2021 Q1 Feature Recap!
To kick off the year, we have some exciting updates and feature improvements coming your way! From a major overhaul to our Portal Policy feature, a notification center added to the Mobile App, and more, this is a feature recap you don’t want to miss! Read on to learn about some of the awesome features and upgrades we have been making to our platform.
Client Agreements
One of the updates we are most excited about is the overhaul to the Agreements feature that we rolled out this past quarter. While Time To Pet has always supported a "Portal Policy” for our customers to utilize for their company, as our platform and customers have grown, we have received a good amount of feedback that a singular “Portal Policy” agreement wasn’t always the best way to have clients review your service agreements and capture their e-signatures for your business.
That is why we are happy to introduce the Client Agreements tool! This is a replacement and major improvement for our old Portal Policy tool and has been renamed to better reflect the true purpose of this feature.
To start things off, Client Agreements now support the creation of multiple policies for your business. For example, do you want to capture an e-signature for your company’s Service Agreement, Vet Release Form, and Key Handling Agreement and don’t want them consolidated under a single policy? Well, look no further because now that is absolutely possible! Client Agreements can now also be text-based (where you write your agreement within Time To Pet itself), or you can upload a PDF of your agreement!
With the capacity to upload more than one agreement, you may have some agreements that are required for all clients and some that are geared toward a specific subset of clients. For example, do you have an agreement that details your overnight sitting policies that you need clients receiving those services to sign but not others? This is now also possible to achieve with Client Agreements utilizing the options available in the new “Required By” tab!
We have also made some major improvements as to how Agreements are managed on a client’s profile. You can now choose which agreements are required for that individual client to sign from the sidebar. We have also added an “Agreement Status” tag under a client’s name at the top of their profile so that you can quickly see which agreements they have signed and which still need to be signed. You also have the ability to download any agreements they have completed for your records.
For more information on what is possible to achieve with our new Agreements feature and where you can upload and configure them, please see our help article here: Client Agreements. We also have sample agreements you can use as inspiration for your own documents here: Sample Service Agreements.
Notifications Center For Staff Mobile App
One of the most common feature requests we receive is for more administrative-type functionality built into our Staff App. We are thrilled to announce that the first phase of this added administrative functionality is available with the updates we have made to our Mobile App these past few months in the form of the Notifications Center!
Here at Time To Pet, we are always working hard to bring you and your team a better experience by creating more features aimed at helping you to run your business more efficiently, especially while you are out in the field. At its core, that is precisely what the Notification Center is meant to do. With this addition to our Staff App, it is significantly easier to receive and view the same types of notifications that you can see on your Staff Dashboard, as you can now access these directly on your mobile app.
This new update also means that you and your team can now see many additional push notifications that were previously not available on the App. For example, when a client submits a service order request or they update their pet details, you will receive an alert that they have done so without ever needing to exit out of your app. We’ve also created a new central hub in the Staff App where you can easily access all of these important notifications at any time.
The Notifications Center is accessible by clicking the new bell icon in the upper right corner of your app.
Inside the new Notifications Center, you will find two tabs, one for Messages and one for Notifications. The Messages tab will show you all of your client message notifications (including private messages). You can also filter by unread messages only, mark all messages as read, or mark just selected messages as read. And, if you click one of these messages, you will be taken straight to that client’s conversation feed so you can easily send them a reply! If you click on a notification wherein an action currently isn’t supported within the app, then you will instead be taken to the appropriate page within your Staff Dashboard on your mobile device’s web browser.
For more information on this major update and the different notifications you can now receive, as well as how to manage your notification settings, please see our help article here: Notifications Center In Staff App.
Conflict Warnings For Bulk Approved Templates
Another update we have made will help to streamline your scheduling in regards to your Templates. Part of what makes Templates so effective is that you can set them up to be auto-approved by our system without needing to lift a finger. However, sometimes, issues can arise when a Template is approved onto the calendar but the staff member assigned to the events has time off or perhaps you’ve mistakenly overbooked yourself for that particular timeframe.
Whatever the reason, we have now added a Conflict Warning tool that will detect when a staff member has an existing conflict with the Template events about to be approved onto the calendar. Just as if the events were being auto-approved, bulk approving Templates with detected conflicts will prompt the system to provide a notice of which Templates have conflicts and send an email to the Administrator team detailing the conflicts found. With this tool, you can more efficiently schedule your team and avoid potential misunderstandings.
For more information on our Templates feature, please see our help article here: Scheduling Repeat Services Using Templates.
Disbursed Tips Can No Longer Be Edited
Some other changes we have implemented is that tips can no longer be edited on or removed from invoices if that tip has already been disbursed. This was done in order to prevent any conflicts that could potentially arise from situations where a tip was disbursed and paid out to a staff member, but then was later removed from the invoice to be returned or refunded to the client.
In order to edit or remove a tip on an invoice that has already been disbursed, you will first need to un-disburse the tip. Once this has been done, the tip can then be edited.
As a bonus, when editing a tip, you can click on the suggested tip amounts for various percentages that are listed on the tip window and they will automatically fill the tip amount text field with that suggested amount.
For more information on how to un-disburse a tip and on how tipping works on our platform, please see our help article here: How To Un-Disburse A Tip & Tipping In Time To Pet.
New Filter Added For Client Reporting
If you have our Automatic Charging feature enabled for your company, you can now use a brand-new filter called “Clients With Or Without Automatic Charging” when generating a report in the Reporting > Staff & Clients > Clients Tab section of your account. Using this filter will allow you to quickly determine which of your clients has the feature enabled or disabled for them if you need to make any changes to their status.
For more information on how to enable Automatic Charging for your company, please see our help article here: Automatic Charging.
Improvements Made For Event Histories
Being able to access histories of scheduled events is a critical aspect to successfully managing a pet care business. Having accurate knowledge of what staff members made what changes and when can do a lot in helping to determine when a particular action was taken or where mistakes may have been made. While Time To Pet already grants you access to these types of histories, we have now made an upgrade to event histories in that the tool that a change was implemented with will not be displayed. For example, if someone reassigned all of the events from one staff member to another, you will see a little label in the history for that event that says “Bulk Re-Assign”. Or if a staff member adjusts the timing on events from the same service order using the Bulk Edit tool, a label in that event’s history will say “Bulk Edit”. This will enable you to keep better track of what your staff members are doing and with accountability if any errors or mistakes are made.
For more detailed instructions on how to access the change history of a particular event or the other places wherein histories can be found, please see our help articles here for additional information: Viewing Service Order History & Locating The Different Histories In Time To Pet.
