Allowing clients to self-book services with you plays a major role in reducing the time you and your team need to spend managing your booking calendar. Once you have configured your self-serve booking settings, your clients will be able to choose the service(s) they are interested in and schedule the dates and times that work for them. The process is the same whether your clients are booking through the Public Portal or the Private Client Portal, via the link or the widget on your website.

In this guide we will walk through the self-booking process from start to finish, detailing each step along the way.

Opening a booking link will take your client to the booking portal. Following the Public Link brings clients to a list of all publicly available services and series.

Clicking the card for any listed service or series will bring the customer to the next page, where they can select specific bookings for that offering.

If the client has selected an individual service that has one or more associated add-ons with extended time, they will be shown those purchase options before being directed to select a date and time.

This page differs slightly for individual and group/series bookings as well as for training/daycare/grooming and boarding services.

For individual bookings, your customer selects the time that a new booking will be created. The available times will be dependent on the scheduled availability and set Time Slot Interval for that service in addition to any existing bookings already on the calendar. Note that, any selected add-ons with extended time will increase the duration of the booking, potentially affecting the available time slots.

If the chosen service is set to prompt clients to select a provider during self-booking, they will be presented with a list of available providers to choose from. Each provider is listed with their name and profile photo (if any). The client may also select the "Find Next Available" button if they don't have any preference and just wish to view all upcoming times.

Once the client has chosen a provider, they will be shown the available times based on that provider's availability. The provider's name will be shown in the top-right corner of the date/time selection page. Clicking "Change" next to the listed name brings the client back to the provider-selection step.

If the selected service has provider-selection disabled, the client will skip straight to the date and time selection step, and will be shown all availabilities for the chosen service, with no indication of any associated providers.

For group/series options customers register themselves for a booking that already exists in your calendar. If a service (i.e. grooming, daycare, single training class) has been selected, the booking portal will display a card for each available booking for that service, listing the date, start and end times, and remaining spots for the booking. Customers can use the blue right/left arrows to navigate forward and backward through the scheduled bookings on the calendar.

Selecting a series or open enrollment service results in the portal displaying similar cards, with the date, start time, remaining spots, and all included dates for each scheduled set of bookings.

If the service being booked is a daycare service for which check-in & check-out time selection has been enabled, clients will be prompted to choose their desired times after selecting the date for their booking. In this case, the customer will be required to select both their drop-off and pickup time before proceeding with their registration.

Like other individual bookings, boarding services allow clients choose their own dates and times. The selectable options in the booking portal will depend on the settings chosen for the boarding service. To start, clients must set the number of pets they are looking to register. They can then select their drop off date and time.

If they are booking a flexible duration boarding booking they will also be able to select their pick up date and time.

If the boarding service has been set up with a fixed duration, the booking portal will allow only the selection of the drop-off day and will list the set duration for the booking.

After the drop off and pick up dates have been set, the total booking duration will display near the bottom of the page. This count is listed as a number of nights for boarding services billed nightly or a number of days for services billed daily.

Once all required selections have been made, the "Select Dates"/"Book Now" button at the bottom of the screen will bring your client to the next stage of the booking process. If the client is new or has not logged into their account, an email field will also populate at the bottom of the Date/Time Selection card.

There are a few possibilities and resulting forms for the client at this point in the booking process depending on whether the client is a new or returning customer, and if you have assigned an intake form to the service they selected at the beginning of the booking process.

If the email address collected during the Date/Time Selection step is not recognized, the client will be registered as a new customer. Even if no intake form has been assigned to the selected service, new customers will always be asked for their first and last name so that a client profile can be created. At this point they will also be prompted to enter their pet's information.

If an intake form has been assigned to the service being booked, the form name will appear at the top of the page followed by the fields you have chosen to include in the form. Note that the client first and last name fields will appear at the top of the form even if you have not included them on your form template. This is because those fields are required to create a customer profile.

Since new clients enter their pet information here, they will skip the Pet Selection step and will be brought instead to the Package/Add-On Selection (if applicable), Payment Collection (if payment is required), or Booking Confirmation page.

If the email entered during the Date/Time Selection step is associated with an existing profile, the system will check for previously collected client and pet data. This means that, when the selected service has no intake form assigned, or if the client has previously completed or received a copy of the assigned form, their information will auto-populate and they will skip to the next step of the booking process.

If there is a form assigned to the service that the customer does not currently have on their profile, the form will display for them in full.

Once the profile information and any required intake forms are completed, the client will be taken to the Pet Selection page.

