What the Training module adds

Muttmates Core is the spine of your back office: clients and dogs, the diary, prices, payment links, receipts, reminders, emails and settings. This manual covers only what the Training module adds on top, so if you have not read the Muttmates Core owner’s manual, start with that.

Training is what makes Muttmates a trainer’s back office rather than a general one. It adds:

• Session reports you write on the booking and email to the owner, with the dog’s photo in the header — four set sections, or one open page.
• Courses and workshops. A course is several classes booked and paid for as one; a workshop is a course of one class. Enrol a dog once and it is on every class, charged once.
• Classes on the diary and the class register: present, absent, class done, and homework emailed home to everyone.
• Weekly drop-in — a standing weekly class with its regulars and no course wrapped round it.
• Board & train programmes, on Business and Business + Online plans: a dog stays with you and is trained every day, sold as one programme with one fee.

It also changes the words: with Training on, a booking is called a Session throughout the menus, because that is what you call it.

Your Training page

Your services → Training in the rail opens the page that gathers the whole trade in one place, subtitled One-to-one sessions, classes and workshops, session reports.

Four tiles across the top — Today, Next 14 days, Owing on these and This month — count your one-to-one sessions and the money against them. Beside the heading sit + New booking, + New class or workshop, Take payment, and a More menu holding Class register, + New board & train (Business plans) and + New package.

Under that is the tab row, which is how you reach everything else.

The tabs say where you are; the pills under the open tab say which slice of it. You can move between the course list, the class list and the register without coming back here.

The main column leads with Board & train — the dogs staying now or soon — then Courses, each with its next date, whether it is all paid and how many places are taken. Then Next classes, the coming fortnight, each with a Register button straight to that day’s roll. The side column carries On your website and Waiting for a place; dogs waiting also raise a line on the Diary’s Needs you.

Setting up what you offer

Everything you sell is a service, and services live under Services & prices, tabbed by area. Training uses two: the Training tab for one-to-one work and, on Business plans, your board & train programmes; the Classes tab for whatever a class or a course is charged at.

Each service carries the Core fields: Price, Minutes, Where (In-home, On premises or Online), Location / address — blank for in-home work, which uses the client’s address — and Book online on the plans with a booking page. Three class services are set up for you the first time Training runs: Puppy class — 6 weeks at $180 for 60 minutes, Adolescent class — 4 weeks at $140 for 60 minutes, and Workshop at $45 for 90 minutes. Change the names and prices to yours.

For a course, read those two numbers carefully. Price is the fee for the whole course, charged once per dog, and Minutes is the length of one class. A six-week puppy class at $180 for 60 minutes is $180 for the course and an hour a week — not $180 a week.

Agreements work on classes too: one can be asked for on Training sessions (one-to-one), on Classes, or both, and an unsigned one is flagged on the register before the dog walks in. Travel and add-ons come from Core, through Travel zones and Extras.

One-to-one sessions day to day

A one-to-one session is an ordinary Core booking: + New booking, a client, a dog, a service, a time, and the confirmation and payment link go out as your settings say. The Bookings pill shows the Training slice of the list — one-to-one sessions only, because walks, classes and days each have their own page.

What Training adds to a booking is the report box below it, and two side boxes that appear only when they apply: a Course box when the booking is a class inside a course, and a Board & train box when it is a session on a programme. Each says where the booking sits and whether it carries the fee. Private notes stay private; nothing you write there is sent to the owner.

Session reports — the four sections, or writing freely

The report box is headed Session report — emailed to the client and sits below the booking’s own fields. Save the booking first; a report needs a booking to belong to.

At the top is a switch, Write freely. Left off, you get four sections, which suit most sessions.

Empty sections are left out of the email, so a short session can be two lines and still look deliberate. Switch Write freely on and the four fields give way to one open editor called Report, where headings set as Heading 2 or 3 come out styled like the section headings.

The Session report box on the side of the booking sends it. It says whether a report has gone, offers Mark the booking Completed when sent already ticked, and then Email report to client — or Email report again. The button stays disabled until something is written, and Preview the email ↗ shows the report as the owner will see it. The email carries your logo, the dog’s photo opposite it, your wording from Branding & emails → Session report email, the sections in order, and any handouts attached to the service.

Every report a dog has had is listed on the dog’s own profile under Session reports, newest first, each expanding to show what you wrote. That list is the dog’s training history, and the thing to read before a follow-up months later. Core’s Reports page sorts every report into To write, Drafted and Sent, and the bookings list carries a Report column saying the same per row.

Courses and workshops

A course is several classes booked and paid for as one — a six-week puppy class, say. A workshop is a course of one class. They are the same record with a different number in one field, which is why they share a screen: Training → Classes & workshops → Courses & workshops, or + New class or workshop.

Save, and the classes are made — one on the diary for each date — with every enrolled dog booked onto each. Each class is titled for you: Puppy class · class 2 of 6 · Tue 15 Sep, 6:00 pm.

The fee, charged once

The course fee sits on the dog’s first class. Every other class is $0, “included”. The ledger then holds one charge, one payment link and one receipt per dog per course, while the diary still holds six classes with a reminder before each.

It stays true as things move. Enrol a dog in week three and the fee lands on their first class with you, not one they missed. Trash a class for the weather and the fee moves to that dog’s next. Take a dog off the course and they come off every class still to come, and anything paid becomes credit.

The Classes box beside the course is where you watch this: how many places are taken and how many are waiting, then each class by date with its dogs and a link to that day’s register. Underneath is what is still to come in, and Send links to all owing, which sends every unpaid dog on the course a link at once — by text where texting is on and the client has a mobile, otherwise by email.

Dates that move together, or not

Class dates is filled in from First class × Classes × Every, minus any Skip dates. After that it is yours: change one row for a one-off, add rows, take rows away, and the classes on the diary follow. Change First class, Classes, Every or Skip dates and the whole list is laid out again. Move a class on its own screen and its row on the course follows, so the two never disagree; classes already held stay where they were.

