Muttmates Core

What Muttmates is, and how this manual works

Muttmates is the back office for a dog business: your clients and their dogs, your diary, your money, the emails and texts that go out to owners, and the settings that shape all of it. You reach it by logging in to your own site.

It comes in two parts. Core — what this manual covers — is the spine every business gets: clients, dogs, bookings, prices, payment links, receipts, reminders, reports, the diary, the mobile app and the settings behind them. On top sit the modules, one per trade: Training, Grooming, Daycare, Walking, Boarding, Day training, Home care, Paddock, Events and Therapy. A module adds its own screens — a kennel board, a salon board, a register, a round of walks — but uses the same clients, diary and money as everything else, so turning one on never gives you a second system to keep in step.

There are four plans: Solo, Solo + Online, Business and Business + Online. Solo is the whole back office for one person. The + Online plans add online booking and a login for your clients. Business adds staff, roles and a roster. Prices are in New Zealand dollars, and the software is built for New Zealand and Australia — GST, the local time zones, and the wording tax invoices need in both countries.

The sections run in the order you meet the software, and screens, buttons and fields are named exactly as they appear, so you can search for a word you can see. Where something needs a plan or a module, the sentence says so.

Your first hour — getting set up

The home page carries a card called Getting set up with a progress bar, and the same list lives under Getting set up in the Tools block of the rail. Most steps tick themselves the moment they are true; the ones Muttmates cannot see for itself carry a Done button, with Undo if you tick one too soon.

Start at Settings → Business. Fill in Business name, Send emails from (payment links and receipts come from this address), Business address and Business phone — the last two appear in your email footers, on the payment page and on your front page. Set Currency to NZD or AUD, and check Time zone: it defaults to New Zealand, and every clock in Muttmates follows it.

Then decide about GST registered. Left off, prices are plain amounts, nothing mentions GST, and a receipt is headed Receipt. Switched on, labels read Price (incl. GST) and a receipt becomes a Tax Invoice carrying your invoice number, date, name and address, your GST number and the client's details, then an itemised table showing the GST component.

Next, Services & prices, where each service carries a Price, Minutes, Where and a Location / address; then Settings → Money for your bank details and Connect with Stripe; then Branding & emails → How clients see you for your Logo and Brand colour, which appear on your dashboard, payment pages, emails and front page on every plan — a client should never see Muttmates' colours instead of yours.

Finding your way around

Muttmates replaces the usual WordPress admin with its own chrome: one rail down the left of every screen, a top bar above the page, and nothing else to learn.

The rail's top block is the work everyone does: Diary (the home page, opening on today), Register where a module has one, Clients, Dogs, Handouts, Money, Messages, Enquiries with a red count of what is waiting, and Reports where a module has them. Below comes Your services, one entry per module on your plan, ending with Add-ons, which lists every module there is, marked On, On your plan or Add to plan. Owners also get a Tools block holding Getting set up, Import clients & dogs and Message everyone. At the foot are Mobile app, Settings, Branding & emails and Account, then your name with your plan under it and Sign out. On a phone the rail becomes five tabs along the bottom.

The Diary's Day view

Diary opens on Day, with Week and Month beside it and arrows to step to any other day. This is the page you will live on:

• the day's sessions as cards, each with the time, the service, the client and dog, breed and age, the dog's markers and photo, where it is as a map link, and ✓ Done, No-show, Notes, a phone icon and an email icon
• Needs marking off — past sessions nobody has set to Completed or No-show
• a Money panel with Owing to you, This week, the three biggest debts and Send links to everyone owing
• Needs you — reports to write, when statements go out, clients yet to sign the agreement, and whatever the modules add
• Coming up — the next week

A group session collapses to one card with ✓ All done on it. Anything you mark stays on the page for the rest of the day, greyed and struck through, with Undo beside it.

Service pages, and the top bar

Each entry under Your services opens its own page: a header with that service's buttons — one filled, one outlined, Take payment, and the rest under More ▾ — then a tab row of Overview, a tab per group of screens, and Reports and Set up at the end, with pills under any tab holding more than one screen. Four tiles say Today, Next 14 days, Owing on these and This month, and Coming up lists that service only. The tab row follows you onto every screen underneath the service, with its name at the front as the way back: tabs say where you are, pills say which slice of it, and buttons do things.

The top bar has a search box reading Find a client or dog…, a New client button, and + New booking, a menu with one line per service — each starting the right kind of booking — plus Package on any plan with packages.

Clients and dogs

A client and their dogs are separate records, joined by the dog's Owner field. Money, agreements and balances belong to the client; vaccinations, markers and reports belong to the dog.

