Lesson 109

Grow and scale

A puppy course template, week by week

The occurrence count creates the session rows, and the titles you put on them ride out on every booking confirmation. The age window is set somewhere else entirely.

3 min read · Owner or trainer · Growing
Open in Petboost

A puppy course is sold on what happens in it. "Six weeks, Wednesdays" fills slowly; six named weeks fills fast, because the owner can see the dog they will have at the end of it.

The syllabus and the age window are set on two different tabs, and both of them decide who can enrol.

Set the shape, then name the weeks

Course Structure on the template holds two numbers, and both of them move the session list underneath.

  1. Open Courses, then Manage on the template's card and Manage Template.
  2. On Course Structure, set the Number of Occurrences first, then Maximum Capacity.
  3. Select Edit session titles, then give each session a Title and a Description on Lesson Details.
  4. Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.

Number of Occurrences is what creates the session rows, so set it before you name anything: dropping from six to four takes the last two titles with them.

Then write the titles. They appear on booking confirmations and on the course schedule, which makes them marketing copy as much as a plan, and the last row above is what an unnamed week looks like to a customer.

Tip

Maximum Capacity times the occurrence count is the number to sanity-check. Six pups across six weeks is 36 pet-sessions, which is 36 places to fill rather than six.

The age window is the enrolment rule

A puppy class is a puppy class because of who can get into it, and that lives on the template's own Who Can Book tab rather than on Course Structure.

  1. Open Courses, then Manage on the template's card and Manage Template.
  2. On Who Can Book, switch on Age Restrictions.
  3. Set Minimum Age and Maximum Age.
  4. Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.

Age Restrictions takes both ends. Minimum Age is the vaccination stage most classes wait for, and Maximum Age is the one people forget, which is how a nine-month-old ends up enrolled in a course built for twelve-week-olds.

Trap

An age rule fails closed. A pup with no birthday on file cannot book an age-restricted course at all, and a new owner filling in a form at eleven at night is exactly the person who leaves the date blank.

Publish one intake, and the one behind it

A template is the recipe. A course is one intake cooked from it, with real dates and real pups in it.

  1. Open Courses, then Manage on the template's card and Publish New Course.
  2. Fill in Course Setup and Scheduling, selecting Next after each.
  3. On Review & Publish, select Publish New Course.

The coloured bar and the chip tell you its state, the left column tells you when the next session runs, and the panel on the right opens the enrolled pups. The inline Add pet only appears while there are places left.

Check

Publish the next intake before the last week of the current one. A cohort that graduates with nothing to move into is the easiest enrolment you will ever lose, and the owners are standing in your hall when it happens.