2020 Q1 Feature Recap!
As our first quarter of 2020 draws to a close, the pet care industry and the world at large are entering a strange and unprecedented time. As we enter these uncertain waters, we want to impress upon our customers that we are here to help and support you and your clients in each and every way we can. In order to help us all weather these challenging times, we have been hard at work to introduce some new features like Gift Cards, as well as a COVID-19 Resource Guide we built specifically for pet care professionals. We are also extending our free trial to 45 days.
Hourly Time And Mileage Tracking
Managing staff members can be one of the most challenging aspects of running a dog walking or pet sitting business. There are schedules to juggle, training to be done, and a ton of reports to attend to. You may even have to use a few different tools to keep track of all these different things. Well, we are very proud to announce that we are releasing two new features in Time To Pet to help make these things easier to manage for our customers – Hourly Time Tracking and Mileage Tracking!
First up is Hourly Time Tracking! Hourly Time Tracking is designed for pet care companies that pay their staff members an hourly rate. With Time Tracking enabled, your staff can clock in and out of shifts, and you can run quick reports to see all of their shift data. To enable Hourly Time Tracking for your company, navigate to the Settings > Staff Settings > Time & Mileage section of your account. You also have the power to select which staff members of yours have the ability to track their hourly time, which can be extremely useful if you pay some staff members an hourly rate and others a per-visit amount.
As soon as you have enabled Hourly Time Tracking, your staff will be able to start and stop shifts directly from their Staff App or from the mobile website version of their Staff Dashboard. After they record their shifts, you can view all of this shift information in the “Time & Mileage” tab on a staff member’s profile and even opt to include them on staff paystubs.
Our Mileage Tracking feature, on the other hand, makes it simple for your staff to track their mileage right from their Staff App. To enable Mileage Tracking for your company, navigate to the Settings > Staff Settings > Time & Mileage section of your account. Just like with Time Tracking, you can determine which of your staff members have access to the Mileage Tracking tools. After being enabled, staff will be able to track their mileage from their Staff App or on the mobile website version of their Staff Dashboard at any point or when they are starting and stopping their hourly shifts. After mileage data has been entered, it can also be viewed from the “Time & Mileage” tab on a staff member’s profile or directly through their Staff App.
For more information on how to enable these great features for your business, please see our help article here: Time Tracking & Mileage Tracking. We also have instructions aimed at staff on how to utilize these features in their Staff Apps in our help article here: How To Clock In, Clock Out, And Track Mileage As Staff.
Upgrades To Custom Staff Rates
No two pet care companies are run in the same way and due to that reality, we have done our utmost to include as much customization to our features as possible. Historically, when it came to setting custom staff pay rates, only core services (such as a 25 minute cat visit) could have a custom staff rate configured for them. For example, if the default rate you pay for your team per 25 minute cat visit is $7, you could set things up so that senior team members are paid a higher rate of $8 instead. Well, we are very excited to announce that this past quarter we have greatly expanded upon custom staff rates!
You can now set custom staff rates not only for your core services in Time To Pet but also for extra pet rates, weekend rates, after-hours rates, and holiday rates! So, using our 25 minute cat visit service example, not only can you set custom rates for staff based on the service itself, you can set the custom rate your senior team members are paid for each additional pet on the cat visit and ensure they are receiving higher rates for weekend, after hours, and holiday visits, as well!
To set these custom rates for your staff, just navigate to the "Rates" tab on a staff member’s profile. You’ll be able to see all of the additional custom rate options from there. Custom holiday pay rates can also be set separately at the top of the screen.
To learn more about configuring custom staff pay rates and how you can generate a report to view everyone’s rates, please see our help article here: Staff Pay Rates.
Staff ID Numbers
While Time To Pet itself is not a payroll processor and cannot pay your staff directly, we do have tools that can be used to help you calculate payroll for your company. The majority of these tools can be found within the Pay Center. Some payroll companies, however, may require some sort of ID Number for your staff members. To help assist you in this area, we have added a brand new ID Number field to staff profiles. This is a field that will be blank by default but that you can choose to use in order to add an internally assigned ID to your team members. You will need to manually update this field, and will be included on the paystubs you generate for your staff. This field will not be visible to staff members with a staff role of Trainee or User/Staff and will only be visible to Office Managers and Administrators.
Custom Transactions Numbers Warning For QuickBooks Online Integration
If you have Time To Pet connected to your QuickBooks Online account, you may have encountered an issue where, seemingly out of nowhere, all of your invoices were suddenly assigned the number zero. This is an issue that can crop up due to updates made on QuickBooks’ end that can cause the setting to be toggled on even if you didn’t change the setting yourself.
