Staff assignment

Assign a booking to a team member (their initials show on the calendar), and use the “Show” filter at the top of the diary to see just your own visits or a colleague’s.

Team members are WordPress users who can edit content. Assign a whole series at once from the Series panel.

Assigning a customer’s request as you confirm it

A request in Waiting for an answer shows who is free at that time, with the ones who are not already filtered out. Pick a name and tap Confirm: the booking is confirmed and assigned in the same action, rather than landing in the diary belonging to nobody. Confirm waits for a name — where there is a choice, somebody has to make it, and a default chosen for you is how a job ends up with the wrong person’s name on it.

If the customer asked for somebody, that name is already selected and the card says so. If they asked for somebody who is no longer free, it says that too and asks you to choose again — the customer will notice they got a different groomer, and you should know before they do.

Confirming also sends the customer their confirmation, naming who the visit is with. That used to wait for the overnight run.

The strip on a request

The bar under each request is that whole working day, from the first booking to the last, so you can see where the request would land before you answer it. Yellow, outlined and gently pulsing is the request you are looking at. Green is confirmed work, amber is another request still waiting for an answer, blue is done, and the empty track is free time. There is a key above the list.

It is a picture of one day, not a diary — tap See the day for the real thing.

See the day and Open both take you off the list to look properly — at the day around the request, or at the booking itself. A Back to requests button sits above the tab bar until you use it, so the Confirm button is one tap away wherever you end up. Closing the booking screen brings you back on its own.

The email that tells you

The email that arrives when a customer asks for a booking now carries the request itself: every treatment they ticked, what it comes to for that animal, any deposit, their phone number and email as tappable links, whoever they asked for by name, and their note. A Confirm or decline button opens the staff app on that request with the buttons already in front of you.

It used to be four lines and “open your dashboard”, which meant going and finding the thing the email was about. If somebody else has answered the request before you get there, the app tells you rather than showing you a list it is not on.

Declining

Pick a reason, write a line to the customer, and send. They are emailed — the reason, whatever you typed, and that nothing has been charged — and the same thing appears at the top of their app, in red, above everything else. A customer who asked in the app gets the answer in the app.

The message is optional and worth the ten seconds: a reason on its own reads like a form letter. If the customer has no email address on file nothing is sent, and the app says so rather than letting you assume they were told.

The list is not a guess. If your availability is set to only offer times when a suitable team member is free, the customer was offered that time because somebody was free — this shows you who, worked out from the same weekly hours, days off and diary that offered it. Anyone whose hours do not cover the whole visit, who is on a day off, or who already has a dog across it is simply not listed.

When member scheduling is off for that service type, no names appear: tables or a plain capacity number decide the booking, and naming a person would be inventing one.

Seeing who is free, before you book anything

In the staff app, tap Pick a time from the calendar on a booking and use Showing availability for — choose a person and the free times become theirs alone, or leave it on Anyone. Their weekly hours and days off are set on the Team page, and each person can set their own under Settings → My availability in the app.

Example

A three-person team each opens “My bookings” to see only their round; the owner assigns a whole holiday to one sitter.

FAQ

A request shows no names to pick from — why?
Either member scheduling is off for that service type (Bookings → Availability — “only offer times when a suitable team member is free”), in which case tables or a capacity number decide instead; or nobody on the team is free across that whole visit. If it is the second, the day strip on the request usually shows why.

Can I confirm without assigning anybody?
Where names are offered, one is always chosen — leaving it blank is how a booking stays unassigned, which is the thing this fixes. To change it afterwards, open the booking and use the assignee field.

Where do I see one person’s free time?
On a booking, tap “Pick a time from the calendar” and set “Showing availability for” to that person. Their hours and days off come from the Team page, or from their own Settings → My availability.

The request email only ever showed one treatment.
It was sent the moment the booking was created, which is before the other treatments, the preferred person and the deposit are attached to it — so it described a booking nobody had asked for. It is now sent once the request is finished, and it lists the lot. It also goes out before a customer is sent off to pay a deposit, so the requests that carry money are no longer the ones you never hear about.

The Confirm or decline button did nothing.
It needs an App page set (Settings → General) — without one there is nothing for the link to open, and the email leaves the button off rather than offering a link that goes nowhere. You also need to be signed in to the staff app on that device, and to have permission to answer requests.

Who counts as staff?
WordPress users who can edit content (Contributor and up).

I’m solo — where’s the filter?
It hides itself unless you have two or more staff.