Muttmates Therapy

What the Therapy 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 Therapy module adds on top, so if you have not read the Muttmates Core owner's manual, start with that.

Therapy is for canine massage, hydrotherapy, physio, laser, acupuncture, chiropractic or nutrition work — one module, whatever the discipline. It adds:

• A therapy profile on every dog: conditions, medication, contraindications, the vet and their referral, consent to treatment.
• A treatment record on every appointment: what you found, what you did, how they responded, home care, the plan — plus a few measures (weight, mobility, comfort, one of your own) tracked visit to visit so they trend.
• Two reports: a summary to the owner, and — by hand, whenever you choose — a proper report to the vet.
• The vet-referral gate: a treatment that needs one can't be booked online, and warns in the back office, until the dog has a referral dated inside its validity.
• "Due for the next one": worked out from the last treatment and how often, with a nudge you can send.

Therapy needs the Professional plan and up.

Your Therapy page

Your services → Therapy in the rail opens the page. Four tiles: Today's appointments; Next 14 days, red once any of them need a referral or consent that isn't yet on file; Owing on these; and Due for the next one — dogs about due by their own plan with nothing booked. Beside the heading sit + New appointment and This week.

The tab row:

There's no stage board here — a treatment is one dog with one practitioner for the length of the appointment — so the page itself is the week: each appointment shown with the dog's cautions, its referral and consent state, whether the record's written, and whether the owner and the vet have had their reports. The main column leads with Today, then Records to write (anything completed or confirmed in the last fortnight with nothing written yet), then Coming up. The side column is Due for the next one, each with a Nudge link.

A treatment is one ordinary booking

There's no group session and no stage board — a treatment is any booking whose service is ticked "This is a treatment." A second tick, "Needs a vet referral", marks the ones that can't go ahead without one. Everything else — the diary, the mobile app, payment links, receipts, reminders, credit, statements — works exactly as it does for any other booking; what Therapy adds sits on top, in the dog's own profile and in a record on the appointment itself.

Setting up what you offer

A treatment service is set up under Services & prices, ticked This is a treatment — eight are seeded for you the first time the module runs:

Change the names, prices and lengths to yours, and tick or untick Needs a vet referral on each as your own practice requires. Every one is seeded On premises — flip Where on any service to work mobile from the client's home instead.

The dog's therapy profile

Every dog carries a Therapy profile, asked on the New client page and kept up to date from the dog's own record, the owner's login, or wherever a booking's referral-and-consent step is answered:

The contraindications checklist is: pregnant or in season; fever or infection at the moment; surgery in the last two weeks; an open wound or skin infection; an undiagnosed lump; on anticoagulants (blood thinners); seizures / epilepsy; a heart condition. Anything ticked here — or in the free-text "other" field — shows as a red warning on every appointment for that dog, not just the one it was added on.

The vet-referral gate

A service ticked Needs a vet referral can't be booked online, and warns plainly in the back office, until the dog's referral is dated inside its validity window — six months by default, set under Therapy settings. A referral shows as one of four states: ok, expiring (inside the last 14 days of its validity), expired, or none at all.

Online, the booking page's "a couple of things first" step asks for the referral date, the letter (a photo or PDF — optional there, since it saves you ringing the vet), and the vet's email, whenever the dog's referral isn't ok or expiring; consent is asked for there too, the first time it's needed. The same fields sit on the owner's own login, where the referral letter can be replaced at any time. In the back office, the Before you treat box on the appointment itself shows the dog's cautions, consent, and — for a referral-gated service — exactly where the referral stands, with a link to the letter.

Booking a treatment

Opening a treatment's Before you treat box shows the dog's cautions in red where any apply, whether consent is on file (with the date it was given), the referral's state for a referral-gated service, conditions, medication, the vet's details, when the dog was last seen and how often, and its last few visits at a glance — each linking straight to that appointment. A new appointment opened from the Therapy page ticks the first treatment service automatically, ready to go.