New client in the top bar opens one page for a person and their dogs together. The Client section takes Name, Email, Mobile, Travel zone, Address (the default place for in-home sessions and pick-ups) and Private notes. The About the dog section takes Name, Breed, Date of birth, Sex, Vaccinations current until, Markers, a Photo, Notes about the dog and What's going on, in the owner's words. Modules add their own questions here, and Another dog adds a second block. Save client lands on the new record; Save and book opens a booking with the client and first dog already chosen. A matching email or exact name is caught before a duplicate is made, with an add anyway option.

Down the side of a client's record sit the boxes that do the work: Account, Bills & packs, Enquiry & call notes, Agreement, Reliability, Client login on the Online plans, Marketing, Shop, Handouts, Privacy and Sent automatically. Each has its own section later.

A dog also carries a Vaccination certificate box, a Session reports box listing every session newest first, and a Photos box — On social media and the website, answered yes, no or not asked. Photos you send the owner in a report are always fine; this is about sharing them publicly.

Passed away is a status, not a tick. Give the box a date and press the button: the dog leaves every booking form, the login, exports, broadcasts, the mobile app and the automations at once, upcoming bookings are cancelled (anything paid becomes credit, and a place on a walk or a day is released), and the dog comes off every weekly pattern. Past sessions and reports keep the name, nothing is emailed to anybody, and Marked in error brings the dog back.

Markers

Markers are what anyone handling the dog needs to know at a glance. They show as icons on the Dogs list, the day's cards, the boards and registers, and with their words on the mobile app card.

The lists, and getting data in and out

The Clients list shows Client, Phone, Email, Dogs and Balance, plus Reliability and Agreement columns once those are in use. The Dogs list shows a round photo, Dog, Owner, Breed, Age, Markers and Vaccination, with a Passed away view of its own. Age comes from the date of birth, kept short: 9 weeks, 7 months, 1 yr 4 mths, 3 yrs once a dog is three or over.

Import clients & dogs takes a CSV with one row per dog. The first row must be headings; Muttmates guesses each column and shows you the match to check before anything is saved, matching clients by email then name rather than duplicating them and skipping a dog already on that client. Export offers All clients and Mailing list (opted-in clients only, with no notes, addresses or balances).

Enquiries, call notes and reliability

Somebody who fills in your enquiry form becomes a client record straight away, with their dog and a count on the rail's Enquiries entry. They get your automatic reply; you get an email and, if texting is on, a text.

Enquiries are listed to answer or answered, each row carrying the message, the client and dog, and buttons: Call, Text, Email, Book, Replied and Not a fit. On Business plans an owner or manager can hand one to anybody who can book clients in. A repeat enquiry from somebody already on your books creates nothing: earlier call notes stay, and what they typed this time shows as They typed, for you to merge by hand. Every row has an Add a call note link, kept on the client with who wrote it and when.

Reliability puts time-wasting on the record rather than in your head. One click logs Missed the call (2 points), No reply (1), Cancelled late (2) or Other (1), and a No-show (3) writes itself when you mark a booking as one. Points halve over time, so a bad month does not follow somebody for ever. Past the threshold the client shows ⚠ Unreliable — an amber pill with the reason on hover — on Enquiries, the Clients list, their record, their bookings and the day's cards. Flag by hand and Clear the flag are both there, and Settings → Bookings → Reliability sets Flag at (4 points) and Points halve every (90 days).

Taking a booking

A booking is one client, one dog, one time. However it arrived — by phone, online, from a walk round or from a package — it is the same kind of record, so the diary, the money and the reports all see it the same way.

Tick a Service and the blank fields fill from its defaults in the browser, and again on the server when you save, so nothing is left empty by accident. A field you typed into is never overwritten. The title is written for you from the client, the dog and the time, so leave the title box alone.

Set the status from the Payment box, or in one tap from the day's cards.

The other boxes on a booking: The dog (photo, breed and age, markers, vaccination date and your notes), Extras, Repeat (the same booking every week or fortnight for a number of times, skipping clashes), Safety — lone working on in-home sessions, Messages sent, Booked online when a client made it themselves, and Who on Business plans. When a booking is completed its report box appears — one report, the kind that fits its service.

An extra is an add-on with a name, a price and, if it takes time, some minutes: a second dog, a nail trim, a longer walk. Tick one and the amount due changes without touching the price field, and the minutes are added to the length. Each extra is its own line on the payment box, the payment page and the receipt.