Places, the waiting list, and what the owner hears

Enrol more dogs than there are places and the last ones move to the Waiting list automatically, with a notice. When a place comes free, move a row up into Enrolled and save; the dog is booked onto every remaining class and hears from you as any enrolment does.

That is one email — the course confirmation, from their first class, with the whole list of dates and their own class in bold, the fee, what to bring and the payment link. After that a reminder goes before each class. The wording is yours under Branding & emails: Course / class confirmation, Class reminder (email and text) and Class notes / homework, each able to use {course} alongside the usual placeholders.

The course list shows every course with its First class, Classes, Enrolled out of the places, and Money.

Classes on the diary

Training → Classes & workshops → Classes lists every class. Each carries a When, a Capacity (eight for a class), a Service (price & length), a Where / notes — where the class is held, which goes into every confirmation and reminder — and a Dogs list, with a booking per dog. Because a class is a group session, everything Core does works on it unchanged: the diary, reminders, payment links, receipts, credit, statements and agreements. Its On the diary box lists the dogs with Present and Absent on each row.

You do not usually make a class by hand: a course makes its classes when you save it, and a weekly pattern makes them as the dates come round. By hand is for a one-off that belongs to nothing.

A class from a course carries a Course box naming the course, which class of how many, and the other dates. Dogs enrolled on the course are booked on from the course; a dog you add on the class alone is a guest for this class only — what you want for someone catching up a missed week.

The class register

This is the screen you hold while the class fills up. Training → Class register and Muttmates → Classes today land on it, and it works on a phone. The rail’s Register entry opens the register hub instead — one place to start a morning when more than one kind of dog turns up in a group — with an Open register button through to that day’s class register.

It opens on today, with arrows either side of a date picker and a Today button. Every class on that date is a card: its name, the time it runs from and to, where it is, how many places are booked, how many are present, and a link to the course. Then each dog:

• the dog’s name, the owner’s name, and the owner’s phone as a tappable link
• the first line or so of the dog’s notes, and the dog’s markers
• what state they are in — Present, or Expected, Arrived, Collected or Absent — with the time they were marked, and done once the booking is completed
• flags where they matter — due $45, fee paid, agreement unsigned — and the buttons Present, Absent and Open

Tap Present as each dog arrives, and again to undo. Absent marks a no-show, and tapping it again puts the dog back to expected. Nothing here needs saving.

At the foot of the card is Class done. It asks you to confirm, then completes the bookings of everyone marked present and marks anyone unmarked absent — one tap at the end of the hour, and the diary is tidy.

Notes and homework

Under each class on the register — and in a Class notes & homework box on the class’s own screen, for when you are back at a desk — is one box for what you covered and what to practise. Save keeps it on the class. Save & send to everyone emails it to every owner in the class, one email each with their name and their dog’s, in your Class notes / homework wording. Once sent, the box says when, and warns that sending again sends whatever it says now.

Weekly drop-in

Not every class is a course. A standing Tuesday-night group whose regulars come when they come is a weekly drop-in: Training → Classes & workshops → Weekly drop-in makes a weekly pattern of the Class kind, and the classes create themselves.

A pattern asks for a Name, whether it is Active, From and Until, the Days it runs, the Time, a Capacity, the Service (price & length), a Where / notes, and its Regulars. Leave Until blank and it rolls on; set it and you get a block, with every date created now.

Muttmates creates the sessions ahead once a day — fourteen days by default — and books the regulars onto each as it is made. After that each class is its own thing: drop a dog for one week, add a guest, trash it for the weather, and the pattern is untouched. Change the pattern and only classes not yet created pick it up; Regenerate remakes the future ones nobody has paid on.

The difference from a course is the money: a drop-in class is charged at the service’s price per class, so each week is its own charge, link and receipt. That is the right shape for a class people dip in and out of, and the wrong shape for a programme you want paid up front.

Your What’s on page and putting it on your website

Muttmates gives you a public What’s on page, and Training fills it: a card for every course or workshop whose first class is still to come, and one for every weekly class not part of a course. If you run the Events module too, its open days and talks share the page.

A card shows your picture (or the name’s initial on your brand colour), a small line saying what it is — Workshop, 6 classes, Weekly class — the name, a when-line reading something like Tuesdays 6:00 pm · 6 Oct – 10 Nov, the venue, the fee marked for the course or a class, and a places pill: Full, Last place, 3 places left, or 8 places. Your blurb and what to bring follow, then a button: Book a place, Enquire where online booking cannot take it, or Join the waiting list when it is full, which opens your enquiry form with the class already named.

The On your website card on the Training page has what you need: See the page, the address under Link to it for a menu item on your own site, and under Or embed it a snippet you paste where the cards should appear, which sizes itself. On your Muttmates site, the shortcode [mm_events] does the same job.

Taking a course place online

On the plans with online booking — Solo + Online and Business + Online — with booking switched on and the course’s fee service ticked Book online, a course appears on your booking page as an offer of its own, grouped under Courses & workshops.

The offer is the course, not one class: the number of classes, the first date and the last, the venue, how many places are left and what to bring. It shows while the first class is far enough ahead to satisfy your notice period and there is a place free.

Booking it enrols the dog exactly as you would from the editor: a row on the course, every class booked, the fee on the first, and the course confirmation with the dates and the payment link. If you take a deposit, the first class is held pending in the usual way, and if the hold lapses the dog comes off the course and the place goes back.

On the client login, a class inside a course cannot be cancelled by the owner — the fee is for the course, so cancelling one class of six makes no sense. Their link reads Need to change it? and sends you a request instead, and their booking list names the course and which class it is.

Board & train programmes

A board & train is a dog who stays with you and is trained every day, sold as one programme with one fee. It is a Business and Business + Online feature, listed as such under Settings → Plan; on a Solo plan none of it appears, though a site that moves down keeps its records and gets them back on the way up. Training does the whole thing on its own; if you also run Boarding or Daycare, each adds its part.