The treatment record, and the measures that trend

Every treatment carries its own Treatment record: Presenting issue (prefilled from what the owner wrote when booking online, if they did), Findings on assessment, Treatment given, How they responded, Home care until next time (this goes to the owner word for word), a short Plan, and Next in — weeks until the next one's expected, which updates the dog's own interval the moment the appointment's completed.

Alongside the record sit measures, kept the same shape every visit so they trend: Weight (kg), Mobility and Comfort (each 1–5, poor to good), and one measure of your own — a name and a number, e.g. left stifle circumference, stance time, pool laps — as long as you keep the name the same visit to visit. The dog's own Treatment history box shows a trend table across the last dozen visits, each measure's change from the visit before marked with a ▲ or ▼, followed by every visit's record, newest first, each one expandable.

Two reports: to the owner, and to the vet

The Treatment summary & vet report box on the appointment sends two separate things, and neither goes automatically.

To the owner, through Core's ordinary report email — the same Reports page every module uses — built from whatever you've written: why you saw the dog today, what you found, what you did, any extras charged, how they responded, home care until next time, the plan, and today's measures.

To the vet, by hand, whenever you choose: a proper clinical report, with the patient, date of birth, owner, when they were seen and the treatment given, the referral date and consent as recorded, conditions and medication as recorded, cautions noted, then the record in full — presenting issue, findings, treatment given, response, home care advised, plan — and a trend table of the measures across the last eight visits. It closes with your own sign-off (name, qualification, registration), set once under Therapy settings. Both Email the owner and Email the vet are disabled until something's actually written in the record, and each shows plainly whether it's already been sent.

Due for the next one, and the nudge

Completing an appointment stamps the dog's Last treatment date; if you filled in Next in on that record, it updates the dog's own How often too. From those two, a dog appears on Due for the next one once its last treatment plus its interval is due — minus a warning window (7 days by default, in Therapy settings) — provided nothing is already booked ahead for it. It drops off the list the moment something is.

Each dog there offers Send a nudge (or Nudge again): a text if texting's on and there's a mobile on file, otherwise an email in the "due for the next treatment" wording, with a Book a time button when online booking is switched on. The same "due" card, with its own Book button, appears on the owner's own login.

Taking a treatment online

On the +Online plans, with online booking switched on and a treatment ticked Book online, it appears as its own offer at the service's price and length, from Core's Hours. Booking one asks a question no other module does: "What's going on with [dog], and what would you like the treatment to help with?" — the answer becomes the record's own presenting issue, ready for you before they arrive. The referral-and-consent gate described above slots into the same flow, asking for whatever's missing before the booking can complete.

On their own login, a treatment's report is labelled Treatment summary rather than the generic name, and a dog that's coming due gets its own Book a time button, preferring whichever treatment type it had last.

Settings and set-up reference

When something goes wrong

Online booking is asking for a referral or consent I thought was already on file. Check the dog's own Therapy profile — the referral has to be dated inside the validity window in Therapy settings (six months by default), and consent has to have actually been ticked somewhere, not just mentioned.

Email the owner or Email the vet is greyed out. The record's empty — write what you found and did first.

Email the vet is disabled even with the record written. Add the vet's email under Vet's email on the dog's Therapy profile.

A dog I know is overdue isn't showing on Due for the next one. Check two things: it needs a Last treatment date on file at all, and it drops off the list the moment anything is already booked ahead for it, even a pending one.

A referral shows "expiring" right after I entered a new date. Check the date itself — "expiring" means it's inside the last 14 days of its validity window, so a date that's older than it looks will show that way.

A caution I ticked on the dog isn't showing on the appointment. Cautions are read live from the dog's own Therapy profile, not copied onto the booking — check it's actually saved there.

Consent shows as missing even though the owner agreed by phone. A spoken yes isn't recorded anywhere until it's ticked — either you tick Owner consents to treatment on the dog yourself, or the owner confirms it through their own login or the online-booking step.