Feature Recap for Q4 of 2023!

End Of Year Feature Recap: Managing Staff Access, the Daily Visit Map, and More!

Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe that we’re already halfway through the first month of 2024, but before we fully embrace the new year, we wanted to wrap up 2023 with a proper send-off. The end of the year was a busy but successful time here at Time To Pet. In the last quarter of 2023, we were able to implement several new updates to our platform, including some highly requested features like Managing Staff Access and a Daily Visit Map for staff to utilize. 

Whether or not you were able to make it to our New Feature Recap webinar, in order to make sure you and your team are set up for success in the new year and can utilize Time To Pet’s features to their fullest potential, we have compiled an overview of the latest features, tools, and updates we have rolled out within the last few months. 

You can also watch a video recording of our Feature Recap for Q4 2023 on our YouTube channel here!

Now let's dig into the features!

Managing Staff Access

Every pet care professional has run into a situation where it’s been necessary to sever communications between a staff member and a client that they have completed visits for after a complaint or other issue has arisen. Being able to keep these clients and staff members separate is vital to avoiding further misunderstandings. It can go a long way in maintaining both parties' happiness and ongoing satisfaction with your company. That is why we are so excited to introduce one of our most highly anticipated features – Managing Staff Access – which allows you to have a greater degree of control over the client profiles that your staff are able to view and access than before. 

With this new feature, when you encounter these types of interactions between your clients and your pet sitters, you now have the ability to revoke the access of specific clients from staff members with the click of a button from the Client Subscriptions tab of a staff member’s profile. Once a staff member has had their access revoked from a client’s profile, they can no longer view their details or messages and cannot interact with them through their conversation feeds. On the Administrator side of things, you will no longer be able to assign that staff member to any events for that client, and their name will appear under a section titled “Access Removed” on dropdown menus for events relating to the client from whom their access was revoked. 

For more information on this feature, please see our dedicated blog post here: Managing Staff Access To Clients.

Daily Visit Map

Another highly anticipated feature is our Daily Visit Map for staff members! Your staff will no longer have to switch between multiple apps to determine the best way to travel their routes or retrieve directions to a new client’s residence. With the Daily Visit Map, staff can now view all of their scheduled and completed visits on a map within their Time To Pet Mobile Apps. While all of their events for the day will initially be organized by the time they are scheduled, staff can rearrange the order of their visits to optimize their daily route easily. By tapping the brand new map icon that will appear on their Schedule List, staff can access their Daily Visit Map and even get directions with their phone’s default map app from their current location by selecting the Route Icon below the map for singular destination or receive directions for all of their events by choosing the “Open Route” option. With this new resource at their fingertips, your staff will be able to achieve more self-sufficiency and be better set up for success when managing their time and schedules. 

Updates To The Knowledge Base

While we are always working to keep our Knowledge Base and help articles up-to-date and make improvements where necessary, our Customer Support team have added a number of new articles this year geared toward helping you and your team navigate Time To Pet and its features easier than ever before! 

Some highlights include our Advanced Template FAQ, which provides an in-depth guide on different Templates you can create with our highly flexible Templates tool to match the needs of your clients! 

We have also crafted an incredible resource in our Tax Season article, which will point you in the right direction when it comes to finding the necessary data you need for Tax Time. While we are not accountants and cannot offer advice on matters involving your finances or taxes, this article brings together all of the most commonly-asked for reports and instructions on where to find them. 

Other resources that we highly recommend checking out that have been released within the last few months are some wonderful blog pieces on Virtual Meet & Greets (with some video examples included) and a Complete Guide To Every Pet Holiday In 2024. With this guide, you’ll know exactly what to post to your 2024 social media calendars! 

Tooltip Refresh

Another update we are very excited to announce is something that our Onboarding and Support teams have been working on together – a complete refresh of many of the tooltips, “About This Report” bubbles, and support sections that can be found throughout Time To Pet! We strongly encourage you to take a look! As a reminder, all of our Support and Onboarding team members are former pet care business owners or Office Managers themselves, which means we not only have a high degree of familiarity with our platform but with the pet industry, as well! Using that combined knowledge and experience, we have worked to provide what we hope is a more user-friendly and intuitive experience that will help to better guide you through our various features and reports moving forward. 