The programme

A programme is a Training service with This is a board & train programme ticked. Its price is the fee for the whole programme, charged once; its minutes are one session. Ticking the box reveals the rest.

The enrolment

Training → Board & train → + New board & train asks for the Client, the Dog, the Programme, the Check-in date and time, and the Session time — the daily session, and the handover. With Boarding on you also pick a Kennel type (the stay) and a Kennel; with Daycare on there is In daycare during the day. Then What the owner wants, in their own words, which heads the programme report; What they’re bringing; Sessions; Online catch-ups; and Private notes.

Save, and the work is laid out: one session a day from check-in for the programme’s nights, rest days left out; the handover on check-out day, the one the owner comes for; and a catch-up for each date you add. Each is an ordinary one-to-one booking on the dog, so the diary, reminders, staff assignment and the session report all work as on any lesson. The Sessions list is then yours — move a row, add one, take one away, and the bookings follow.

One fee

The programme fee sits on the first session. Every other session, the handover and every catch-up are $0, “included”. One charge, one payment link — Send the payment link on the enrolment — and one receipt. The owner hears once: the confirmation from the first session, naming the programme, the dates, a session most days, a report after each, and the handover on the last, with Bring underneath.

The programme box beside the enrolment is the whole picture: the dates, the nights, how many sessions are done, then every session numbered, with H for the handover and C1, C2 for catch-ups, marked fee where the fee sits and report sent once that day’s report has gone. It also says how many catch-ups are still to arrange.

The daily update is the session report

There is no separate daily-diary screen, and there does not need to be one. Write each day’s session report on that day’s session and email it. The owner gets it with the dog’s photo, the same shape as any other report — and it builds the dog’s history at the same time.

At the end, the Programme report box pulls it together. It reminds you what the owner wanted and gives you How the programme went to write — where the dog started, where they are now, and the three things to keep doing at home. Save & email the programme report sends that summary with every session’s report rolled up under it, day by day.

Beds, and what Boarding and Daycare add

If the programme says how many dogs you take at once and you go over it, the enrolment still saves and you are told to check the beds — a double booking you know about beats a refusal you have to work around.

With Boarding on, picking a kennel type makes a real stay: on the kennel board with a board & train tag, with check-in, check-out and the daily photos, at $0, because the programme fee covers it. With Daycare on, ticking In daycare during the day puts the dog on every open daycare day of the stay as a free day, so the daycare register has them. Trash an enrolment and its future sessions, handover, catch-ups and the stay go with it; anything completed stays as the record it is.

Packages, courses, drop-ins and pack offers

Four things sell more than one session at once, and they are not interchangeable.

The rule of thumb: dates fixed and shared with other dogs is a course; dates fixed and the dog alone is a package; dates not fixed yet is a pack offer.

Settings and set-up reference

When something goes wrong

The course saved but no classes appeared. A course needs a fee service and a first class before its classes can be made. Fill both in and save again.

Dogs I enrolled ended up on the waiting list. You went over Places. Raise the number and save, or move rows back into Enrolled.

The Email report button is greyed out. Either nothing is written in the report yet, or the client has no email address. The box says which.

A dog was charged for a class that should have been included. Open the course and save it: the money goes back to the account as credit and pays the course fee from there.

There is no Board & train tab, or + New board & train is missing. The tab is a Business feature. The button appears once a service is ticked This is a board & train programme.

A course is not showing on my What’s on page. Check that its first class is still in the future and that Don’t list is off. A course whose first class has passed comes off by design.

What the Grooming module adds

Muttmates Core is the spine of your back office: clients and dogs, the diary, prices, payment links, receipts, emails, reminders, reports and settings. This manual covers only what the Grooming module adds on top, so if you have not read the Muttmates Core owner’s manual, start there.

A groom, in Muttmates, is an ordinary Core booking: one dog, a start time, a length, a price, a service. Which means the diary, the mobile app, payment links, receipts, reminders, credit and statements all work on a groom exactly as they work on anything else. What makes a booking a groom is its service — any service with This is a groom ticked. From that single tick you get:

• A grooming profile on every dog — coat, size, the usual style, handling and coat notes, how often they come, when they were last done.
• Length and price that follow the dog, so a full groom on a large doodle books the time it really takes rather than the time the price list says.
• The salon board — today’s grooms in time order, each showing where the dog actually is, and a text to the owner the moment the dog is ready.
• Due for a groom — who is about due with nothing booked, and a nudge you can send in one tap.
• The groom report, with before and after photos, emailed to the owner.
• Extras scoped to grooms, and your own wording for every groom message.

The module suits a salon and a mobile groomer alike, and it knows the difference: that difference is one field on the service, Where, and the board changes its language to match. With Grooming on and no training or walking module beside it, a booking is called a Groom throughout the menus; a trainer who also grooms keeps the word Session.

Your Grooming page

Your services → Grooming in the rail opens the page that gathers the whole trade in one place, subtitled The salon board, who’s due, groom reports. Beside the heading sit + New groom, Salon board and Take payment. Four tiles run across the top: Today (grooms booked today, or how many are ready to collect if any are), Next 14 days, Owing on these — what is still owed across today and the fortnight — and Due for a groom.

Under the tiles is a tab row. Overview is this page; Salon board holds the board itself, Due for a groom and Grooms — every groom, past and coming, with what is paid; Reports holds your groom reports; Set up holds Services & prices, Extras and Grooming settings. The tabs say where you are and the pills beneath say which slice of it, so you can move between the board and the due list without coming back here.

The main column leads with Today in the salon: each groom’s time, the dog and client, the service, where the dog is up to, and a button that moves it to the next stage, so on a quiet morning you need never open the board itself. Where money is outstanding the row carries Take cash. Below that is Coming up, the next fortnight, each groom with its length and Due or Paid. The side column carries a short Due for a groom list with a Nudge link against each dog.

Two lines also reach Today’s Needs you, on the Diary: how many dogs are ready and waiting to be collected, and how many are due for a groom.

