Set them, publish them, and let the booking form enforce them. Check-in and check-out windows are a capacity tool, not a politeness. They decide whether the run is clean and ready when the next dog arrives.
Without a window a pet owner can book a 3:47am check-in, and Petboost will let them, because nothing has told it otherwise. Most operators discover this the first weekend they turn on self-service for a Stay service.
Open-ended collection breaks the next stay, not this one
The cost of a vague pickup lands on the following booking. A run that empties at 4pm instead of 10am cannot be cleaned, dried and reset before the afternoon arrivals, so either the next dog waits in reception or the run gets a rushed turnover. Neither shows up in your numbers. Both show up in your reviews.
A window fixes that by making the turnover time part of the booking rather than part of the negotiation. It also does something quieter: it spreads arrivals across a band you actually staff, instead of concentrating them at whatever time the first owner happened to choose.
The five rules, and which to use
Each side of a stay takes an optional From and Until. Empty means no restriction on that edge, and the five combinations cover everything you can express.
| Rule | From | Until | Use it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exact time | 14:00 | 14:00 | One staffed arrival slot, everybody in at 2pm |
| Window | 14:00 | 16:00 | The common boarding shape |
| Any time from | 14:00 | empty | You are open until close and just need a start |
| Any time until | empty | 10:00 | The check-out side of most kennels |
| No restriction | empty | empty | Rarely the right answer for boarding |
The pairing that works for most boarding is a check-in window in the afternoon and an any time until check-out in the morning. Dogs leave before the cleaning round, arrive after it, and the middle of the day belongs to the yard.
Two behaviours are worth knowing before you set them. The check-in window applies on the first day only and the check-out window on the last day only, so the nights in between are unrestricted. And the enforcement is one-sided: a pet owner's picker disables anything outside the band, or pre-fills and locks when From equals Until, while staff get the times pre-filled but still editable on New Stay. The regular who genuinely needs a 6am collection is a conversation and a staff override, not a reason to leave the window off.
Set the windows on the Stay service
Windows live on the service, not on the booking, so each Stay service carries one check-in window and one check-out window.
- Open Services, then Manage on the Stay service and Manage Service.
- On Duration & Timing, under Check-in & Check-out Windows, set From and Until for Check-in.
- Set From and Until for Check-out, and leave a field empty for no limit on that edge.
- Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.
Stay check-in and check-out windows covers the setup.
Where it interacts with availability
The window constrains the time of day. Your notice period constrains the date. Both apply, and when they conflict that day is simply unavailable.
The one that surprises people is the session clash. If your check-in window sits outside the hours of the team member or resource the service needs, that day reports as unavailable with a reason attached. A 2pm to 4pm check-in window against a team member rostered 9am to 1pm removes that day from the booking form, correctly, and the fix is to widen the roster or move the window rather than to remove the rule.
Applying windows across a catalogue is a bulk job: Services then Bulk Update, pick Duration & Timing, tick the check-in and check-out fields. Existing appointments are not retroactively validated, so bookings already on the calendar keep the times they were made with.
Windows and money are separate levers
This is the part worth being straight about. A window never adds a fee. It restricts what the owner can pick and nothing else.
Whether a late pickup costs more depends entirely on your pricing mode, and the three modes behave differently:
- Number of nights counts midnights crossed. Friday 4pm to Monday 9am is three nights. A 5pm Monday pickup is still three nights, so a late collection changes nothing on the invoice.
- Number of days counts calendar days, arrival and departure both. Friday to Monday is four days whatever the time, so a late collection changes nothing here either.
- Duration-based bills the hours from check-in to check-out in 24-hour periods, with optional per-day tiers and a spillover rate. Here a later pickup genuinely costs more, because it is more hours.
So if you want late collection to carry a price, that is Duration-based pricing or a line you add to the invoice. It is not a late-checkout fee setting, because there is not one. Decide which of those two you actually want before you go looking for a toggle that does not exist.
One trap on the same-day case: a stay that checks in at 16:00 and out at 09:00 on a single calendar day cannot be booked by a pet owner, because check-out would precede check-in. Day boarding is either a Regular daytime service, or Number of nights with a daycare rate for same-day stays and windows that fit inside one day.
Before you act: arrival and collection times interact with your licence conditions, your opening hours and your staffing. This is general information rather than regulatory advice. Check your own requirements before you publish new windows.