about a clash and saves the time anyway. A notification to the customer carries the new date and time, and the link to cancel or rebook.

The Services for box on each pet holds more than one service, so you add to a booking rather than start again.

Attach Additional Existing Pet and Create & Attach New Pet, under Pet Management in Manage, add a pet without opening the whole form. For the full booking form, see Using the Booking Form.

Adding a pet to the existing booking gives you one calendar card for the family, one itemised invoice and one payment, while each pet keeps its own start and end time. A multi-pet discount applies if you have set one. Book separately instead when the pets come on different dates, different family members drop off and pick up, or the customer asks for separate invoices.

For example, two dogs from the same family: Dog A from 10:00 to 11:00 am with Sarah at Grooming Table 1, and Dog B from 10:30 to 11:30 am with Mike at Grooming Table 2. Same appointment card, one invoice, one payment.

When you create an appointment for a customer who already has one that day, Petboost asks Merge the pet with an existing booking?: one visit, one invoice, separate timing for each pet, or book separately.

With Magic Availability Check on, Petboost finds times that work for the extra pet, checking the team member's availability, the resource's capacity and your multi-pet setting. With it off, you set the times yourself, which is quicker when you already know the day, and Petboost shows a warning for any clash instead of checking.

How close together Petboost books pets from one household is set under Multi-Pet Scheduling on Booking Engine:

Magic Match in Team Member lets Petboost pick a free team member when you book, which suits services where it does not matter who does the work. When a service lists the team members who perform it, only they are offered.

For a mobile service, Change Location on the Appointment tab opens Change service location, where you set the New location. Under Notify customer?, Update silently shows They won't know the location changed: no email or text goes out, so tell the customer yourself.

Before you finalise, check every line, apply any discount, add extra services, and add a message for the customer.

A price you type here belongs to this booking only. The service's own price does not change. Do not finalise the invoice before the service is finished. See Payment Processing for taking payment.

Internal notes are for your team: observations, special handling, follow-ups and concerns. Customer-facing notes are for the customer: a summary of the visit, recommendations, care instructions and a suggestion for the next visit.

The customer sees Customer-facing Notes and Customer-facing Photos & Attachments in their portal. From the pet owner holds the customer's own Instructions & Notes and Pet Owner Photos & Attachments.

Uploads can be JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP or PDF, up to 10 MB each. iPhone HEIC photos are converted automatically. Before and after photos suit grooming, a photo of the pet having fun suits daycare and training, and a photo of an injury or concern is a useful record, including for insurance.

If Visit notes is not on the Notes & Attachments tab, it is not turned on for your account yet.

Visit notes keeps a separate note for each pet on the booking, so a two-pet visit has two sets. Each pet has Check-in notes for what reception saw at the door, and a service note named for what the pet is booked in for: Groom notes, Walk notes, Day notes, Stay notes or Training notes, and Service notes for any other service.

Each note shows who wrote it and when. At the pet's next visit, Last time shows the service notes from the previous visit first.

Visit notes are internal. The pet owner never sees them. They also sit on the pet's timeline, where the team member who wrote the latest one can edit it and anyone can remove one. A visit note cannot be made customer-facing.

When a new appointment is created, Petboost adds the service's default notes from its notes templates, both internal and customer-facing, and any default attachments. Notes from several services are joined with a separator, and notes typed into the booking come after them. Staff can edit or remove them afterwards. See Notes Templates.

To pause a recurring series, use Cancel. There is no separate pause button. The cancel form offers three options:

See Pause or cancel a recurring series for the full steps, other series on the same pet, and what pet owners can do.

If the customer has already paid, choose between a full refund, a partial refund, such as the amount less a cancellation fee, and no refund for a late cancellation. Select Issue refund in Manage. A card refund goes back to the original payment method, and how long it takes to appear depends on the customer's bank. Issue refund asks whether to notify the customer.

The Activity Log tab records the booking's history: status changes and who made them, edits, messages sent, payment attempts and whether they succeeded, refunds, notes and photos. Use it to settle a dispute, understand why a payment failed, see who changed what, or check what the customer was sent.

Moving a booking to a different resource, such as a pen or room, or to a different team member is recorded with the old and new names and who made the move, whether it was dragged on the calendar or Mission Control or changed in the edit form. A move to another resource alone sends nothing to the customer or the team.