Setting up what you offer — groom services, length and price

Everything you sell is a service, and services live under Services & prices. What makes one a groom is the tick This is a groom. Alongside it are the Core fields: Price, Minutes, Where, Location / address and, on the plans with a booking page, Book online.

Four groom services are created for you the first time the module runs, so there is something to book on day one.

All four arrive with Where set to On premises — a salon, drop-off at your address. Rename them, reprice them, delete the ones you do not do; they are seeded only once, so a service you delete stays deleted.

On a groom service, Price and Minutes are the base figures: what the groom costs and takes before the dog is taken into account. The dog is added on top, which is the next section. If you would rather price flat, set the pricing switch to Nothing and the base is all there is.

Salon or mobile

Where is the whole of it. Leave a groom service on On premises and the client brings the dog to you; the service’s Location / address is where. Set it to In-home and the van goes to the client’s address, Core’s travel zones apply as they do to any in-home work, and the board reads in the language of a round rather than a salon.

How the dog shapes the groom — size, coat and your pricing choice

A full groom on a chihuahua and one on a giant doodle are not the same job, and charging the same for both is how a day runs two hours late. So the dog adjusts the service’s base figures. How far it may is your choice, made once under Grooming → Grooming settings at Price and length follow the dog’s:

• Size only — one uplift per size band. The simple way: one number per band, nothing else to think about.
• Size and coat — size band plus coat type. A large doodle costs more than a large lab. This is how the module arrives.
• Nothing — every groom is the service’s base price and length. Your price list is your price list.

The page shows only the blocks the chosen way uses, so picking Size only hides the coat boxes rather than leaving them there to confuse you. These are the figures it starts with; all are editable, a blank box keeps the standard figure and 0 adds nothing.

On Size and coat, then, a large curly coat adds an hour and $40. A full groom on that dog is 150 minutes at $135 rather than 90 minutes at $95 — which is the real job, honestly booked and honestly charged.

When the figures go in, and when they are left alone

When a groom is saved with a dog on it, the module works out the length and price and puts them in — but only when the box is empty, when it still holds the service’s plain base, or when it still holds what the module itself put there last time. A figure you typed yourself is left alone: if you decided this groom is $120, it stays $120 whatever the profile says.

When you do want the profile to win, the Groom box has Recalculate from profile, which overwrites the minutes and the price and re-syncs what is owed. The button says as much — overwrites minutes and price — and afterwards you get Length and price recalculated from the dog’s grooming profile.

The dog’s grooming profile

Every dog gets a Grooming profile panel on its record, just under About the dog — six fields, each earning its place.

Coat and Size touch the money and the clock. Usual style and Handling & coat notes save you from asking again — both appear on the booking’s Groom box and on the dog’s card on the salon board, so whoever is at the table can see them without opening anything.

The same questions are asked on Core’s New client page, under a Grooming heading, so a dog arrives with a profile rather than needing one later. Last groom is asked there for a reason: it is what puts a new dog onto the due list at the right time instead of never.

Extras

Extras are Core’s add-ons — a name, a price and usually a few minutes — and the module scopes a set of them to grooms. They live at Grooming → Extras, which opens the list narrowed to grooms only, seeded once with prices worth changing to yours.

Each extra’s For field says which bookings it is offered on; the seeded ones say Grooms only, so they do not clutter a walk or a training session. Add your own the same way.

Tick an extra on a groom and three things follow. The price is added to what is owed, as its own line on the payment panel, the receipt and the pay page — the booking’s own price field is untouched, so the groom and the add-ons stay visible separately. The minutes are added to the length, and taken off again if you untick it. And the extra shows on the dog’s card on the board, and in the groom report.

Booking a groom

+ New groom, from the Grooming page or the salon board, opens a new booking with the first groom service already ticked and the groom boxes up. From there it is an ordinary Core booking: the client, the dog, the time. Confirmation and payment link go out as your Core settings say, in the groom wording. You can also make any booking a groom by ticking a groom service on it — the groom boxes appear straight away, and unticking makes them disappear again, without saving first.

Down the side is the Groom box, which shows the profile at a glance and does the sums:

• the dog’s name, linked to its record, with coat and size beneath
• Usual style and Handling & coat when they are filled in
• the last groom and the interval — Last groom 4 Sep 2025 · every 6 weeks
• From the profile: 150 min · $135.00, and under it the working — large +30 min +$20.00, curly / wool +30 min +$20.00
• Recalculate from profile

With no groom service the box says Tick a groom service and save — the length and price then follow the dog’s coat and size; with no dog, Add the dog to size the groom. Both are the box telling you what it needs, not an error. Everything else on a groom is Core: the dog-at-a-glance panel, travel zones on in-home work, deposits, the payment panel.

The salon board — the day, stage by stage

Grooming → Salon board (or Muttmates → Salon) is the screen for the day itself. The heading is the date in full, and beside it a count: how many grooms, how many in, how many ready, how many collected. Day arrows sit in the corner with a Today button between them, and Due for a groom and + New groom are there too.

Below that, one card per groom in time order. Each carries the time and length, the service, Due $x or Paid, the dog and client, the dog’s markers from Core, any extras ticked, and the profile line — coat, size, the usual style, handling notes underneath. On a mobile groom the client’s address is a link that opens the map.

The row of pills across the card is where the dog is. One tap moves the dog on, and the button on the right of the card is always the next stage, so the day can be run with one thumb.

Every stage is timed as you tap it, and the stage the dog is on now shows its time beside it — On the table · 11:20 am — so you know how long a dog has been where it is. Tap a pill behind to correct a mis-tap. A card on Ready to collect is edged in green so it catches your eye across the room, and a collected card fades back.

Telling the owner their dog is ready

Moving a dog to Ready to collect tells the owner, and this is the single most useful thing on the board. A text goes if texting is on and the client has a mobile; otherwise an email, branded like the rest, with the dog’s photo in the header. The default text reads Hi Sam, Billy is all done and ready to collect, and you get Marked ready — the owner has been told. If the client has neither a mobile nor an email address the board says so rather than pretending: Marked ready. Couldn’t reach the owner (no mobile or email) — give them a call.