The Diary and your phone's calendar

Week lays out a card per session with the time, a status pill, the service, the client and dog, where it is, what is paid or due and whether a report has gone. Month shows the same as small pills, with today highlighted. On a phone, week and month become a list. On Business plans a Show bar appears under the view toggles — Everyone, each person by name, or Nobody's yet — so you can read the diary one person at a time or look at the unassigned pile.

The Diary page also carries a private address you can subscribe to once in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook, after which every booking appears in your own calendar. It covers sixty days back and a year ahead, each event carrying the client, the dog, the status, what is due and a link to open the booking. Each person has their own address, and a staff member's carries their own bookings. Phone numbers and addresses are left out unless you switch Include phone and address on. You can reset your own address at any time, which stops the old one working.

Prices, GST, travel and extras

Prices are held GST-inclusive, the way they are quoted in New Zealand and Australia. The GST component is worked out when it is needed rather than stored, so changing the rate can never leave a stale figure behind.

Rather than typing a travel charge on every booking, you keep a list of Travel zones — your suburbs and towns — each with a cost. A Travel zone box sits on the client and on the booking, one zone or none. The booking's zone is the travel charged: added to the price, shown on the payment box as Travel · Hāwera, and said plainly on the payment page as Includes travel to Hāwera of $25.00. An in-home booking saved without a zone takes the client's zone, so in practice you set it once per client and forget it.

The amount due is the session price, plus travel for its zone, plus any extras ticked. That total becomes a charge against the client, and every payment, credit and refund is recorded against it. Nothing over $50,000 is accepted in a single line, which catches a slip of the keyboard before it reaches a client.

Packages — several sessions, one price

A package is several sessions for one client and dog, booked and paid for together: three training sessions and a behavioural consult, sold as one thing. Packages are on every plan from Solo up. Make one from + New booking → Package, from the + New package button on the Training page, or from the Packages list.

A package holds the Client, the Dog, a table of Sessions and a Package price. Each session row has a Service, a When (leave it blank if the date is not set yet), Where, an Address / location and a Travel zone; leave the last three alone and each session follows the service and the client. Leave the Package price blank and the package costs the sum of its services; type a lower figure and the discount is shared across the sessions in proportion.

When you save, every row becomes an ordinary booking, appearing on the diary, in the money and in reports like anything else. An undated session reads date to be arranged until you date it from the Bookings list, and removing a row trashes its booking unless it has been paid or completed.

The package gets one price, one payment link and one card checkout. A payment is applied to the sessions in date order, anything over becomes account credit, and one receipt goes out with a line per session. Travel is added per session from the client's zone, not folded into the package price.

Getting paid — the payment link and the payment page

This is the part Muttmates was built around: take the booking on the phone and send a payment link before you have put the kettle on.

Save a booking with a price and the Payment box shows the price, what is paid and what is due. Under Payment link, leave Amount to request blank for the full amount or type a smaller figure to ask for a deposit. Then Create link makes the link and shows it in a box you can click to select and paste into a text; Create & email makes it and emails it in one go; Email to client and Text to client send an existing link again; Open shows you exactly what the client will see. Nothing is ever sent automatically from this box. A link lasts thirty days.

The link opens a page of its own, in your logo and colour, with nothing for the client to log in to. It shows what the session is, when it is, the amount — with Deposit · $X remaining after this when you asked for part of it — the GST breakdown when you are registered, your own Message on the payment page if you have written one, and then how to pay.

What appears depends on what you have set up. With Stripe connected there is a Pay by card button. With bank details saved there is a Bank transfer block showing the Account name, the account number and a Reference — a short code beginning MM, unique to that booking. With both, the client chooses. With neither, the page says Pay on the day: cash, or however you have arranged, with the amount there for their records.

Card payments are confirmed two ways — by a message from Stripe, and by Muttmates checking the payment itself when the client comes back to the page. Either one records it, and both together cannot record it twice. Once paid, the page offers Add to calendar for Apple and Outlook and a Google Calendar link, and the receipt email carries the calendar link too. If you use an agreement, the client signs it on this page before card payment unlocks; bank details still show.

Taking a payment yourself

Take payment sits on every service page's header and opens one small page for cash at the counter, a card on your own terminal, or a transfer somebody shows you on their phone.

1. Pick the Client. The list shows what each one owes or holds in credit.
2. Under For, choose one of their bookings with something owing, or Their account — spread over what's owed, the rest as credit.
3. If you are selling something, put quantities against the products under Sell something. The amount then becomes the products' total, and the payment goes on the sale rather than a booking.
4. Check the Amount, prefilled with what is due or what the client owes overall. Change it for a part payment; anything over becomes credit.
5. Choose How: Cash, Card — on my own terminal, Bank transfer or Other under Paid now, or Email a payment link or Text a payment link under Send them the link instead.
6. Add a Reference if it helps, leave Email the receipt ticked unless you would rather not, and press Record payment.

