2020 Q3 & Q4 Feature Recap!
This year has been a tough one for everyone, and the effect it has had on the pet care industry has been enormous. As 2020 draws to a close, we just want to revisit some of the tools and features we have added to our platform and take a moment to reflect before we strive ahead. Though times have been incredibly challenging, clients have proven themselves to be loyal and generous where they can be, and as businesses continue to recuperate, we will continue to do the best we can to provide you with the best pet sitting software possible in order to take some of that weight off your shoulders. As a reminder, if you have any questions or suggestions for our team, please reach out to us at support@timetopet.com. We’re always happy to assist! Thank you so much for being a part of the Time To Pet family!
Updates To Managing Client Keys
As a dog walker or pet sitter, it isn’t just a client’s pet that you’re looking after. Ultimately, you are responsible for managing their beloved furry family member, their home, and in many cases, the keys to that home. Without a client’s keys or proper access instructions, it can be difficult or nigh impossible to complete your visits. That is why, as a business owner or member of your company’s management team, it’s integral to know where each client key is, which team member has them, and that if another staff member needs them, the plan for them to switch hands is set.
But keeping track of these things by hand or through countless email threads can be a bit cumbersome and leave room for mistakes to be made. To help counteract some of those potential troubles, we have made a few updates to our key management tools in Time To Pet to allow Office Managers and Administrators a more efficient way to track keys and see which team members have the keys they need and the ones that don’t. To that end, we have added two brand new reports that can be found in the Clients > Keys > Key Report section of your account.
The first report is the Missing Keys Report. This report allows your management team to see which upcoming visits have keys that are not assigned to the staff member doing that visit.
The second report is the Key No Longer Needed Report. This report allows you to see which staff members have keys in their possession that they no longer need. A key is determined as no longer being needed by a team member if they have no upcoming visits scheduled for that client.
To learn more about these reports and how Time To Pet can help you manage client keys, please see our help article here: Managing Client Keys.
Local Pet Care
Over the past few months, our team has been hard at work on a new project that we’re very excited to announce - Local Pet Care!
Local Pet Care is a tool used to connect pet parents looking for high-quality pet care services with local, experienced, and professional pet care businesses. Here at Time To Pet, we believe that professional pet care companies offer a service that cannot be matched. Professional providers deliver a better service to the pets in their care and a better experience to the humans who trust them to care for their pets as compared to those without the proper experience, training, and resources. We have entire list of reasons why clients should opt to hire professionals to look after their pet than the kid down the street that you can find here: Hiring a Professional Pet Care Business is Better for Your Pets.
Local Pet Care is completely free for pet care businesses and for pet parents. All pet care businesses that use Time To Pet do get a free Featured Listing which includes preferred placement in search results and more visibility to pet parents in their area. You can update your Local Pet Care listing right in your Time To Pet dashboard. If you don’t already use Time To Pet to manage your pet care business, don’t worry, you can create a free listing on Local Pet Care too!
Pet parents can search for local, professional pet care providers directly from localpetcare.com. From there, they can see business profiles, click on the links to the company’s website or other social media pages, and send messages to professional pet care businesses to inquire about their services.
While we have all been through so much hardship this year, we are incredibly optimistic about the future of our industry, and Local Pet Care is our way of throwing our hat in the ring and giving pet parents and pet care professionals a new place to converge and connect to ensure top-notch care for pets everywhere.
Resource Center
Another update we are excited to share is our new Resource Center! This page is available from the dropdown menu in the upper right hand corner of your screen that you can access by clicking on your profile photo. Our Resource Center is brimming with different tools and references that every pet care business owner using Time To Pet can take advantage of, especially if you are just getting started with our program!
At the click of a button, you have access to several Onboarding tools that can help you to transition your clients and staff to Time To Pet, and to our Getting Started Video that will link to a Youtube playlist we have that is full of tutorials and walkthroughs of our platform’s various features. Alongside these videos, you can also find FAQs we have put together to answer some of our customers’ most pressing questions. You’ll also find links to our Best Practices articles that contain many tips and suggestions for using our software to do things like schedule overnights, if you’re using Time To Pet as a dog trainer, and many more!
And if you don’t quite find the answer you’re looking for, we have a link at the bottom of the page that will open our Help Tool that will allow you to search our Knowledge Database for the answers you’re looking for or reach out to our Customer Support through Live Chat or by emailing us at support@timetopet.com!