While a dog sits on Ready to collect the card carries Tell them again, which sends the same message a second time and shows when you last told them.

Collected completes the booking and stamps the dog’s last-groom date, which is what keeps the due list honest without anyone typing a date. It asks first — Collected — mark the groom complete?

Taking the money at the counter

Where a groom still has something owing, the card carries Take cash, which opens Core’s Take payment with that booking already chosen. It is recorded the ordinary way, so the ledger, the receipt and the balance behave as they do from the booking screen. The same button sits on the Grooming page’s today list.

The groom report — before and after

The report box sits below a groom booking, headed Groom report — emailed to the owner. It appears on grooms only; the session, walk and day report boxes stay out of the way there, and yours stays out of the way on theirs.

The two photos are the heart of it. They go out side by side, labelled Before and After, and they are the reason owners forward these reports to their friends.

Down the side, the Groom report box does the sending. It says whether the report has gone and when, offers Preview ↗, and carries a tick — Mark the groom Completed when sent — on by default for a groom not already complete. The button reads Email the owner, or Email again once it has gone, and stays greyed out until something is written; press it with nothing there and you are told The groom report is empty — write what was done first.

The email is Core’s branded report email with the dog’s photo in the header. Its sections, in order, are Before & after, What we did, Extras, Products used, Anything we noticed and Next time; anything blank is left out rather than appearing empty. Groom reports are registered with Core’s Reports page as their own kind, Groom report, and Grooming → Reports opens that page filtered to grooms.

Due for a groom, and nudging

This is the quiet money-maker. Grooming → Due for a groom lists dogs whose last groom plus their interval is here or nearly here, with nothing booked — as the subtitle says, Last groom plus how often they come, with nothing booked yet.

The arithmetic is deliberately simple: last groom, plus How often in weeks, minus a warning period so there is time to book. The warning is Show as due this many days early under Grooming → Grooming settings, and it arrives at 14 days, so a dog groomed every six weeks appears a fortnight before the six weeks are up. The moment a groom is booked for that dog it drops off the list; nobody is nudged about something they have already arranged.

Each row shows the dog, its owner, the interval, when it was last done, and a pill: Due in 9 days, Due today, or 12 days overdue. Then, once you have nudged, a quiet Nudged 4 Sep so you do not nudge twice in a week. Two buttons: Send a nudge, which becomes Nudge again afterwards, and Book.

A nudge goes by text if texting is on and the client has a mobile, otherwise by email, in your Due for a groom wording — by default a friendly note that it has been a little while, asking them to reply or ring. You get Nudge sent — “due for a groom”. If the client has neither a mobile nor an email address, nothing is sent and you are told why: Couldn’t send the nudge: the owner needs an email address or a mobile number.

A dog only appears here once it has a Last groom date — the one field worth filling in for a client whose dog you have not done yet. The count sits on the Grooming page’s tiles and on Today’s Needs you.

Letting clients book a groom online (plans with online booking)

On Solo + Online and Business + Online, clients can book their own groom from your booking page. Three things have to be true: Take bookings online is on under Settings → Online booking, your Hours are set there, and Book online is ticked on the groom service. All three are Core’s; the module only decides how a groom is offered.

The offer appears under a Grooming heading, named after the service, with a line beneath it: Sized to your dog — from $95, followed by whatever description you gave the service. “From” is the honest word, because the price depends on the dog.

The times are the interesting part. They come from your Hours — the salon’s day or the van’s — measured against the groom’s real length, the service’s base plus what this dog’s size and coat add. A large doodle is only offered where a large doodle actually fits, not wherever a 90-minute slot fits.

Before the dog is known — a new client, or one with several dogs who has not yet picked — the slot is sized to a medium dog, because something has to be assumed. Once the dog is chosen the times are read again with the real length, and if the slot they had their eye on no longer fits they are sent back to pick another: That time is too short for what you’ve chosen — the times below fit. The same check runs at the last moment before the booking is made, in case someone booked either side while they were typing.

On the confirm step the client answers a few questions, prefilled from the dog’s profile:

1. <Dog>’s size — required, since the price and the time follow it.
2. Coat — required, and only asked when your pricing is by size and coat.
3. How would you like <Dog> done? — for example teddy bear, short all over, just a tidy.
4. Anything for the groomer? — matting, nervous of the dryer, sensitive paws.

Their answers are saved onto the grooming profile and recorded as the owner’s own change, the way Core records anything a client edits in their login. What they write for the groomer is appended to the handling notes, dated and marked as coming from the owner, and carried onto the booking as For the groomer: …, so it is in front of you on the day. If the size is still blank they are asked for it — Please pick Billy’s size so we can book the right length — rather than booked into a slot that may be wrong, and a client with no dog is told A groom needs a dog — add one to your account first.

The booking that results is made the ordinary back-office way, with the profile applied as usual, so the Groom box and Recalculate from profile read exactly as they do on a groom you took over the phone.

In the client’s own login the report is called Groom report; the home tab shows a Due for a groom card for any dog that is due, with a Book a groom button; and the nudge email picks up a Book a time button. Where online booking is off, that card says Ring or email us to book instead.

What clients hear from you — the wording you can edit

Every message about a groom has its own wording, editable under Branding → Emails alongside Core’s. A groom’s confirmation, reminder and report pick up the groom versions automatically — you do not have to choose.

The defaults are written to be sent as they are: the confirmation asks the owner to have the dog with you at the start time and promises to let them know when the dog is ready, and the reminder mentions that a quick toilet stop before arriving helps. Change any of it to your own voice — the tokens for the dog, the service, the time and your business name carry through.

Whether a message goes by text or by email is Core’s business, and depends on your plan and your texting credit. Grooming asks for a text first where one makes sense — ready, reminder, nudge — and falls back to email.

Settings reference

Everything the module adds lives on one page: Grooming → Grooming settings, reached from the Set up tab.

