Muttmates · the back office for dog professionals
Muttmates Walking
Owner's manual
What the Walking 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 Walking module adds on top, so if you have not read the Muttmates Core owner's manual, start with that.
Walking is the module for a dog walker: solo and group walks, each with a capacity and a pick-up address, weekly rounds that fill the diary with your regulars, and a short walk report emailed home after each one. It is a light module on purpose — a walk is an ordinary booking underneath, so everything Core already does (payment links, receipts, statements, credit, reminders, the diary and Today) keeps working unchanged.
Walking is available on every plan. If it is installed but not on your plan, you get one quiet line about it under Settings → Plan and nothing else — no banner, and no data touched.
Your Walking page
Your services → Walking in the rail opens the page, subtitled with what Walking does. Four tiles across the top read Today, Next 14 days, Owing on these and This month — walks, not individual dogs, though Today also counts the dogs going out. Beside the heading sit + New walk and Weekly patterns.
Under that is the tab row:
| Tab | What is under it |
|---|---|
| Overview | This page |
| Walks | Walks, Weekly patterns, New weekly pattern |
| Reports | Walk reports — to write, drafted, sent |
| Set up | Services & prices, Mobile app |
The main column is Coming up — every walk today and in the next fortnight, oldest first, each with its time, who's on it and whether it's paid. The side column is Needs marking off — walks in the past whose dogs have not yet been ticked off — each with a ✓ to mark it done on the spot, without opening it.
Setting up what you offer
A walk is a service like any other, filed on its own tab: Services & prices → Walks. Two are set up for you the first time Walking runs — Group walk at $25 for 60 minutes and Solo walk at $35 for 60 minutes — change the names and prices to yours, and add more (a shorter walk, a puppy visit, a weekend rate) as their own services.
Each service carries the usual fields — Price, Minutes, Book online on the plans with a booking page — but not Where: a walk always starts from the client's address. There is no separate "Where" field to set, and no travel zone tile on this page; if you charge more to walk further, that is Core's Travel zones, which applies to any in-home booking, a walk included.
A walk is a group session
Every walk — solo or group — is a session, not a plain booking: one record holding the time, the type, how many places, which service, and a row per dog. Save it, and each dog gets its own ordinary booking underneath, with its own payment link, reminder and receipt; drop a dog and, if they had paid, what they paid becomes credit on their account.
+ New walk asks for:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| What | Walk — set automatically if Walking is your only session module |
| When | Date and time |
| Type | Group walk or Solo walk (your two starter names; edit or add types by editing the services) |
| Capacity | Six by default — how many dogs the walk takes |
| Service (price & length) | From your Walks services — this is what every dog on it is charged |
| Where / notes | Blank uses each client's own address for pick-up. Fill it in for a walk that starts somewhere else — a park meeting point, say — and it goes on every dog's confirmation and reminder in place of their address |
| Dogs | One row per dog: client and dog. Save, and each becomes a booking |
A solo walk is the same record with capacity set to one and, usually, a solo-priced service — there is no separate "solo" screen, just this session with one dog on it.
The On the diary box on the walk itself lists every dog with what they owe, a way to email or text a payment link to everyone still owing at once, and a ✕ to take a dog off. Put more dogs on a walk than it has places and the extra rows are left off, with a notice telling you so — raise Capacity or start a second walk.
Marking a walk done
There is no dedicated walk register. Mark each dog off from its own booking — Completed once you're back, or No-show if they weren't ready — exactly as you would any Core booking, and it shows against that dog's row on the walk. The quickest way is the ✓ on the Walking page's Needs marking off card, or the same tick on Today, which marks the dog Completed without opening the booking at all.
The walk report
Every dog's booking on a walk carries a short Walk report box, in place of the training module's longer session report: How the walk went — where you went, who they walked with, the good bits — and Anything to know — toilet, water, a sore paw, a new friend; leave it blank when there's nothing to say. Short on purpose: a walker sends several of these an hour.
The Walk report panel on the side of the booking sends it: it shows whether one has gone already, offers Mark the walk Completed when sent (ticked by default), then Email the owner, disabled until something's written. Preview ↗ shows the email as the owner will see it, with your logo and wording from Branding & emails.
Every walk report a dog has had is listed on the dog's own profile, newest first. Core's Reports page — and the Reports tab on the Walking page — sorts every walk into To write, Drafted and Sent, the same way it sorts every other kind of report on the site.
Weekly rounds — the regulars who come every week
Most walking businesses run on regulars, so Walking uses Core's weekly-pattern engine to keep them on the diary without you touching it. Walking → Weekly patterns → + New weekly pattern asks for:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | Tuesday park group, say |
| Active | Off pauses it — no more walks are created, existing ones are untouched |
| From / Until | Blank From means starting now; blank Until means it rolls on indefinitely. Set Until for a fixed block and every date in it is created at once |
| Days | Tick one or more |
| Time | One time for every day ticked |
| Type | Group walk or Solo walk |
| Capacity | Six by default |
| Service (price & length) | From Walks |
| Where / notes | As on a single walk |
| Regulars | One row per dog — the dogs booked onto every walk this pattern makes |
Save, and Muttmates lays out the next fortnight of walks from the pattern (Create sessions ahead, under the module's own settings, 14 days by default) with every regular booked on and confirmed. After that each walk is its own thing: take a dog off one Tuesday for a holiday, add a guest for the day, or trash a walk for the weather, and the pattern is untouched — it only ever adds the future.
Change the pattern — a new regular, a different time — and only the walks not yet created pick it up. For a change that should reach walks already on the diary but not yet paid for, use Regenerate future sessions on the pattern itself: it clears and remakes anything ahead with no payment on it, and leaves anything paid exactly where it is.
Taking a walk place online
On the +Online plans, with online booking switched on and a Walks service ticked Book online, your walks appear on the booking page as a place on a walk you've already scheduled — never an invented slot. Only walks with a free place, far enough ahead to clear your notice period, are offered; book the last place and it disappears from the page for the next visitor.
Booking online adds the dog to the walk exactly as you would from the editor: a row on the session, a booking made, and — if you take a deposit — held pending until it is paid, same as any other online booking. Let a hold lapse and the dog comes off the walk, freeing the place again.
Settings and set-up reference
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Walk services and prices | Services & prices → Walks |
| Travel charged for pick-up | Travel zones (Core) |
| How far ahead weekly patterns fill the diary | The module's settings, under Weekly patterns |
| Walk confirmation, reminder and reminder text wording | Branding & emails → Walk confirmation, Walk reminder |
| Walk report email wording | Branding & emails |
| Online booking, notice period | Settings → Online booking |
When something goes wrong
A walk saved but nobody's on it. Add the dogs under Dogs and save again — nothing is booked until a row has a client and a dog on it.
Dogs are missing from a walk I expected them on. Check the weekly pattern is Active, the day is ticked, and From/Until cover today.
The Email the owner button is greyed out. Nothing is written in the report yet, or the client has no email address — the box says which.
A walk I changed didn't update the ones already on the diary. Only walks not yet created pick up a pattern change automatically. Use Regenerate future sessions on the pattern for the rest — it leaves anything already paid alone.
There's no register for the day's walks. That's by design: mark each dog off from its own booking, or with the ✓ on the Walking page or Today — there is no separate screen to open first.
Muttmates Walking — Owner's manual. Muttmates, 19 September 2026.