A standing series with a card on file, and yes, charge for the meet and greet. Walking is the vertical where operators most often go looking for a deposit and there is not one to find, because recurring bookings do not take one.
That is worth sitting with rather than working around. The thing you are trying to protect is different here. A groomer is protecting one expensive slot. You are protecting a route, where a Tuesday client who drops out does not cost you their fee so much as it costs you the shape of a run that was built around their street.
The commitment is the run, not the booking
Price the loss properly and you will stop worrying about the wrong thing.
A four-dog Tuesday round at $45 each is $180. Lose one dog and you have $135, the same drive time, the same fuel, and a gap you cannot fill unless somebody within a few streets happens to want Tuesday. The revenue fell 25% and the cost of delivering it barely moved.
So what you actually need from a client is not money in advance. It is a standing commitment to a day, and enough notice when that day stops working that you can sell it to the waiting list rather than driving the round with a hole in it.
That is what the series gives you. Book it as recurring with No End Date and Petboost holds the slot twelve months ahead and adds a visit every night to keep the horizon there. The client's Tuesday is not something they re-decide each week. It is on the calendar until one of you takes it off.
Then let your change and cancellation notice period do the rest. It applies to each occurrence, so a client who cancels Monday night for Tuesday morning is inside it and the fee applies, exactly as it would on a one-off.
Charge for the meet and greet, and make it the gate
An unpaid meet and greet is a half-hour of your time, a drive each way, and a conversation you will have several times a month once you are busy. It is also the single most useful visit you make, because it is where you find out the dog is reactive on lead, that the side gate sticks, and that the "spare key under the pot" is a key for the screen door only.
Charging for it sorts enquiries at the moment you most want them sorted. It does not need to be much. A short-visit rate is enough to make somebody check their own commitment before they book.
Build it as its own service and make the walk depend on it, so the gate holds without you watching. On the walk service, open Who Can Book, switch on Advanced options, turn on Require Prerequisite Service, pick the meet and greet, and set What counts as met to Completed. A new client who finds you at 10pm is then offered the meet and greet and not the walks, which is the right answer at 10pm.
Pause the series without ending it
Pausing is a cancel with an end date on it, and it saves you a phone call every holiday season.
- Open the visit where the break starts from Appointments.
- Select Manage, then Cancel.
- Choose Skip these dates, then set Stop at to the last day away.
- Answer Notify customer?, then select Skip these dates.
Those dates come off and the series resumes afterwards. Stop at is marked Optional, and leaving it empty ends the series for good, which is the one action on this screen you cannot undo. When a client tells you they are away, that field is the whole job.
Separate weekdays are usually separate series. A Tuesday and a Thursday walk for the same dog are two, so skipping one does not skip the other, and a client going away needs both paused. The cancel screen lists the other series it can see, but nothing is selected until you open it. Recurring appointments covers the three cancel options and what each one does to the series.
Owners can do this themselves in their app when changes are allowed and the notice period has not passed. Tell them to use Skip these dates, because the option next to it stops their standing walk permanently and they will not mean to.
Before you act: cancellation terms, notice periods and key-holding arrangements are commercial terms between you and your customer, and this is general information rather than legal advice. Check your own terms and your insurance conditions before you change them.