Blank means the standard figure shown in the box; 0 means nothing added. The size and coat blocks appear only when the pricing switch uses them.

Three things people look for here are elsewhere, because they are Core’s: groom services and their base figures under Services & prices, groom add-ons under Grooming → Extras, and the wording of every message under Branding → Emails. Two more live on the dog rather than in settings — How often and Last groom, on its Grooming profile.

What the module doesn’t do yet, and when something goes wrong

Some honest limits, so you can plan round them rather than discover them on a busy Saturday.

One groomer is assumed. There is no groomer or table capacity and no overlapping slots. The board is one day’s list in time order, and online booking offers a time if the hours allow it, not if a second pair of hands is free. With two groomers side by side the board shows you both dogs, but will not stop the booking page offering the same hour twice. A staff roster is a Business-tier Core feature rather than a grooming one, and on those plans it is the roster that answers the booking page’s hours.

There is no photo gallery per dog. Before and after photos live on the groom they belong to and go out in that report. There is no screen showing one dog’s grooms over the years side by side.

There is no stock of products. Products used on the report is a line of text for the owner. Nothing is counted, deducted or reordered.

When something looks wrong

The length and price did not change when I picked the dog. Check three things: the service has This is a groom ticked, the booking has a dog on it, and that dog’s profile has a size (and a coat, if your pricing uses coat). The Groom box says which is missing. If all three are right but the figures are yours rather than the module’s, that is deliberate — press Recalculate from profile.

A dog is not on the due list. Either it has no Last groom date, or it has a groom already booked. Both are by design.

The owner did not get the ready message. The board says so at the time: no mobile and no email on the client. Add one and use Tell them again.

The groom boxes are not showing. They appear on grooms only. If a booking shows a session or walk report box instead, its service is not a groom service.

What the Daycare module adds

Muttmates Core is the back office you already know: clients and dogs, bookings, money, reminders, the diary, Today and reports. This manual assumes you have read the Muttmates Core owner’s manual, and covers only what the Daycare module adds.

A daycare day is one session on your premises, with a number of places, a day rate, and the dogs booked onto it — one ordinary booking per dog. Because each dog’s day is a normal Core booking, everything Core does keeps working: payment links, receipts, statements and credit are unchanged, the reminder goes out, and the card is filed with your other reports.

Around that, Daycare adds the daily machinery: days that make themselves from your open weekdays, times, places and closures; a daycare record and an assessment path on every dog; rooms; Today’s register, with a mobile app for the paddock; a report card home each day; behaviour levels; vaccination chasing; van runs; and day rates that understand size, half days and days a week.

Daycare runs on Solo, Solo + Online, Business and Business + Online. Online booking of a day and the owner’s login come with the + Online plans; staff and rosters are a Business feature of Core, which Daycare uses where it can — who is on the floor, a driver for a van run — but nothing here needs staff.

Your Daycare page

Daycare has its own page, and it is where to start the morning if you are not going straight to the register. Four tiles sit across the top: Here now, the dogs marked arrived against the number booked; Places today, reading 8 of 20 with 12 free; Owing for today and the next fortnight; and Dogs, approved and on trial.

Below them, Today at daycare lists each room with its sizes and count, and a No room yet line if anybody is unplaced, while The days ahead gives the next fortnight. Down the side are the things to chase: Vaccinations to chase, On trial, Behaviour concerns, the latest End of day note and Closed dates. Everything else is in the manage tabs:

Daycare also writes lines onto Today’s Needs you: dogs waiting for a place, lapsed vaccinations, trials to approve and a van run with no driver.

Setting up the day — what you offer, hours, rooms and how many dogs you take

Most of this is Daycare → Daycare settings, in the block Daycare — the day. First the price: under Daycare → Services & prices, tick This is a daycare day rate on the services that are days at daycare, then choose one under Day rate. That price is your casual day rate.

Open days, Drop-off from and Collect by set the shape of the day; the two times are what owners are told and what lateness is measured against. Make days ahead is how far into the future the days exist, and so how far ahead you can book. Closed dates takes a first day, a last day and a reason.

Rooms, places and groups

Dogs a day is the number of places on every day. Rooms are the finer limit: under Daycare → Rooms each room has a name, Takes so many dogs, the Sizes it accepts (none ticked means any), an Order and an In use tick. A dog is placed as it is booked — its group’s room, then its Usual room, then the first room with space that takes its size — and you can move it on the register.

Under Daycare — groups & care, Dog groups pairs a Group with its Usual room, and Support needs is a list ticked on each dog and shown as chips on the register, so nobody has to remember the tablet at noon.

You never make Mondays: the days are built once a day, again when you save Daycare settings, and on demand from Make the days ahead — the fix for most oddities.

What a day costs, and how it gets charged

A dog’s price is the trial price if it is on Trial and you have set one, otherwise the days-a-week tier it reaches where that applies, otherwise the day rate — then the size group adjustment, plus any van charge and late fee. It is worked out as the dog goes on and again as the week fills, and a price you type yourself is left alone from then on.

The dog’s size, and half days

A dog’s Weight puts it in a size group, which can add to or take off the day rate. The bands are in Daycare settings → Daycare — prices, in kilograms:

From (kg) is included and Up to (kg) is not, so a 10 kg dog is Medium above. Places a day caps that size (0 for no cap), and +/− a day ($) is dollars on the day rate: 5 adds five, -3 takes three off. A half day is simply a different service on the booking.

Discounts for regulars — days-a-week pricing

Days-a-week pricing means the more days a week they come, the less each day costs. The rule is exact: count the days that dog has booked in the week (Monday to Sunday), take the highest tier it reaches, and price every one of those days at it. A tier takes either a price a day or a percentage off — never both.

On a $50 day rate: two days, $47 a day; three or four days, 10% off; five or more, $40 — four days gets the three-day tier, because a tier is a floor, not an exact match. A percentage works off the day rate before the size adjustment, and a finished day is never repriced.