Opportunity For User Feedback On Mobile App
We want to hear from you! In some of the most recent updates that we rolled out for our mobile app, we have added some tools specific to the Staff App that will allow users to share their opinions and leave feedback regarding their experience using Time To Pet. If you’re having issues or if you have any questions or suggestions that you would like to share directly with our team, you can reach out to our Customer Support Team directly from your Staff App!
We greatly appreciate all feedback from our customers and use it to help improve our apps and software to give you the tools and features you need to provide the best pet care to your clients possible. So reach out to us through the Settings section of your app at your earliest convenience!
New Revenue Report
In a continuing effort to expand and improve on our current reporting tools, we have also introduced a new revenue report called the Week-Over-Week/Month-Over-Month Revenue By Client Report or “WoW/MoM Revenue By Client” as it is listed in the Reporting > Financial > Revenue section of your account.
If you have ever wanted to view a full breakdown of all client revenue your company has generated on a week-over-week or month-over-month basis, then this is the report for you! As with all of our revenue reports, you can use the download button to get a downloadable CSV of the report that you can then export to a program like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets to use for any pertinent record-keeping. For more information on our revenue reports, please see our help articles here: Understanding The Different Financial Reports & Analyzing Financial Data Discrepancies In Time To Pet.
New Scheduler View
Something that we hear from customers often is that they would like to view their company calendars on a Monday-to-Sunday basis as opposed to a Sunday-to-Saturday basis. We’re happy to say that we have answered these requests with a new view available on your main Scheduler page. Please note, however, that this is only a view change and won’t have any impact on your scheduled events or on things like the Templates tool that relies on a Sunday-to-Saturday week for scheduling.
To change your Scheduler to this view, navigate to the Scheduling section of your account and click the “Week” filter located above the company calendar. This will open up a dropdown menu. Select “Week (Mon-Sun)” to change your calendar to this view.
To change this view to the default one for your company calendar, navigate to the Settings > Company Settings > Scheduler section of your account and toggle the “Calendar Default View” option to the “Week (Mon-Sun)” view. It will then become the default view across the board for your company.
For more information on what views are available for your Scheduler, please see our help article here: Scheduler Settings.
Leave Client Change Requests As Pending
Have you ever wanted the option to leave a client’s change request as “Pending” while processing a client’s change request? Well, we are happy to announce that now you will have the option to do so with the new “Leave As Pending” option we have added to the “Request Status” dropdown in the Scheduler > Change Requests tab of your account. So now, if you would like to process a large amount of change requests from a client in phases, you can! For example, if a client cancels a large number of changes that span multiple months, you could approve the ones for the current month and save the ones for the following months until later to see if their needs may shift again. Whatever your preference, the power is in your hands!
For more information on processing change requests, please see our help article here: Processing Change And Cancellation Requests.
New Photo Upload Limit In Mobile App
While an update on the smaller side, we are thrilled to announce that the number of photos you can upload in the mobile app when sending a Visit Report or attaching photos to a message has gone up to twenty! So get out your cameras and capture some great memories you can share with your clients!
Step-By-Step Guide For Generating Paystubs In Bulk
To round up our highlights from the features and updates we have released these past few months, we have recently revamped our paystub-generating process! When you go to your company’s Pay Center to generate paystubs in bulk for your staff, you will now be treated to a step-by-step guide that will help instruct you on each part to ensure you generate paystubs accurately and with the parameters you want.
The first step is the Calculate step. On this screen, you will be given the opportunity to configure your paystubs to generate for your team to your preference. For example, if you want staff members to be paid for visits that haven’t yet been completed or that have been cancelled, you can choose to include those on the paystubs that will count towards what you owe your team.
Once you’ve configured the paystub options as you desire, the next step is to Review & Edit. On this screen, you can preview what will be included on each staff member’s paystub and can edit or add to it as needed. To review a particular staff member’s paystub, click “Edit” next to their name. It is on this page that you can add custom line items or edit the amounts your staff is paid for a specific line item.
Once you have reviewed all of your staff’s paystubs and are satisfied, you can move on to the third step, which is the Finalize step. On this screen, you'll be asked if you want to "Email Pay Stubs To Staff?" If yes, check the box. If no, uncheck the box. Then, you will click "Finalize & Generate Pay Stubs" to complete the process.
For more information on generating paystubs for your team, please see our help article here: Generating/Deleting Pay Stubs/Invoices For Staff/Users.