The money is recorded exactly as it would be from the booking screen. If you chose to send a link, the amount you typed becomes what the link asks for, and for their account it sends a statement instead: everything owing on one page, one Pay button, one reference.

A lump sum can also go straight onto a client's record. The Account box has one form taking the amount, how it came (Bank transfer, Cash, Card (elsewhere), Other, Adjustment (no money) or Old system balance), what it is for — What's owed, extra as credit, or Credit for any service or one particular service — a reference or note, and Record. It is spread over the open bookings oldest first, Muttmates says what it covered, and the client gets one Payment received email rather than a receipt per booking.

On Business plans, money on a client's account is the owner's or a manager's job, and a staff member can only take a payment on their own bookings.

Statements, pack offers and invoices

Three things live alongside bookings and behave the same way — same payment link, same receipt, same place in your money.

A statement is one email covering everything a client owes up to a date: the list, the total, one Pay button and one bank reference. Paying it settles those bookings oldest first, and anything over becomes credit. While a statement is unpaid, the bookings on it keep quiet about money in their own reminders, so nobody is chased twice. Send one from the client's Bills & packs box — Statement now, pick the date, Send statement — or set them to go on their own under Settings → Money → Statements: off, Weekly, in advance or Monthly, in advance, with the weekday or day of the month and the hour. Clients whose credit covers everything get nothing.

A pack offer is the conversation you have on the phone — "ten walks for $200 instead of $250?" — turned into a link. In Bills & packs, pick the service, how many and the price (prefilled at full price, so you type the discount), add a line for the client if you like, and press Send the offer. When they pay, the money becomes credit earmarked for that service at its full value: ten walks at $25 becomes $250 of walk credit for the $200 paid, and their next ten walk bookings pay themselves.

An invoice is lines you type: what, how many, each — a late fee, a call-out, a phone consult, or products off your list. Nothing becomes credit; an invoice is simply owed and then paid. Send an invoice in Bills & packs gives you a product picker and blank lines with + another line, a running total and Send the invoice; Take payment → Sell something makes the invoice and takes the money in one motion; + New invoice on the Money page starts a blank one. All three, and packages, appear under Invoices, packs & statements with the same payment box as a booking.

Settings → Money → Products holds what you sell that is not a booking: a lead, treats, a book. Each row has a name, a price, a tick for In the client portal and a line for the client. Products are then a tick away on the invoice form, on Take payment, on the mobile app's Sell button and — with the client login — in the client's Shop tab.

Credit, balances and what a client owes

Every client has one balance, the sum of everything on their ledger. Money owed shows as owing, money in hand as in credit.

One number is rarely the whole story, so the Account box breaks it down: owed on 1 booking: $25.00 · credit unspent: $25.00, plus each service pack with what is left in it. A balance of zero with a booking still due is exactly this — money in that has not been matched to the booking — and Apply the credit to what's owed settles it there and then rather than waiting for the next hourly pass.

Settings → Money → Bank transfer has Credit pays bookings, on by default. With it on, whenever credit arrives or a new charge lands, spare credit quietly settles the client's open bookings oldest first, with no receipt each time, so a prepaid walker's rounds generate bookings that are already paid. Switch it off and credit sits on the account until you apply it by hand. Credit added with a service against it becomes a pack, spent on that service's bookings only — that pool first, then general credit.

Sometimes a booking holds more money than it is worth: its price came down after a payment, or it was cancelled and its charge removed while the payment stayed. The Account box names it — stuck on Lala · Mon 14 (overpaid): $25.00 — and Free it up and apply it moves it into credit and spends it on what is owed. On the ledger it reads as a refund into credit and then Applied to …, so every cent stays traceable.

Reminders, the payment chase and no-shows

Four things go out on their own, and all four are yours to change or switch off under Settings → Messages → Reminders.

The confirmation carries the details, calendar buttons and a Pay button if anything is owed — or Nothing to pay — this one's covered when credit paid it. It is never sent if a receipt has already gone, because a receipt says the same thing, and never twice; every booking also has an Email confirmation button for sending it by hand. The payment chase goes to a link still unpaid, at most twice, and stops when the link expires. The no-show email goes when you set a session to No-show, with the payment link if there is a balance owing.

