Lesson 34

Client experience and retention

Attributes, tags and custom fields

An attribute can change a price, a duration or a place. A tag cannot. Picking the wrong one is why a note never reached the booking.

2 min read · Owner · Running day to day
Open in Petboost

Three things look similar on a pet's profile and behave nothing alike. An attribute is a fact the booking engine reads. A tag is a label for you. A custom field is a question you asked on a form.

Only the attribute can change what a booking costs, how long it takes, or whether it can be made at all.

Build the library, then decide who sees it

Attributes live in one place and are reused across every pet. Each has a care type, and each has an audience.

  1. Open Pet Attributes and select Add New.
  2. Enter the Attribute Name and choose an Icon.
  3. Under Care Type, choose General, Minor care or Major care.
  4. Under Visibility, choose who sees it, then select Create Attribute.

Major care is red, Minor care is amber, General keeps the colour you picked. Visible to is the setting people miss: Pet Owner & Business shows it to the owner on their own pet, Business Only keeps it to your team.

Tip

A handling note belongs on Business Only. An owner reading "bites when handled" on their own dog's profile is a conversation you did not plan to have.

Give it an effect, and it changes the booking

A booking property set attaches to an attribute and changes one of three things: the price, the time, or how many pets carrying it can be in at once. It can also make the attribute required for a service, or block it from one.

  1. Open Pet Attributes and select Add Booking Properties.
  2. Under Applies to attributes, search for the attribute and choose it.
  3. Set a Price adjustment, a Duration change or an Attendance cap.
  4. Select Add Booking Properties.

Amber is an increase, green is a reduction. Once a set is on an attribute, any pet carrying that attribute gets the effect on every booking, without anyone remembering.

Check

The effect applies from the attribute, not from the service. Take the attribute off the pet and the surcharge stops on the next booking, not on the existing ones.

Use a tag when you just want a label

Tags are free text, shared across your account once anyone types one, and they do nothing to a booking.

  1. Open Customers & Pets and select Manage on the pet.
  2. On the Petprint card, type the tag into Tags.
  3. Choose it from the list, or select Create for a tag nobody has used yet.

That is the point. Winter clip, Prefers Nina, Pick-up before 3: useful to read, filterable in a list, and no risk of quietly changing a price.

Tip

If a note needs to reach the booking, it is an attribute. If it needs to reach you, a tag is enough. If you need to ask the client, it is a custom field on a form.