Setting Up Your Sessions

Sessions are focused time blocks inside your working hours. They give your day structure, control when bookings can start, and let you set a different number of pets at a time for different parts of the day.

Three things work together. Schedules & Sessions sums them up as your hours, then sessions (blocks in your day), then pets at a time (how many at once):

Open a team member's or resource's week

1. Open Schedules & Sessions.
2. Optional: with more than one team member or resource, choose Team Members or Resources, or type in the search box.
3. Select Edit beside the team member or resource.

Each day reads Working or Day Off, and each session shows its times and Max pets At Once. A working day with no session reads No sessions and takes no bookings. You can also add and change sessions straight from the full list without selecting Edit.

Create morning and afternoon sessions

This example splits a day into a morning session and an afternoon session with a lunch break between them.

1. Open Schedules & Sessions and select Edit beside the team member or resource.
2. On a working day, select Add Session.
3. Set Start Time to 9:00 am and End Time to 12:00 pm.
4. Set Pets at a time, for example 2.
5. Optional: open Advanced options and enter a Label (Optional), such as Morning Grooms or whatever fits your day.
6. Select Add Session.
7. Repeat steps 2 to 6 for the afternoon: 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, a Pets at a time that can differ from the morning, for example 3, and a label such as Afternoon Express.
8. Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.

Bookings now fit only inside those two sessions: each appointment has to start and finish within one of them. The gap from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm becomes your lunch break.

Pets at a time is not a daily limit

This is the most common misunderstanding. 3 pets at a time does not mean 3 pets a day. It is how many can overlap at the same moment.

With Pets at a time set to 3, a session from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm and services that take an hour each, the session fills like this:

That is 9 dogs in one session, and never more than 3 at any moment. The number controls how many overlap at the same time, not how many come through the door that day.

Spot weights: larger dogs can use more spots

Some pets take up more capacity than others. By default every booking uses 1 spot, and a service can be set so that each booking of it uses 2.

With Pets at a time set to 4, a small dog groom that uses 1 spot and a large dog groom that uses 2 spots, 9:00 am could hold any of these:

Petboost counts the spots itself when it checks availability.

Set the spots a service uses

Each service has one Spots used value for every pet booked on it, so use separate services for small and large dogs.

1. Open Services, then Manage on the service and Manage Service.
2. Choose Team & Resources.
3. Open Advanced options and set Spots used under Places Used Per Booking. It shows once team members or resources are Required for the service.
4. Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.

Edit one session

1. Open Schedules & Sessions and select Edit beside the team member or resource.
2. Select the session.
3. Set Start Time and End Time.
4. Set Pets at a time.
5. Optional: open Advanced options, enter a Label (Optional), and turn Show on booking page on or off.
6. Optional: turn on 24 Hours, set Same-family booking, or turn on Fixed start times.
7. Optional: under Services in this session and Which pets can book, limit the session to some services or pets.
8. Select Stage for Publishing, or Add Session when you are creating a new one.
9. Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.

Same-family booking is how many pets from the same family can be booked side by side in this session. Without it, siblings are booked one after another. Fixed start times makes every appointment start exactly at the session start time, or not at all. With it off, Petboost prefers the start time but can start a booking straight after an existing one. Services in this session and Which pets can book (weight, age and breeds) use the defaults when left empty.

Session labels do not hide clock times

Show on booking page puts the session label next to each available time in that session, for example 9:00 AM with "Morning Pick-ups". The clock stays.

That label also wins over a service set to A message instead of a time. If customers should see Morning with no clock:

1. Open Schedules & Sessions, select the session and leave Show on booking page off.
2. Open Services, then Manage on each service and Manage Service.
3. On Duration & Timing, under Times customers see (previously Service Windows), select A message instead of a time.

Fixed start times on the session pins bookings to the session start. It still shows a clock unless the service uses A message instead of a time.

See How do I show Morning or Afternoon instead of clock times?.

Split a session

You can split a session from the session editor or from the split dialog.

From the session editor

1. Open Schedules & Sessions and select the session.
2. Turn on Split Session.
3. Under Sub-Sessions, set Start Time, End Time and Pets at a time for each part.
4. Select Split Session.
5. Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.

From the split dialog

1. Open Schedules & Sessions and right-click the session on the day you want to split.
2. Review Original Session:. The dialog title reads Split, the day's name and Session, such as Split Monday's Session.
3. Under Sub-Sessions, set the parts.
4. Check Split Preview.
5. Select Split Session.
6. Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.

Pointing at a session shows Click to edit and Right-click to split.

Add a session for set dates only

A date-specific override adds a session to selected dates rather than every week.

1. Open Schedules & Sessions and select Add Session on the day.
2. Set the session's times and Pets at a time.
3. Turn on Date-specific override.
4. Set Start Date and End Date.
5. Select Add Session.
6. Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.

Date-specific override only shows while you are adding a session. Inside special dates, Copy Hours from Another Day copies a session's hours from a default weekday or another override day when you add a session.

Batch create special dates

Special dates replace a team member's or resource's hours for a date range. Batch mode creates a run of them in one go.

1. Open Schedules & Sessions and select Edit beside the team member or resource.
2. Choose Special Dates.
3. If there are none yet, select Create Special Dates. If some already exist, select New Special Dates.
4. On Create special dates, select Switch to Batch Mode. The dialog title becomes Batch create special dates.
5. On First Week, set Week Start and Week End.
6. On Frequency, choose Every Week, Every 2 Weeks or Every Month.
7. On End Condition, choose After and enter Create this many periods, or choose Until Date.
8. Check Preview, add an optional label on Label, then set the hours on Schedule.
9. Select Create with the number of special dates.

Batch mode saves straight away, without Publish Changes.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

No availability is showing online

Likely cause: sessions do not cover the hours you think they do, or Pets at a time is set to 0.

Fix: check each working day has sessions over the times you expect, and that Pets at a time is at least 1. A session set to 0 shows Zero Capacity Warning, because nobody can book it.

Bookings are landing in random gaps

Likely cause: the working day is one long session, so a booking can start at any time inside it.

Fix: split the day into sessions that make structured booking windows, and turn on Fixed start times on a session where every booking should start at the session start.

I set 3 pets at a time but I'm only getting 3 a day

Likely cause: the session is too short for services to rotate through. If the session is 1 hour and each service takes 1 hour, you only get one rotation.

Fix: make the session longer or the services shorter. 3 at a time over 3 hours gives you up to 9 dogs with 1-hour services.

Large dogs are still booking alongside small dogs

Likely cause: large and small dogs book the same service, which has one Spots used value.

Fix: create a separate service for larger dogs and set its Spots used, as in Set the spots a service uses.

I want different services in different sessions

Each session can limit which services can be booked in it, under Services in this session in the session's Advanced options. See Edit one session.

Before you finish

• Working hours are set, the container
• At least one session is created, the structure
• Pets at a time is set on each session
• If you use spot weights, Spots used is set on each service

Need help? Select Get Help in your dashboard or email support@petboost.com.au.