Every send is recorded, so nothing goes twice, and each appears in the Messages sent box on the booking and on the Messages page.

Session reports and handouts

A report is what you send the owner afterwards. It stays attached to its booking, but it is a thing in its own right with its own page.

Reports in the rail lists every report — session, walk, day, whichever modules you run — with its state: To write (the session is completed and nothing is written), Drafted or Sent. Three tiles count each state, you can narrow by service and by how far back to look, and Write the next one takes you straight to work. Opening a report opens its booking in report mode: only the report and its send box, headed Billy's session report.

The report email goes out in your logo and colour with the sections as headed blocks and the dog's photo in the header, opposite your logo. The booking's Private notes stay private — a report is written in its own fields. What the sections are called depends on the module, and for training sessions a Write freely switch gives you one open editor instead. The Bookings list gains a Report column reading sent, written, not sent or none.

Handouts in the rail holds the things that go home: a written page, a file, or both. Each has a title, a line under it (In one line), the Services it goes with, Sent automatically — With the booking confirmation or With the session report — and For every client, which shows it to everyone on their login on the Online plans. In an email a handout is a link, sent once per client per handout however many sessions they book. A written handout opens as a branded page at an address nobody can guess; a file opens directly. Every booking and client also has a Handouts box with Email ticked handouts.

Emails and texts — wording, previews and what sends itself

Everything a client receives is one family of emails, in your logo and brand colour, plain enough to look the same in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail. The structure — the greeting, the details table, the buttons, the invoice — is fixed. The sentences are yours.

Branding & emails → Emails — the wording lists every email with a Subject, an Opening line, an Opening line (part payment) where it applies, and a Closing line. Leave a box blank to keep the standard wording, shown as the placeholder text so you can see what you are replacing. A How to pay line at the top says what your payment emails currently say.

Text messages use the same placeholders, plus {url} for the payment link and {at_where} for " at 14 High Street".

At the foot of Branding & emails is a live preview with a tab for each thing a client sees, drawn with sample data borrowed from your own services: Front page, Booking confirmation, Payment link email, Payment page, Statement, Pack offer, Payment chase, Receipt email, Reminder, No-show and Session report email. Change something above, save, and the previews update.

The Messages page lists everything that has gone out, newest first, with who it went to and the record it was about. Message everyone sends one branded email, and optionally a text, to current clients (booked in the last ninety days or ahead) or to everyone, narrowed to one service's clients if you like. It is capped at 500, logged, and is the owner's alone.

Automations

On the + Online plans, Settings → Messages → Automations holds emails that send themselves, each a switch.

They go in daytime only, never twice for the same reason, never to a client without an email, and never about a dog that has passed away. The wording is under Branding & emails → Emails, and each client and dog carries a Sent automatically box.

A No marketing tick on a client's record leaves them out of Message everyone and of the birthday, milestone, we-miss-you and review automations; bookings, receipts and reminders still go, because those are service, not marketing. Every marketing email carries an unsubscribe link that sets the tick for you. If an address bounces, an Email bounced box appears with Clear — send again, and the automations leave it alone until you clear it.

Texting — what it needs and what it costs

Texts are optional. Everything works by email without them, and where a text cannot go the message goes by email instead.

There are two ways to send. From Muttmates, on an allowance: every plan with texting carries 150 texts a month, and that route carries the day-before reminder, the payment link and the lone-worker safety texts. Through your own account, which carries everything — the mobile app's Text button, report cards, the van, quick messages — and costs you what your provider charges, with nothing added by Muttmates.

Texting is a plan feature: it comes with Solo + Online, Business and Business + Online. On Solo it is by the pack — buy credits and the reminder and the payment link go by text until they run out.

Settings → Messages → Texting carries a three-step guide, about ten minutes' work: sign up with the texting provider and add credit, create an API token in their settings, then paste the token ID and secret here, save, and send yourself a test. The Your own account switch turns it on, and a Status line always says plainly what is happening and how many texts have gone this month.

Past the allowance, texts come out of credits. Packs of 100, 500 and 2,000 are bought on Account → Texting by card, never expire, and appear on your Muttmates invoices; the allowance is used first. A bar shows the month and the credits, and you get an email at 80 per cent, at 100 per cent, and when the credits run out. With neither left, the message goes by email.

Reminders by text are on by default and no-shows by text are off, both under Settings → Messages → Reminders. Safety prompts and alerts go by text, and on the mobile app Text composes a message sent as your business and logged on the booking, with your Quick messages as taps above the box.

