Money taken at booking, and a card you have re-checked before the sit runs. The second half is the one that catches sitters out, because a peak booking is usually made months in advance and a card does not stay valid just because you are counting on it.
The shape of the risk is particular to sitting and it is not the same as boarding. A boarding operator who loses a fortnight loses the income from one run while the rest of the house keeps trading. You lose the fortnight itself. You are in somebody's home, you cannot be anywhere else, and every other Easter enquiry was turned away in February.
Price what the fortnight actually costs you
Do the sum against your whole capacity, not the booking.
Fourteen nights at $95 is $1,330. That is not the loss when it falls over in March. The loss is $1,330 plus every other Easter enquiry you declined while holding those dates, and Easter enquiries do not come back in April. A quiet fortnight in February is a different animal, because the dates are still sellable and the phone still rings.
So size the deposit by how refillable the window is rather than by the value of the sit. Ordinary weeks can sit light. The school holidays, Easter and the fortnight after Christmas are the ones to load, because those are the dates where a cancellation is simply a lost fortnight.
Be clear-eyed about what a partial deposit protects. If the client cancels later than your notice period allows, you keep your cancellation-fee percentage of what was actually paid, the rest goes back, and the unpaid remainder is never charged. Half of a 30% deposit on that $1,330 is about $200 against a fortnight of your life. If the whole booking needs protecting, the setting is Pre-pay in Full, not a bigger percentage.
The card decays while you wait
This is the part that is specific to booking a long way out, and it is where sitters lose money they thought was secured.
A card saved in January with an expiry of 03/26 is a valid card when the booking is made and a dead card at Easter. Nothing about the booking tells you, and the first you hear of it is a failed charge on the day you finish.
Petboost does watch this. A card nearing its expiry shows as Card Expiring Soon and is still chargeable, and the owner is emailed 30 days and 7 days before the end of that month when they have a future booking or a live membership. You can push it yourself from the Wallet tab with Text card update, or from the Key Dates calendar by tapping the expiry day. Card on file and payment methods covers the statuses and the three ways a card gets saved.
Put a check in your own routine anyway, a fortnight before every long sit. It is a minute, and it moves the awkward conversation from the day you hand the keys back to a month earlier, when the client is not already home and unpacking.
Text a card update before the sit
A fortnight out, open the client's wallet and send the secure link if the card is expiring or has expired.
- Open Customers & Pets and select Manage on the client's pet.
- Open the Wallet tab. If it shows sub-tabs, choose Wallet Activity.
- Under Card on File, select Text card update, or Text card request when no card is saved.
The button only appears on a card that is expiring or has expired, and only when the client has a mobile number on file. Once it goes, it reads Request sent.
Take the booking first, chase the card second
The worst version of this is refusing a booking because the client has no card on file while they are standing in a car park in February.
You do not have to. Create the sit yourself and it lands as Pending with a Deposit due banner on the appointment. From there, Send card request texts them a link straight to the add-card form, and Take $X collects once the card is on. Take the dates now, collect within the day.
Staff cannot type a card in for a client, so that link is the path rather than a workaround. It is a card-industry requirement, not a Petboost setting, and asking a client to read their numbers out is the one thing to stop doing.
The alternative tool, Pre-hold funds, is not right for this. A hold goes on 72 hours before the appointment, which on a booking made four months ago tells you nothing while it still matters. It suits a short visit next Tuesday. It does not suit Easter.
Before you act: deposits, refunds, cancellation terms and key handling are commercial terms between you and your customer, and this is general information rather than legal or financial advice. Check your own terms, your insurance conditions and your obligations under Australian consumer law before you change them.
