New Features: Training Visits, Blocked Sitters and more

Mar 17, 2020   Adam   Feature Updates

We hope everyone is staying healthy and afloat with the worldwide impact that COVID-19 has had. We are fortunate to have a remote team so everything will continue as per usual on our end. Today we are releasing a number of highly requested features! We've added labels to each feature:

• EVERYONE means that this is a feature that will immediately apply to your site or is available to use
• OPTIONAL means it is a feature which you need to turn on to use (either in the settings or single use on a particular page)

Training Visits

OPTIONAL - You can now add visits to the schedule which are hidden from clients for training purposes. When you add a new visit from the Master Schedule select "Training Visit" as the Type. Here is how Training Visits work:

• Training visits are completely hidden from clients (on their schedule, invoices and anywhere else)
• Client Confirmations will not and cannot be sent for Training Visits
• Journals can be added for Training Visits, but the Journals and journal comments are sent to Management instead of the client
• Training Visits have a $0 price, cannot include Surcharges and cannot be invoiced
• You and the sitter will see a "Training" label for the visit on the Schedule
• Other than the rules above, Training Visits are treated like any other visit (sitters can be paid for them, although they cannot include tips from clients)

Block sitters from servicing clients

OPTIONAL - This is done by using the new Blocked Sitters setting in the Client Profiles. When a sitter is blocked:

• They will be unassigned from any future visits and ongoing series for the client
• They will be removed as Primary/Secondary (if they are set as such)
• They will not show as a choice in the "Assign" dialog for that client and will not be able to be assigned to the client's visits again by any method

Auto Invoicing Grouped Visits

OPTIONAL - You can now have the system keep groups of visits together on the same Invoice when using the Auto Invoicing. This is done using the Keep Grouped Visits on Same Invoice setting when configuring Auto Invoicing. Instead of partially invoicing visits in a group the system will wait to invoice them until they will all be included on the same invoice. There are three different grouping settings:

• Trip Visits Only (the system will wait to keep visits from the same Trip on a single invoice)
• Trip and Consecutive Day Visits (in addition to the above, the system will wait to keep visits on consecutive days on the same invoice)
• Trip, Consecutive Day and Every Other Day Visits (in addition to the above, the system will wait to keep visits that are every other day on the same invoice)

Additional Updates

• EVERYONE - Expiring Vaccinations Alerts: on the 25th of every month you will receive an "Expiring Vaccinations" email which will list pets that have vaccinations which have expired that month or will the next month. Clients will see in-system notifications if they have pets where the vaccinations have expired or will expire in the next month
• OPTIONAL - Custom Sitter Pay for specific clients: For cases where you have sitters that get paid more only for certain clients, you can now specify a Client when configuring their Custom Rates on the Administrative > Users page
• EVERYONE - You can now see all Trips in one place, and add new Trips, from the Scheduling > Trips page. The page has tabs for "On Schedule", "Canceled" and "Concluded" trips so you can easily see them separately. Trips are sorted by Departure Date/Time, making it easy to find trips which the clients never marked as Home Safe.
  
• OPTIONAL - Using Site Options > Time & Scheduling > Date Naming & Blocking you can now block specific Time Blocks
• OPTIONAL - Using Site Options > Clients > Client/Pet Fields you can now choose separately whether Sitters can see information (instead of having Managers and Sitters grouped together as "Staff")
• OPTIONAL - If you need to reorder your Client Fields that can now be done at Administrative > Tools > Swap Client Fields
  
• OPTIONAL - You can prevent specific surcharges from being discounted by updating them at Petcare > Services & Times > Surcharges and setting Surcharge can be discounted to "No"
• OPTIONAL - There is now more flexibility in how the due date for invoices is calculated (which can now be based on Invoice Date, First Visit or Last Visit), which can be adjusted at Billing > Billing Options > Default Terms, by editing an invoice and by adjusting the Invoice Date setting for Auto Invoicing
  
• EVERYONE - When a client is first creating signing up on your Registration page their phone number is now required, which will give you another way to contact them if they were to abandon before filling out their My Info
• EVERYONE - If a client attempts to Register without an Invitation Code and the system detects an existing Client Profile with the same email address it will block them from registering and automatically send them a new Invitation email. They can then use the new Invitation Code to register. This should help prevent duplicate Client Profiles from being created in cases where clients forget or misplace their Invitations.