Who gets it decides who it applies to: Dogs on the Regular plan only (the default — a Regular has set days on its record), or Any dog, by the days they actually book that week, which rewards a casual client booking three days.

Late pick-up, and how the money reaches the client

Under Daycare — late pick-up you set a Grace, then a fixed fee or a rate per minute. Mark a dog picked up after collect-by plus the grace and the register shows LATE n min and offers + Late fee $X — nothing is charged until you tap it.

Otherwise nothing is daycare-specific: the charge goes on the ledger, and Take payment handles cash at the gate. Prepaid days are Core’s Packages — a ten-day pass is ten daycare days on one payment link. A Free day is zero, though the van charge still applies.

Booking a dog in — one day, a repeating week, a block

Daycare → Book days is one form for every shape of booking.

1. Pick the Dog — the list is in two groups, In daycare and Not in daycare yet — booking puts them in.
2. Set the First day and For how many weeks.
3. Tick the weekdays under On: nothing ticked means just the first day, greyed days are closed, a regular’s own days come ticked.
4. Tick Trial day for a new dog’s first day, or Free for a comp day or a staff dog.
5. Leave Email the owner a confirmation ticked, set the Van if you run one, add a Note on the booking, and Book the days.

Days that do not exist yet are made, so booking three weeks out works beyond your horizon. What comes back is a plain summary: days booked, waitlisted, already booked, closed, and anything refused with the reason. A dog not in daycare yet joins as you book.

The gate is strict on purpose, because the alternative is a dog on a day it should not be on:

An enquiry from your website arrives with the dog’s rough weight, saved as its size group, and the Enquiries page’s Book menu opens Book days with the dog chosen.

Who’s coming, capacity and the waiting list

Daycare → Days ahead lists every day ahead and who is on it. Each day has its own screen too, from The day’s screen on the register: places used, a count per room, the end-of-day note and the waiting list. One day’s places can be changed there without touching your settings — for the day you are short-staffed.

When a day is full, booking another dog puts it on that day’s waiting list. When a place frees up, the first in line is booked in automatically and its owner emailed in your a place has come up wording — so keep that wording warm, and make clear the day is booked. The order is the order they joined, and the ✕ skips somebody.

The register and the mobile app — the day’s board

Daycare → Today’s register (the menu calls it Daycare register) is where the day is run from. A date picker moves between days, and the header reads drop-off, collect-by, places used, here now, picked up and waiting, with Send today’s report cards, The day’s screen and Take payment beneath.

Dogs are grouped by room, anybody unplaced at the top under No room yet, trial dogs at the top of their room with a red edge. Each dog is a tile: the photo ringed in its behaviour level colour from green through amber to red, the background saying whether they are here (grey not yet, light green here, faded once picked up or absent), then size and group, breed and age, the owner with and links, the care strip ( naps, support chips, ℹ the note), the state with times — ○ not here yet, ● here since, ✓ in → out, ✕ absent — and a flags line: birthday, Trial day, ⚠ vax lapsed or vax in 9d, the behaviour level, due $X, ↪ moved, free day and the van stop.

Then the buttons. Arrived, Picked up and Absent stamp the time, and tapping a lit one undoes it; Picked up completes the booking and Absent records a no-show. + Late fee appears when a pick-up is late, a room picker shows each room’s count, and on a trial day ✓ Approve and Not suitable sit alongside. Card opens the report card, a box saves today’s note, and Flag an incident opens the form in place.

At the bottom of every day is End of day: one note, for you and your staff rather than the owners. With the roster on, each room’s heading also names the people rostered into it, and warns when nobody is on in a room with dogs.

Daycare → Mobile app is the same day built for the paddock, so bookmark it to the phone’s home screen: big photo, badges and care strip, by room, with thumb-sized ✓ Arrived, Absent, ✓ Picked up and Undo, and chips for Call, Text, Photo — the phone’s camera, straight onto today’s report card — ✓ Approve, Flag an incident, Send cards and Van. The card shows as a status only: writing it is a desk job.

Assessments and trial days, and what a dog needs before it can come

Every dog has a Daycare block on its record, and the same questions appear on Core’s New client page. What governs whether it can come is Daycare status:

Book a trial with Trial day ticked and the dog is marked Trial and priced at your Trial day price (blank means the day rate). On the day it sits at the top of its room with a red edge, so whoever is on the gate knows; log what you see, then tap ✓ Approve or Not suitable. Until you decide, the On trial card keeps saying so — a trial nobody decides is a dog nobody has taken responsibility for.

Daycare uses Core’s Vaccinations current until date. In settings, Vaccinations — Must be current to be booked in — is on by default: a dog with no date, or one that lapses before the day, is refused; with it off nothing is refused, but the register still flags it. Owners are reminded 14 and 7 days before, and the Daycare page lists who to chase: lapsed in red, due within a fortnight in amber, no date in grey.

Daycare → Dogs on the books is every dog with a daycare status, as a card: photo ringed in its level colour, status, plan and days, size and group, age and weight, owner and phone, the vaccination banner with a certificate ↗ link, and the care block. Dogs with days booked come first, and you can narrow by size, status or level; each card carries Book days, Behaviour, Edit and a box for a dated note.

Behaviour — incidents, levels and suspensions

This is the part nobody enjoys and everybody needs. The aim is a record that is fair to the dog and defensible to an owner: not “we’ve had trouble with him”, but four dated entries with what happened and what you told them at the time.

Flag an incident is on every dog on the register and the app, and on the dog’s Behaviour page. The form is short on purpose: a category from your list, a severity of Minor, Moderate or Serious with its points shown, Other dogs involved ▾ where you tick as many of the day’s dogs as were in it, a photo, and one line of what happened — the line that appears in the owner’s email if the dog goes up a level. Photos go to your private file store, not the public media library, and open only through a signed link.