To help combat this situation, a warning will now appear in the Settings > Integrations > QuickBooks section of your account if your QuickBooks Online account has the Custom Transaction Numbers setting enabled.
For more information on how to correct this situation if your invoices are all populating with the number zero, please see our help article here: Custom Transaction Numbers.
Updates To Time To Pet’s Referral Program
Do you know someone with their own dog walking or pet sitting business or someone just starting out in the pet care industry? Do they have a good and reliable pet sitting software to help with all of their business managing needs? If there’s anybody like that that comes to mind, please feel free to recommend us!
Through our new Referral Program, for each company that you refer, you will get $100 in referral credits applied to your account. The referred company will get 50% off their first three months with us, as well! And if you’re opening up a second business account for a new location, you can use your referral link from your original account to refer yourself and earn the credits for both of your companies!
To locate your referral link to send your friends in the pet care industry, navigate to the Billing section of your account. This link is unique to you. From there, copy your link and share it with any pet care providers you know who are looking for pet sitting software. Be sure to remind them that they will get 50% off their first three months when using your link! When your referral activates their account and completes their first paid month, Time To Pet will automatically deposit your referral credits into your account, and they will automatically be applied to your monthly subscription fee!
For more information on our referral program, please see our help article here: Referral Program.
Gift Cards
Gift Cards are a great way for your business to allow clients to pre-pay for future, not yet scheduled services. We have heard countless stories from our customers that cash flow is a major issue currently due to the pandemic. Gift Cards can help you alleviate some of this.
Gift Cards can be purchased in $20, $50, $100, or any custom amount directly from the client’s portal. When a gift card is purchased, Time To Pet will automatically create an Open Payment on their account, which can be applied to a future invoice for your client. Since releasing Gift Cards a few weeks ago, we’ve seen some incredible data on how generous pet care clients can be. The average gift card sold is over $180, and we’ve seen a total of gift card sales well over $150,000.
We’ve also released some additional reporting in the Reporting > Financial > Payments section of Time To Pet to help our customers track and ultimately thank their generous clients for their gift card purchases.
For more information on how to enable gift cards for your company or how clients can purchase them for themselves or others, please see our help articles here: Gift Cards & Purchasing Gift Cards.
Cancelled Visits Report
We have created a new Canceled Visits Report to help our customers understand the financial impact that COVID-19 may be having on their business and to help them generate quick reports for government assistance programs.
This report can be found in the Reporting > Schedule section of your account and allows your business to see a full breakdown of all cancelled events over any date range. Data on the cancel percentage and lost revenue has also been included.
The Cancelled Visits Report allows you to include deleted events as well as events deleted when voiding an invoice in addition to events that are just marked as “Cancelled.” You can also view a breakdown of all cancelled events by client.
Please note that this report does not include any of the following information:
- Lost Revenue for events cancelled that are part of a package
- Lost Revenue from Template events that were cancelled before the Template was approved or events that were part of a rejected Template period
- Lost Revenue based on extra fees that were manually changed on an event (Extra Pets, After Hours, Weekend Fee). Lost revenue from these fees is calculated based on the default rate for each service and any custom client rates for that service
For more information on this report and our other Scheduling reports, please see our help article here: Schedule Reports.
Tip Audit Log Added To Staff Profiles
In order to help our customers better track the tips their staff members receive and to better understand when they are paid out through a generated paystub, we have created a dedicated tip log that can be found on each and every staff member’s profile. It is a tag labelled “Tip Balance” that will display the current amount of tips that staff member has accrued that have been disbursed but not yet paid out to that staff member. It will also a history of the tips previously disbursed to that staff member. It can be located right beneath their name on their staff profile.
To view this information, click directly on the Tip Balance tag. A new screen will open with a history of tip disbursements with a link to the client invoice it came from, as well as a log of when tips are "paid out" on a pay stub.
For more information on a staff member’s tip balance and on how tipping works in Time To Pet, please see our help article here: Tipping In Time To Pet. We also have some great tips on how to encourage your clients to tip in our help article here: Best Practices For Maximizing Tipping.
Event Note Included By Default In Mobile App Field Visibility
Whether they leave additional instructions when they submit their service requests or you add care instructions or reminders for your team as you schedule the events yourself, the Event Notes section of a visit can play an essential part in a staff member’s ability to carry out a visit. For example, if a client instructs that they would like their pet to be fed within the Event Notes section of their requests and provides specific instructions on how to do so, those notes may not be available anywhere else on the client or pet’s profile. So in order to avoid any confusion or potential mistakes, you want to ensure that this information is visible and hard for your staff members to miss.
To that end, we have now made it so that, in the Settings > Mobile App > Field Visibility section of your account, the Event Notes field is visible by default to your staff members in the field.