Your agreements

An agreement is your terms, and a client signs it on the payment page: they read it, tick, type their name and press the button, before card payment unlocks. Bank details still show, so nobody is stopped from paying you.

They sign once and it holds for their later bookings of the same thing. Change the wording and they sign the new version next time. Each signature is kept on the client, permanently and without overwriting, with the exact text they saw, a fingerprint of that text, their typed name, the time, their address and their browser, and the booking it was signed for. You can read or print any of them from the Agreement box on the client, and the client gets a copy by email. This is a reliable electronic signature in the sense the law uses in New Zealand and Australia, because the link is one only they received.

Settings → Bookings → Agreements is the one place it lives. It lists your own agreements with what each is asked for and an Add link, then holds the default: Ask clients to sign the default, Default agreement — title, Default agreement — the wording and Button wording (I agree and sign unless you change it). You can use {business}, {client} and {date} in the wording.

A booking asks for exactly one agreement, the most specific that applies: one written for one service — a board-and-train programme, one course — else one for its kind of booking (grooms, walks, classes), else the default. An agreement of its own carries For this kind of booking, Or one service only, Ask clients to sign, The agreement and Button wording.

Your website, online booking and the client login

Your Muttmates address can be your website. Branding & emails → How clients see you has Your site's front page: leave it as Muttmates draws it and your address shows a page carrying your logo, a Headline, A few words about you beside a Front page photo, the buttons that matter, a What we offer grid, a contact strip, and a footer with Business owner or staff? Log in. What we offer is your own words, one thing per line, and a dash turns the rest into small print: Daycare — small dogs, a big garden. Unlike the client login, this page is indexable, so it can be the address on your cards.

Branding & emails → Your website collects every embed and link in one place, each with a self-sizing frame code, a plain link and a shortcode: the Enquiry form, Classes & events (with the Events module), Online booking, the Client login link, and Your Muttmates front page. For a frame to show, your website's address has to be on the allowed list — Websites allowed to embed it, under Settings → Bookings, which is also where the enquiry form's introduction, thank-you and Text me a new enquiry on live. Every public form is protected against bots invisibly, with no puzzle for a real person to solve.

Online booking

Online booking comes with Solo + Online and Business + Online. A client goes: what → when → who → a couple of things first → confirm and pay → done, and what comes out is an ordinary booking.

A service can override the deposit rule with its own. Whatever the client must have first is asked for on the page as part of the flow, not as a detour. A booking awaiting a deposit is held for twenty minutes and then released; once paid, or when nothing is owed, it is confirmed and the ordinary confirmation goes out. New online bookings appear on Needs you, and the booking carries a Booked online box. On Business + Online the times offered come from the roster once anybody is marked Bookable online.

Clients logging in

A client logs in with a one-tap link emailed to them — fifteen minutes, single use, remembered on that device for thirty days — or with a password if they set one. They have no access to your back office at all. Their tabs are Home, Bookings, Pay, Dogs, My details, Agreement, plus Shop when you have ticked a product for clients and Handouts where you use them.

A cancellation inside your policy refunds what was paid to account credit. Outside it, the client asks, and the request lands on Needs you and as a box on the booking with Close the request. Every edit a client makes is stamped and shows on Needs you for three days — Sam updated Billy's vaccination date — so nothing changes behind your back. Send a client their first link from Send login link on their record, which also shows when they last logged in.

Money — the page, the year and exports

Money in the rail is the whole picture. On Business plans it is the owner's and managers' page. Four tiles across the top: Owing to you, Received this month, Prepaid credit held and Statements.

Owing lists each client with how many bookings are owing, whether a link has been sent and when, the amount, and Email link and Record buttons; Send links to all emails or texts a payment link to everyone with an unpaid upcoming booking. Recent is the full ledger: date and time, client, the booking, what it was and the amount, over Last 10 days, 30 days, 90 days, A year or your own dates, with the total received and refunded in the heading.

The year shows money received by month for twelve months as a bar chart, and what has been billed by service since 1 January; received means payments in the ledger, so credit moving between pots does not count. On the side sit the Export card and a How money works here card, which says whether statements are on, whether credit pays new bookings and whether card payments are set up.

The Export card takes a From and to date and offers five CSV files; the dates apply to bookings and money, while clients and dogs are everyone.

Your team — staff, roles and the roster

Staff come with the Business plans, and Staff appears in the rail for the owner. Invite somebody by email and they get a link to set their own password, or type a password on the form and their login works straight away.