This page shows a list of the client's pets, allowing them to select which will be registered for the booking. For group/series bookings any pets already associated with the selected booking will be blocked out.

Note that, for any service or series, a client may select multiple pets to associate with the booking.

This page also includes an "Add Pet" button for any client registering a new pet for the first time.

If the client has selected a service configured with the Customer Address as its assigned location, they will be prompted to enter or confirm their address during the self-booking process. If the customer has no address yet listed on their account, they will need to enter one to proceed with their booking. If they have an existing address saved to their profile, it will autopopulate and they need only confirm the address. All address fields (street, city, province/state, country, and zip/postal code) must be completed to continue on to the next step in the booking process.

Package selection is a conditional step that will occur if you have one or more published packages containing at least one credit for the service currently being booked. It will display a list of available packages for the client to choose from.

For most payment settings, your customer can continue without selecting a package by selecting "No Package", or choose one of the packages listed. If the selected service has its payment settings set to "Require package/credit" however, this screen will display differently. The options listed will depend on the packages you have available and whether the client has credits available on their account.

If the client has no available credits for the selected service and there are no published packages for the service, a message will display prompting the client to contact you regarding purchasing a package for the service.

If the client has no available credits, or has chosen to skip logging in to use their credits, and you have packages available, the full package list will display without the "No Package" option. Once the client has selected one of the packages, they will be able to click the "Continue" button to move to the Payment Collection step. Clients will not have the option to purchase the service outside of a package.

If a client has credits available on their account but they have not yet set a password for their Client Portal account, the package selection page will display with a message stating that they should contact you to redeem their credits. They will still be able to purchase an additional package if desired, but will need an admin user to redeem any existing credits.

Add-on selection is a conditional step that will occur if you have one or more active add-ons that are available to be applied to the service being booked. While any add-ons with extended time display for selection immediately after an individual service is chosen, add-ons without extended time are listed nearer the end of the booking process. Clients will be shown a list of available add-ons to choose from.

The customer can select one or more add-ons by clicking on them. Clicking the same add-on a second time removes the selection. A tally of selected add-ons will display at the bottom of the form, under the "Continue to Purchase" button. This count will include add-ons selected at this stage as well as any add-ons with extended duration that were selected earlier in the booking process.

When the "Continue Without Add-On" or "Continue to Purchase" button is selected, the client will be directed to the next step in the process. Note that the payment settings selected for your service/series will also apply to any add-ons clients select during self-booking.

The payment page is a conditional step that will occur if one of the following conditions are met:

In this step clients are presented with a credit card form powered by Stripe. This form includes fields to enter their card number, expiry date, and CVC. Beneath those fields, the form also lists the name and prices of any selected services, packages, and add-ons, as well as any taxes, processing fees, and the payment total.

If the payment succeeds, they'll be shown an accepted message. This ends the booking process.

If the service being booked is instead set to "Require card on file", the customer will still be required to enter their card information, however the card will not be charged. Instead, when the client finalizes their registration the entered card data will be saved to their profile as a stored card.

At the end of the booking process, clients will be shown a confirmation and will receive an email with their booking details. For bookings requiring pre-payment, the booking confirmation will display as soon as payment information has been entered. For services or series that do not require payment to book, this page will display instead of the payment page. Clients wishing to make any additional bookings can use the "Make Another Booking" button to navigate back to the Public Booking page.

Once a booking has been completed, any automated messages you have set up for Booking Confirmation will be sent to the client's email address.

When clients are rebooking with you, it's possible that some may have available service/add-on or cash credits on their account that they wish to use towards their new booking. Keep in mind that clients must have a Client Portal password set up to be able to use their credits during the self-booking process.

After selecting their pet(s), if your customer is making this booking via the Private Client Portal and they have credits available for the service being booked, they will automatically be reserved for the booking and the process will jump to the Booking Confirmation.

If a client has credits available on their account and they are not logged in, but have previously set a password for their Client Portal account, they will be prompted to log in to use their credit(s) towards the booking. They may also use the "Skip This Step" button to continue on with the booking process without logging in or using an existing credit.

Clients with stored cards saved to their customer profile can use those stored cards to pay for bookings while logged into their Client Portal account. When logged in, the payment step for their registration will include options for selecting an existing card or adding a new one. This option will not be available if the client is booking while not logged in.

There are many settings and components that can impact the flow of the client self-booking process. For more information on how to go about setting up self-booking for your clients, check out our guide on Configuring Self-Serve Bookings. To learn more about setting up the service offerings available to your customers, see the articles in our Getting Started and Building Your Service Offerings collections.