To access these tooltips in your Dashboard, you can hover over different areas to see the “i-bubble” contents or click directly on “more info on this report” to open up a more detailed explanation of the data our reports contain. 

Customer Support Tip: Use the search bar in the Settings section of your account to find certain features, settings, and customization options. If you’re still having trouble, be sure to use our Live Chat feature or message our Support team at support@timetopet.com. We also provide support via our Facebook and Instagram pages - just click the “message” button and we’ll be happy to assist!

Bulk Send Client Invoices And Confirmation Emails

In the past, it’s only been possible to email service confirmations and client invoices individually from their profiles or Service Orders, which can take a lot of time to process. Now, we’ve updated the Bulk Invoicing section of your Time To Pet accounts to allow you to send multiple client invoices and service confirmation emails at once. You can now also schedule invoices and service confirmations in advance to be sent out to your clients in bulk. With these new capabilities, you’ll be able to send important notices to your clients while having time to spare and with a lot less clicking! 

Filter Clients By Date Their Profile Was Updated

One of Time To Pet’s greatest strengths is the accessibility clients have to accounts and their ability to pay their own invoices, add and remove their own payment methods, and edit and update the details for themselves and their pets as needed. When clients maintain their own profiles and keep their information current, it can be incredibly beneficial to you and your team when it comes to visiting their homes and caring for their pets. However, there may also be times when a client makes an update to their profiles that isn’t overly apparent, and you’d like to know when it was added, or perhaps they never perform any upkeep on their profiles at all. Whatever the case, Time To Pet now allows you to generate a report using a filter based on the date a client’s profile was updated. This filter can be used when generating Client Reports in the Reporting section of your Time To Pet Dashboard. 

Customize Confirmation Email Text When Approving Or Scheduling Requests

Previously, the text included in confirmation emails sent to your clients wasn’t customizable when approving their pending service and change requests. Now, however, when approving client requests, you can select to customize the confirmation message included with the approved services. When manually scheduling events for clients and sending a confirmation email from the Scheduler, you can customize the text sent in the message in the new text box that now appears. Just be sure to save your customizations! 

Existing Invoices Will Now Display Range Of Dates When Scheduling Services For Clients

When manually scheduling events through the Scheduler for a client, if they have an open invoice on their account, you are given the opportunity to add the services you’re scheduling to one of these existing invoices. In the past, only the invoice’s due date would be visible. Now, though, you will be able to view the range of dates scheduled on each existing invoice in the dropdown menu. With the full range of service dates easier to reference, this will allow for greater accuracy when adding visits onto an open invoice and should lead to fewer scheduling mishaps for you and your team!

Pet Photos Now Displayed On Mobile App Schedule Screen

Until recently, pet photos that were added to a pet’s profile could only be viewed on a staff member’s Mobile App after selecting a client’s profile and then clicking to view each pet’s profile. With this new update, staff members can now see the profile photo for each pet assigned to their visits as they complete their events right from their Schedule screen! The pet photos are located beneath the list of all pets assigned to the event. If a pet doesn’t have a photo uploaded to their profile, the default profile picture will be visible instead. By displaying these photos and the names of the pets when you select a photo, staff members will be able to discern which pet is which more easily. This can be especially helpful when they are visiting new clients or filling in for a client’s usual sitter.

Updated Client’s Schedule View On Mobile App

While we always strive to better the experience of all customers using our software, the experience your staff and clients have when using our Client App or Client Portal is equally as important. In order to provide a more user-friendly experience, we have released some updates for the Client App’s Schedule View that are aimed at offering more straightforward navigation, especially when viewing visits scheduled on a specific date. 

Clients Can Now See And Save Videos On Their Mobile App

One of the most exciting features we rolled out last year was the ability for staff members to send videos through a client’s Conversation Feed in the Mobile App. They can do so either directly from the Chat section of a client’s profile or when completing an event for the client. With our most recent update, these videos are no longer limited to a client’s Conversation Feed. They can now see, save, and share the videos within the Mobile App by playing the video to enlarge it and choosing from the “Save” or “Share” options that can be found directly above the video.

We are very excited for what 2024 brings for Time To Pet and our customers. Stay tuned for some awesome new updates soon!