On Mission Control, Check In checks the pet in with one tap when there is nothing to hand over. When there is, it opens Confirm Check-in first:

Confirm Check-in lists, above the notes:

Select Check In to finish, or Cancel to leave the booking as it was. On a check-out, Confirm Check-out lists who may collect the pet besides the customer (set in Who may collect on the customer's profile) and the Belongings to return. Trips runs keep the one tap.

If a booking was checked in, marked In Progress, by mistake, you can send it back to Confirmed: an accidental check in, the wrong pet, or a customer who has not arrived yet.

The booking goes back to Confirmed. No time is cleared, the earlier Appointment started entry stays in the Activity Log, and the customer is not notified. Undo Check In only appears while the booking is In Progress. If auto-start is on for the service, Petboost blocks the undo: turn auto-start off first.

If a booking was checked out, marked Ready to Pay, by mistake, you can send it back to the status it held before. Check out is available from In Progress, Completed, Confirmed and Payment Declined, which is why the destination varies.

The booking returns to its earlier status. No time is cleared, the earlier Appointment Finalised entry stays in the Activity Log, and the customer is not notified.

Undo Check Out appears while the booking is Ready to Pay and that status came from a check out. A booking that was never checked out has nothing to undo, so the action does not appear on the booking's page, on the calendar or on a Mission Control card. That covers a payment recorded without a check out and then un-marked, and older bookings where Petboost has no record of the check out. Un-marking a payment does not erase a check out: a booking that was checked out, paid and then un-marked still goes back to the status it came from.

Petboost blocks the undo when the service has the automation on that would move the booking forward again: auto-complete when it was In Progress, auto-finalise when it was Completed, auto-start when it was Confirmed. On the booking's page Undo check out is not offered while that automation is on. The status chip still lists the earlier status, and selecting it is refused with the automation named, the same message the calendar and Mission Control show. Turn that automation off in the service's settings first.

The Mission Control board only moves forward, so use Undo Check Out rather than dragging the card back. Drag Lock on Mission Control stops accidental status drags and Drag Lock on the calendar stops accidental reschedules. They are separate switches: turn Mission Control's on when you are browsing, not moving cards.

Recreate books a cancelled appointment again with its details filled in: the customer changed their mind, it was cancelled in error, or they want the same slot.

On the calendar the same action is Un-cancel Appointment in the card's right-click menu. The original cancelled booking stays on record, and the new one is a separate appointment that follows your usual booking notifications. See Un-cancel & Appointment Recovery.

Archiving hides a booking from your views while it stays in reports and history, which suits old bookings cluttering the calendar. Permanent deletion removes it from the system, which suits test bookings, duplicates and requests to erase a customer's data.

A booking can only be archived or deleted while it is Pending, Confirmed, Declined, Cancelled or Invoice Amount Void, so a paid booking cannot be deleted. On a Paid booking, Edit and Cancel are not in the Manage menu, and Delete Appointment fails. What to do depends on how it was paid:

A booking that was checked out but not paid is Ready to Pay: you can still edit or cancel it, or use Undo check out. A recurring series with visits still to come cannot be archived, and one with any visits cannot be permanently deleted. Archiving a booking that is still Pending or Confirmed cancels it first, silently, with no fee and no message to the customer.

Trap: Permanent deletion cannot be undone. There is also no button to bring back an archived appointment, although the dialog says archived items can be restored later.

When the booking has Customer-facing Notes or Customer-facing Photos & Attachments under Notes & Attachments, on From your business, report card actions appear in the booking's Manage menu under Print & Reports:

Internal notes never make a report card. For the full guide, see Report Cards.

Print actions sit in the booking's Manage menu, under Print & Reports.

This shows when the booking includes a grooming service.

This shows when the booking is a stay.

For today's full schedule, see Can I print today's schedule?.

Quick Book Again opens a new booking with the same customer, pets and services. It is available when the booking is Paid, Completed or Refund Granted.

The badge row at the top of the appointment shows whether each pet on the booking has another visit booked after this one. Cancelled, declined and no-show bookings do not count.

Select the badge to see each pet's next visit, and the first pet's usual frequency and last visit. When a pet has nothing booked, select Book next visit to open a new booking. When Petboost knows the pet's usual frequency, the booking opens on the date the pet is next due. Recurring bookings show their series badge instead.

In Week view with the calendar grouped, you can choose how the columns run:

Your choice is kept for next time, and the per-day counts show the total for each day and each row rather than the whole week.