With online booking available to your customers 24/7 on any screen, your front desk staff will likely find they are taking fewer reservations over the phone or in person than they used to. However, we know that not every customer wants to book online and some offers may only be available via calling your front desk.
Which Users Can Make a Front Desk Booking
Any employee with an active account (including administrators, managers, and employees) at your facility can add a new booking for a customer.
When making a booking at the front desk, the employee starts by looking up a customer, saving time entering pet and customer details.
Employees will have access to information not shown to customers, such as occupancy rates and rules affecting the availability of each offer.
Step 1: Start a New Booking
From the navigation menu on the left side of the Operating System, choose the "New Booking" button. Initially, Boarding is selected, but if your facility offers daycare as well, you may also see a daycare option on the page.
Step 2: Identify Returning vs New Customer
Before entering in information about the booking, select if this is a new or returning customer:
Returning Customer: Search by the owner's name, phone or email to return all the pets for the customer.
New Customer: Select Make a New Customer Reservation to type in required pet information.
Step 3: Defining Pets & Dates
The dates and pets are used to determine availability of offers, so you must specify this information before you can add booking details:
Enter the stay dates by typing in dates or selecting from the calendar.
Returning Customers - For each pet on the customer's account, you can select one of the following:
Room 1: All of the owner's pets of the same species are initially assigned to the same room.
Room 2: If an owner has multiple pets and they require separate rooms, you can specify 'Room 2' (or Room 3, 4, etc) for each pet.
Not Staying: If the owner has multiple pets but one or more are not going to stay as part of this reservation, select 'Not Staying' for that pet. At least one pet must be staying for you to continue with booking the reservation.
You can add new pets to the customer's account by choosing '+ Add Pet.'
New Customers - You must add at least one pet to continue with the reservation.
Enter pet information including Name, Breed, and Weight for each dog (or Name and Breed for each cat)
Add additional pets or rooms to the reservation by choosing '+Add'
Choose 'Save and Continue' to start adding booking details
Step 4: Selecting the Offer
You must select an offer for each room included in the reservation. The offer defines the base price for the reservation (you can add room extras and pet perks which can increase the price of the booking).
You must select an offer for each room in the reservation.
Optionally, you can add room extras for each room and pet perks for each pet
New Pets: If your facility requires Behavioral Evaluations for boarding, you can schedule one now
New Customers: add contact information including name, address, phone, and email.
After you've entered all the booking details, choose 'Complete Booking' to navigate to the Invoices & Payments page where you can add a deposit and confirm the booking.
Step 4: Confirmation & Deposit
The new booking remains unconfirmed until you have chosen to confirm the reservation on the Invoices & Payments page.
You have a number of options to select from:
Pay Now
If the customer has booked online or their credit card has been saved by a front desk member
"Saved Card" will allow you to pay with a card that was previously used. You can confirm the last four digits
If the customer is at the front desk
"Swipe/Insert/Tap" will allow the customer to pay via credit card at the terminal onsite.
Click the orange "Pay $X.XX" and your customer can tap or insert their card for payment
You can "Save Card for Future Use" so the customer doesn't have to tap in the future
"Cash" will mean that you are collecting cash for that payment
If you are taking a reservation over the phone and there is not a credit card saved
"Manual Entry" will allow you to collect that credit card information
Click Pay $X.XX and you will move to the following screen to collect payment information
If you wish to forego deposit, select "Collect payment in person at facility"