A person's record carries a Colour for their badge, Can be given (the services they may be assigned — nothing ticked means any), and four ticks: Can book clients in (off, their day is read-only apart from marks and notes), Bookable online, Sets their own hours and Can see the team's roster. Settings → Business → Staff adds Unassigned work is everyone's, Make shifts ahead and Clients can choose who.

A staff login opens only what is theirs: their own bookings and sessions, and a client or dog with a booking of theirs or one they made. Any other record is turned away, and they cannot delete any of the business's records. The Account, Bills & packs and Reliability boxes do not appear on a client for staff. A booking a staff member saves emails the client its confirmation by itself.

Work is given to a person from the Who box on a booking, session or weekly pattern, or with one tap from the day's cards; a second person can be added with And. Roster is the week, people down and days across, with shifts made by hand or from each person's weekly hours. Staff ask for leave and an owner or manager approves it, with what is waiting counted on Needs you, and Publish week matters: staff see published weeks only. A shift says what it covers, and the form changes shape to suit the work — rooms for daycare, a kennel block and a duty for boarding, that day's sessions as ticks for walks and rounds, and at base, in-home or in the van for training, grooming and therapy.

Lone-worker check-in

Going into a stranger's house alone is a health-and-safety duty in both New Zealand and Australia, and the check-in is how you meet it and keep a record. Whether it is available on your site is set by Muttmates when your site is created; where it is off, there is no setting, no button and no log.

On an in-home session you tap I've arrived when you get there and I've left safely when you go, and there is a Panic button too. The buttons are on the booking, on the day's cards, in the mobile app and on links that work with no login at all, because somebody standing in a hallway should not be typing a password. An open check-in is pinned to the rail wherever you are.

If a session runs past its end plus the Grace period and you have not signed off, you get a text and an email asking if you are all right. With no answer after the Escalation period, your emergency contacts are told where you are, with the client's address and phone. Every arrival, prompt, escalation and alert is timestamped on the booking and listed on the Safety log page.

Settings → Business → Safety holds it: Lone-worker check-in, Emergency contact with their mobile and email, a Second contact, Your mobile, Grace period (15 minutes) and Escalation (10 minutes). Send a test sends the real channels to you and your contacts and keeps the result on the tab. Every send records whether it worked — Delivery: text sent · email failed — and an alert that reaches nobody writes ALERT NOT DELIVERED on the record, emails your admin address, and puts a line on Needs you for a week. With your mobile set and texting on, you get a text thirty minutes before each in-home session with the address and the arrive link.

The mobile app

Mobile app in the rail opens the phone page: today, stripped to what a thumb needs. It is served bare — no theme, no admin chrome — so bookmark it to your home screen. Every action is a plain link or a small form that comes straight back, with nothing to break on a bad signal.

The day's sessions are cards carrying the time, the service, the client and dog, breed and age, the dog's photo, the markers with their words, the address as a map link, your private notes, and what is paid or due. Along the bottom: Call, Text, Email, Pay link, Notes, Sell where you have products, ✓ Done and No-show, plus an inline form to record a payment then and there. On an in-home session the check-in is the big button. Email is there whenever the client has an email address; Text appears only once texting is connected. A search box at the top finds a client by name, phone, email or dog's name.

The app is for the day in hand: arrive, notes, photos, payment, text, call, safety. Booking, the diary, reports and the office are the desktop's, and nothing in the app links back into them.

Settings, tab by tab

Settings opens Business settings, with your own business name beside the title — it is your business being set up, not Muttmates. There is one tab row and, under the open tab, a row of pills for its sections. It is all one form with one Save, and the section you were on survives a save.

Send email through offers two choices. One is always Use my own mail server, which takes a host, port, encryption, Username and Password. The other is Muttmates sends for you where Muttmates' own mail service is switched on for your site — your business as the sender name, your address as the reply-to — and otherwise This server's own mail (as now), which works but is less reliably delivered.

Branding & emails and Safety log are pages of their own, reached from the same tab row, and a module's own settings live on that service's Set up tab. Dashboard look decides how your brand colour shapes your own screens: Tinted (the default), Bold (the rail filled with your colour), Night (dark surfaces in its tone) or Neutral (colour on buttons only).

Keys and passwords are encrypted and never shown again once saved. The field shows ✓ Secret added (ends …) underneath: leave it blank to keep the value, or type the word clear to clear it.

Your Muttmates account

Account at the foot of the rail is your side of the arrangement with Muttmates, and it is the owner's. A manager or staff member sees only the Profile tab, as My login.

Overview has four tiles — Plan with its status, Modules, Next invoice and Card — then what your plan includes and three buttons: Change plan, Update card / cancel and Ask for help.

