Prospects allow you to keep track of your potential customers. That can include anyone that has submitted a form through your website, left a membership or package purchase unfinished, or joined a waitlist without having booked anything else. You may also choose to add a prospect manually if they have reached out to you but you cannot yet fit them into your schedule. Use your prospect list to keep track of your potential clients and their contact information, add them to your mailing list, and turn your prospects into paying customers. Prospect Profiles may be converted into Customer Profiles easily at any time.

In this guide, we will take a look at how Prospect Profiles get created, what information they provide, and how they get converted into Customer Profiles.

All of a prospective client's contact information, pets, and message history will be accessible through their Prospect Profile. To find a specific prospect, start by clicking on the "Customers" icon in the menu at the left-hand side of the page.

Then select "Prospects" from the submenu.

This page displays your Prospect Index. Scroll through the list or use the Search bar at the top of the page to locate a specific prospect. Note that you can select the "Prospects" tab to filter your search results.

Once the desired prospect has been found, click on their name to open their Prospect Profile page.

Though not quite as extensive as Customer Profiles, Prospect Profile pages include plenty of important information about your potential clients.

All prospect profiles will be marked at the top with a magenta "Prospect" tag. When the profile is converted to a Customer Profile, this tag will change to a green "Customer" tag. If you have created one or more custom tags, clicking the button beneath the client's name allows you to add any of those tags to their profile.

Directly below the prospect's name and tags you'll see all of their available contact information, listed under "Contact Details". This section will include their email, any provided phone number, and their mailing list subscription statuses. Prospects will always have checkboxes for general email and SMS subscription status. If you have enabled email campaigns and/or the MailChimp integration, additional status checkboxes will populate for each.

Below the Contact Details section you'll be able to see the Prospect's pet list. All pets will be listed with their name, profile photo, and any available information about their gender, vaccination status, and breed/type. Selecting the name of a listed pet will open that pet's profile page.

Note that some Prospects may not have any pets yet associated with their profile. For any prospect or client with no added pets, this section will simply display "(Unknown)".

Any addresses the client has shared will be listed in the "Addresses" section, located below the pets list. This includes both the default address field and any custom address attributes. As for the pets list, if there is no address currently saved on the profile, this section will display "(Unknown)".

Your Prospect Profiles may also include some additional, custom information below the Addresses section. If you have created any custom client attributes they will be listed in the Attributes section (excluding custom addresses, which are displayed under Addresses).

Click the "Show More" button to display any attributes set as not visible.

The tabs on the right side of the page will include several subsections with additional information about the prospect's history with you. This includes tabs for Messages, Notes, and Documents.

The "Actions" button menu at the top of the Prospect Profile page contains a wide range of options.

Click the "New Message" button to the left of the "Actions" button to draft and send a custom message to the prospect.

While Prospect Profiles allow you to manage and edit some basic information about your potential clients, they do not store any booking or payment history. As such, when those potential clients are ready to become paying customers, their profile will need to be converted from Prospect to Customer. This is done in a variety of ways.

Any Prospect Profile will be automatically converted to a Customer Profile when a booking is created for them. This can be either a manual booking scheduled by a user on your account or a booking that the client schedules themself through the public or client portal. Their profile will also be converted automatically if they complete the purchase of any Membership or Package from you.

Prospects can also be manually converted to Customers at any time. This is done from the client's Prospect Profile page. There are two options when manually converting a client's profile: "Welcome Email" and "Make Customer". Both of these functions are located in the "Actions" button menu of any Prospect Profile.

Both selections switch the profile to a Customer Profile. The main difference between the two is whether or not the client receives an email notification. While choosing "Make Customer" will simply switch the profile type, "Welcome Email" will also send a copy of your Welcome Email to the email address listed on the profile.

The way your prospective customers get added to your system will depend on how they interact with your business. If they reach out to you directly, but are perhaps not yet ready to book anything, you may choose to add their information into a Prospect Profile yourself. Clients can also create their own profiles either by submitting a form that you've linked or embedded into a page on your website, or by leaving partway through the Membership or Package portal purchase processes. Finally, if you are just getting your BusyPaws account set up and you have an existing prospect list stored elsewhere, you can request to have them uploaded to your account. In this part of the guide we will walk through the various ways that Prospect Profiles are created.

When potential clients reach out to you via email or over the phone you may want to add their information into a Prospect Profile. New profiles can be created by clicking the "New Prospect" button at the top of the main Prospects page.

Enter the customer's information into the fields on the "Add Prospect" form. Note that, though most of the fields are optional, the First Name, Last Name, and Email must be filled out to be able to submit the form. When all of the desired information has been entered, click the "Add Prospect" button to save the new profile.

Now that the client's profile has been created, their pet(s) can be added! To learn more about how to add and edit pets, check out our guide on Pet Profiles.