Each severity is worth points — one, three and five by default — and points halve after the half-life, ninety days by default, so a scrap in March does not follow a dog for ever while a pattern still adds up. Points put the dog on a rung:

The first rung is where every dog starts, and a dog never sits below its Starting behaviour level, which you set for a dog that arrives known to need watching.

When a dog goes up a rung, a warning goes on its log and the owner is emailed in your Behaviour notice wording with the live incidents listed. If that rung is ticked Stops the dog coming, the dog is suspended: the Suspension notice goes out, the dog comes off the days ahead it has not arrived at (paid days become credit), and new bookings are blocked. Issue a warning does the same by hand at any level, and Clear all retires every incident and approves a suspended dog again.

Daycare → Behaviour opens with the dogs of concern — above the base level, or with an incident in the last thirty days — then, per dog, the points, the ladder, the incident form and the full log. The level colours the photo ring everywhere, which is how a new staff member learns which dogs to watch.

The report card and what the owners get

The report card is why many owners pay for daycare rather than a dog walker, and it is a one-minute job. It lives on the dog’s booking, one tap from Card on the register or from Daycare → Report cards:

• Highlights — ticked from your own list, written once in Daycare settings with {dog} where the name goes: {dog} made a new friend today.
• Paw ratings — out of five for each category you set up; blank is not rated.
• A line for the owner — a sentence in your own words, and the line that gets texted when texting is on.
• Photos — as many as you like, two to a row in the email. Photos from the mobile app land here.

The card also prints arrived and picked-up times and the note from the register. The Report card panel offers Email the owner, a Preview ↗ and a tick to Text the line too; or send the whole day with Send today’s report cards (n), which sends every drafted, unsent card. An empty card will not send, and each dog’s chip reads Card, Card (draft) or Card ✓.

Regulars, weekly patterns and changing a week

A dog’s Plan is either Casual — the day rate, booked as they come or Regular — set days each week, tier pricing. For a regular, tick the weekdays under Comes on and set From (blank means now) and Until (blank means ongoing). An approved regular is then booked onto every one of its weekdays as the days are made.

Change the pattern and the days ahead follow: drop Wednesday and the Wednesdays it has not arrived at come off, with anything paid becoming credit; add Friday and the Fridays appear; set an Until date and the days stop there.

Two things follow. Days-a-week pricing applies to regulars by default, and regulars do not get the day-before reminder unless you turn on Remind regulars — they know their days. For a one-off change, work on the days themselves: take the dog off Thursday, and use Book days for the extra Monday.

The van — pick-ups and drop-offs

If you collect dogs, the van covers the two shapes daycares actually use: set stops in drive order, and home pick-up from the door. Under Daycare — the van, Vans is a table of name and dogs per run — leave it empty and there is no van service at all — and Set stops is a table in drive order with times, an address, a price a day (both ways) and which van, followed by the home pick-up price, blank if it is not offered.

On each dog: Van (No — dropped off and collected, From a set stop, From home), which Stop, Which way (both ways, or one way at half price) and For the driver, for the gate code. The charge rides on the day, in the same payment link and receipt, and the register’s flag switches it for one day.

Daycare → Van runs shows any day’s morning and afternoon runs side by side: each van with its count against capacity and, with the roster, who is driving or no driver on the roster; each stop with its time and whether the on its way text has gone; each dog with its phone, the driver’s note and its state — waiting, ✓ Picked up 7:32 am, ✓ Dropped off 5:10 pm — with mark and undo links.

The driver has the same run on the mobile app under Van, a card per stop with the address as a map link and the dogs with photos, phones and notes. ✓ Picked up marks the dog arrived and ✓ Dropped off marks it collected — the same attendance marks the register uses, so the two screens never disagree. The afternoon runs the stops in reverse, home drop-offs first, and one tap texts everyone at a stop that the van is ten minutes away. On Business, a van run appears in the roster, so a shift can be put on it like a room.

What the owners see and hear — online booking, their login, and your wording

On the + Online plans, tick Book online on your daycare day rate and the days appear on your booking page: a month showing the days that still have places, then the day. Because the days already exist, an owner sees your real availability.

The vaccination question is asked on the page, so a booking is never refused afterwards for a missing date. A dog not in daycare yet has its first day made a trial day: it goes on Trial at the trial price, and the owner is asked how the dog is with other dogs, which is saved onto the dog. A suspended or unsuitable dog is asked to call rather than refused blankly.

A regular is not given a self-service weekly pattern, and that is deliberate: who comes on which day is your call, because it is your rooms and your mix of dogs. Instead the owner asks from their login, and the request lands on Today’s Needs you with a Book days link. Book the days, then mark the request done.

On their login, a booking shows drop-off and collect-by and the room, the day’s report is named Report card, and the home tab has a Book a day card. The Dogs tab lets them keep current only what is theirs — weight, naps, support needs and the care note — while status, plan, days and group stay yours.

Every message Daycare sends is a template under Branding → Emails:

Read the behaviour and suspension wording before you need it: those two go out at the worst moment of an owner’s week. To tell every daycare owner something at once, use Core’s Message everyone.

Settings reference

All of this is under Daycare → Daycare settings.

Rooms are separate, under Daycare → Rooms, as are day rates, under Daycare → Services & prices.

When something goes wrong, and what the module doesn’t do yet

• No days, or a day missing. Save Daycare settings, or use Make the days ahead. The register says which case you are in: Closed — reason, Not an open day, or No daycare day made for this date yet.
• A regular is not landing on their days. Check the status is Approved, the plan is Regular, the weekdays are ticked, and From and Until cover the period.
• A price looks wrong. Somebody typed a price on that booking, which is then left alone for ever. Otherwise check the service price, the size adjustment, the tier and Who gets it.
• A card would not send. An empty card will not go, and a client with no email or mobile cannot get one.
• Dogs are stuck under *No room yet*. Check the rooms are In use and their Sizes cover your dogs.

Not yet: drop-off and collect-by are one pair for every day, with no per-day override; there is no public trial-day form, no per-room floor screen or noticeboard, and no “email all owners” button inside Daycare — use Core’s Message everyone.