Plan is the chooser. How big are you? shows the four plans as cards with what each includes and the price, with a Monthly / Annual · 2 months free switch. What do you do? shows the modules as tiles: the first one ticked is included, each extra is priced on the tile, and a module needing a bigger plan greys out and says so. First time, Continue to payment takes you to a card form run by Stripe; already subscribed, Change my plan shows what is charged today, pro rata, before anything is charged.

Texting shows your allowance and credits and the packs you can buy. Invoices is your invoice list with a PDF for each and a Pay button for anything open. Support is where you ask: + Ask for help takes a subject, a description and screenshots, and your plan, versions and site come with it automatically. Replies land here and in your email.

Profile holds Your business (the same fields as Settings, in the one place that also updates your billing details) and Your login. Change your password wants your current password and the new one twice, at least eight characters, and Email me a link to set a new one covers a forgotten password. At the foot, Closing your account: cancel from the Overview and your site stays readable to the end of the period; to have it removed entirely, send a ticket, and Muttmates will confirm before anything is deleted.

If a payment fails, a banner appears on every screen with Fix payment on it. A past-due plan keeps working. A suspended or cancelled one pauses your plan's features — but never touches your clients' payment links, so money already in flight still reaches you.

Privacy, the audit trail and keeping records

Two duties pull in opposite directions: a client may ask what you hold about them or to be forgotten, and the tax record has to survive. Muttmates keeps both.

The Privacy box on every client record is the owner's. Download everything we hold gives you one file with their record, their dogs, bookings, money, agreements, enquiry and call notes, the reliability record as plain facts, the marketing setting, the trail of their own edits and the names of files held. Attach it to your reply.

Erase — you type ERASE — turns the client into Erased client, numbered. Every field is cleared, dogs are deleted with their photos and files, the login is removed, and notes, enquiry, reliability and edit trail go, as do booking notes and addresses. What stays is the tax record: bookings' dates, services and amounts, the ledger rows, and the bare fact that an agreement was signed on a date, without the name behind it.

Settings → Business → Privacy sets Keep lapsed clients for, seven years by default, which is the tax period. Once a month, any client with no booking, no payment and no login in that long is erased the same way.

Audit, reached from Settings → Business, is who did what on your site: payments and credits with who recorded them, client records opened, broadcasts sent, team logins invited or switched off, plan changes, exports, erasures and unsubscribes. The last 500 are kept, for two years, grouped under a date heading and read as time, who and what. There are no addresses in it: the point is accountability inside your business, not surveillance of your team.

Files that should never sit at a public address — handout PDFs, a vaccination certificate — are held in a private store and reached only through a link Muttmates signs. A link on a screen lasts ten minutes; a link in an email does not expire, because a client keeps the email. Every link dies the moment the file is replaced or removed.

When something goes wrong

A bank transfer arrived but the booking still says Due. Record it on the booking's Payment box, or on the client's Account box for a lump sum covering several bookings.

The balance says $0.00 but a booking still says due. Money has come in that has not been matched to that booking. The Account box says which — credit unspent, a pack for another service, or money stuck on an overpaid or cancelled booking — and the button beside it settles it now.

A payment did not apply at all. Look for two client records with the same name: the money is on one and the bookings on the other. Pick one, move the other's bookings across, and trash the spare.

There is no Pay by card button on the payment page. Card payments are not set up. Go to Settings → Money → Stripe (card payments) and use Connect with Stripe.

Reminders and statements are late. Those jobs run when your site gets traffic, so a quiet site can drift. Ask support to have a real scheduler pointed at your site.

A text did not send. Check the Status line on Settings → Messages → Texting. A text that cannot be sent goes by email instead, so nothing is lost. On Solo, buy credits on Account → Texting.

Emails are going to junk. Try Settings → Messages → Email delivery, and use Send a test to me to see which route your mail takes and whether it worked.

A client says they never got the email. Look at Messages sent on the booking, or the Messages page. If their address has bounced, an Email bounced box is on their record with Clear — send again.

The preview on the Branding page is blank. Save the page first; the previews draw with the settings as last saved.

A handout link no longer works. Editing a handout retires its old links on purpose. Send it again.

I cannot find Today. Today and the diary are one thing now: the rail's Diary entry opens on the Day view, which is the page Today used to be.

A module is installed but nothing appears. It is not on your plan. Settings → Business → Plan names what is available, and Add-ons or Account → Plan is where you add it.

Something is genuinely wrong. Account → Support → + Ask for help. Say what you did, what you expected and what happened instead, and attach a screenshot.