If you are adding multiple prospects at the same time, you can expedite the process by selecting the arrow at the right side of the "Add Prospect" button, then clicking on "Add and Create New Prospect" after the first client's information has been entered.

The main way that clients can create their own Prospect Profile is by submitting a form outside of the booking process. This means completing and submitting a form that has been accessed via its direct link or one that has been embedded in your website. For instance, if you create a "Contact Us" form and include it on your website, you can have prospective clients reach out to you through your BusyPaws account, creating a prospect profile for themselves and saving their form responses to that profile.

When a customer accesses a form directly, they will always be prompted to enter their first name, last name, and email, regardless of whether or not you have added those input fields to the form. As an example, let's take a look at a form that has been created with only three fields: one for the customer's phone number, then two custom fields for the training request type and referral source.

When this form is embedded into a webpage or accessed through it's direct link it will display with input fields for the client's name and email as well. The fields for name and email will always be required for the form to be submitted.

When this form is filled and submitted, if the email entered does not match any already associated with a profile on your customer or prospect list, a new Prospect Profile will be created.

For more information about how to embed forms in your website, check out our help guide on Using Links & Website Integrations.

Clients may also create their own Prospect Profile by are accessing your Public Membership or Package Purchasing Portals. If the client does not yet have a customer or prospect profile with you, and they leave the portal after entering their name and email but before completing their purchase, a new Prospect Profile will be created for them.

The links for your Membership and Package Portals can be found on your Links and Integrations page. Each package and membership will also have its own direct link which can be found listed on the Package Management and Membership Management pages.

For more information, check out our guides on Packages, Memberships, and Using Links & Website Integrations.

If you have an existing prospect list you want to add to add to your BusyPaws account, , you can easily upload it from your Data Imports page. To get there, first click the gear icon in the bottom-left corner of the page.

The select "Data Import/Export" in the "Extras" section.

By default, the page will open on your Data Exports. Click the "Data Imports" tab at the top of the page to open your imports list.

From there, select the "New Import" button at the top of your Data Imports page.

Note that customer list files can only be uploaded in CSV format. For more information on the full customer import process, including further details on uploading clients as prospects, check out our help article on Importing Your Customer List.

It's important to be able to make updates to a prospect's profile. This can include changes to their name, email, phone number, address, or any additional information they have previously submitted. To update the information on an existing prospect's profile, start by navigating to their profile page.

To edit their default attributes, select "Edit" in the "Actions" button menu at the top of the page.

That will take you to the Edit Prospect page. This page allows you to update and add to all of the default customer fields, including the client's name, email, phone number, and address.

Use the fields on this form to add or edit any of the prospective client's information, then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Update Prospect" button to save your changes. Note that custom fields are not visible from the prospect's main profile page until information is added to them either through the Edit Prospect page or the submission of an intake form.

You can also click the arrow icon at the right end of the "Update Prospect" button to access the "Update and Create New Prospect" option. Selecting that will save your changes and open a New Prospect form.

To update information stored in custom client attributes, first locate the attribute on the prospect's profile. If the attribute you wish to update has been set as not visible you will need to select the "Show More" button to display it.

Select any attribute's name to open edit its content.

That will open a pop-up with a field to edit the attribute content. The type of field will vary depending on the format of the attribute (i.e. text field, multiple choice, date selection, etc.). Click the "Update" button to save changes made to the attribute data or click the "X" at the top-right corner to exit without saving.

If a client accidentally ends up with two profiles, or if two members of the same household want to combine their profiles, you can easily merge them into a single account. This maintains the history for both accounts, saving both under the same profile.

Start by first navigating to one of the two profiles you are looking to merge. Select "Merge" in the profile's "Actions" button menu.

You will then be redirected to the Merge Client page. The left side of this page will show the "Merge From" card, with the name of the first selected client. The right side of the page will show the "Merge Into" card, allowing you to select the second client you are looking to merge. This page will also display a warning message indicating that profiles cannot be separated again once the merge is complete.

Click the "Select a Customer" field under Merge Into and use the search bar to locate and select the second client.

Once the second client has been selected, the rest of the form will populate. Select which first name, last name, email, and phone number (if any) that you want the merged profile to keep. Below those selections you will see a list of the pets associated with each profile followed by counts for all the bookings, invoices, and messages that will be merged.

Note that all pet information from both profiles will be saved under the merged profile. If both clients have created separate profiles for the same pet, you can merge those pet profiles after you have merged the two customer profiles.

Once you have made your selections, click the yellow "Merge Records" button at the bottom of the page.

A pop-up window will appear, asking you to confirm whether or not you want to merge the two profiles. Click the "Cancel" button to go back or the "Continue" button to confirm the merge.

Prospect profiles are a great resource for keeping track of clients that are interested in your services. Use them to manage customers waiting for more availabilities in your schedule, begin a manual intake and approval process for new clients, or reach out to those that have shown interest in your services but have not yet followed through with any bookings. They are the perfect way to ensure your customer base is always growing!