Waitlists help to keep your bookings filled and reduce the cognitive overhead required to keep track of who needs to be notified when spaces become available. The waitlist function in BusyPaws provides an easy-to-use list of clients associated with specific services or bookings, and an automated process to notify them when spaces become available. In this guide, we will discuss how you can use waitlists to make filling your calendar easier.

Clients can always be manually added to waitlists by you and your team, allowing them to be notified when services they're interest in become available for self-booking. For your clients to self-register for waitlists however, the waitlists setting must be turned on. There are two locations where the waitlists setting is adjusted.

Use your Client Self-Booking Settings to easily manage waitlists for all of your services at once. Access your settings list by clicking the gear icon at the bottom-left corner of the page.

Then select "Client Self-Booking" under "Product Configuration".

Locate the "Waitlists" setting toggle between the "Client Portal Calendar" and "Display Provider Name" toggles.

If this global waitlists setting is set to OFF (grey), no waitlists will be available for clients to self-register, regardless of the setting chosen for any specific service or series. Turning it ON (purple) allows your clients to self-register for the waitlist of any service/series that also has its service-specific waitlists setting turned on.

Once the global setting has been switched ON, the settings for specific offerings can be adjusted by clicking the "Set Waitlist Services" button.

This opens a pop-up window with a full list of your group services and series. Note that waitlist self-registration is not available for individual services, so those will not be included in the list. Use the toggles to choose the group services/series for which you would like to allow client self-registration for waitlists.

Note that any changes made will save automatically.

Once you have turned the global waitlists setting ON, you can control which of your Services and Series allow clients to self-register for their waitlist. As mentioned in the previous section, this setting can be adjusted from the General Settings page, but it can also be found in the settings for any group service or series.

To locate this setting for a specific group service or series, start by selecting "Services" from the ellipses submenu in the left-hand menu bar.

Services on this page are organized by type and listed alphabetically. Locate the service/series you want to open the waitlist for and select either its name or the gear icon to the right of its list entry.

From here, find the "General Settings" card where you'll see a "Waitlist available" toggle. This toggle controls whether a waitlist is available for the service/series. Click on the toggle to turn it from OFF (grey) to ON (purple).

If the global Waitlist setting is turned OFF when the service's "Waitlist available" toggle is turned ON, the message "Warning: Client Waitlist self-registration is disabled" will appear. That means that waitlist self-registration will not be available to clients, even though the toggle for that service has been turned on.

Now that we have gone through how to adjust your waitlist availability, let's take a look at how to access your existing waitlists.

The Waitlist Management Page can be accessed by first clicking the "Customers" icon in the left-side menu.

Then select "Waitlists" from the submenu.

This page has three tabs to explore: "Waiting", "Filled", and "Expired".

The "Waiting" tab displays a list of all clients that are currently waiting to be placed into services. If they've received a notification of available services, it will be noted by a green checkmark in the "Notified" column, and they will not be notified again. Each waitlist entry will list the Customer, Service, Booking (if any), Notified status, and Created date.

If a client is no longer waiting, they can be manually moved to the Filled tab by clicking the "Complete" button at the right side their waitlist entry. A waitlist entry can also be deleted by selecting the trash bin icon to the right of the "Complete" button.

Note that clients will be automatically moved to the Filled tab when they are added to the booking or service/series for which they were waitlisted.

The "Filled" tab displays a list of clients that were on a waitlist and then self-registered, or were manually registered, for that service or booking. Each entry will list the Customer, Service, Booking (if any), Filled On date, and Created date. Any filled waitlist entry can be deleted by selecting the trash bin icon at the right side of the entry line.

The "Expired" tab displays a list of clients that were waiting for a specific booking but were unable to be registered before the booking was completed. Each entry will list the Customer, Service, Booking, and Created date. Any expired waitlist entry can be deleted by selecting the trash bin icon at the right side of the entry line.

On any tab, selecting the client's name will take you to their customer profile. Likewise, selecting the booking will take you to the booking's information page.

There are two types of waitlist reservations, booking waitlist and service waitlist. In this section of the guide, we will discuss the differences between the two and how clients can register for each.

A booking waitlist entry is associated with a specific calendar booking. If a client is self-booking online and the booking they are interested is currently full, a "Join Waitlist" button will display for that time slot; provided of course that the Waitlist Setting has been turned on.

Selecting the "Join Waitlist" button opens a pop-up with fields for the client to enter their name and email. Entering their information and clicking the "Continue" button completes the client self-registration process for the waitlist for that booking.

Once the client has submitted their self-registration, they will be listed in the "Waiting" tab of the Waitlist Index.

If a space opens for that specific booking, the client will receive a notification of availability. If the booking passes without the client registering for it, their waitlist entry will be moved to the "Expired" tab.

It is also possible for clients to be registered for the waitlist of a service or series generally, rather than a specific booking of that service/series. Just as for the booking waitlist, a service's waitlists setting must be turned on for clients to be able to self-register for a service waitlist through the Booking Portal. If a client chooses a service/series that has no bookings within your booking window, a "Join Waitlist" button will populate for that service.

Choosing to join the waitlist opens the same pop-up with fields for the client's name and email. By entering their information and clicking the "Continue" button, a client can add their name to the general service waitlist.

Once a client has submitted the form, they will be listed on the "Waiting" tab of the Waitlist Index. Unlike booking waitlist entries, service waitlist entries do not expire. Service waitlist entries will remain on the "Waiting" tab until the client is registered for the service or the entry is manually completed/deleted.

Your team can also manually register clients on a service waitlist from the Waitlist Management Page. To do this, start by clicking the "Actions" button located at the top-right of the page, then select "Add to Waitlist" from the drop-down menu.

That will open the "Add Client to Waitlist" pop-up.

Click on the "Select a Customer" field to open a drop-down with a search bar. Use the search bar to find a specific client, then select their name to associate the waitlist entry with their profile. Note that pet names can also be used to find a client.

Click on the "Select a Service" field to open a drop-down menu with a full list of your services and series. Select the desired service from the menu, then click the "Add to Waitlist" button to complete the waitlist entry.

Once a client is registered for a Service Waitlist, whether through self-registration or manual entry, they will be notified when a booking becomes available within your client self-booking window.

Notifications are automatically sent to clients on a waitlist that have not yet been notified of availability. Once they've been notified once, they will not be notified again. The timing of a notification will depend on the type of waitlist entry.

For more information on how to customize the content in your notification emails, check out our guide on Customizable Client Notifications.

Once they have joined your waitlist or had a waitlist entry created for them, clients can easily track and remove their waitlist entries from their Client Portal Dashboard. After logging into their account, they will be able to see all of their active waitlist entries just below their Upcoming Bookings list.

Clients can remove any of their waitlist entries by clicking the trash can icon to the right of the listing.

Use your waitlists to help keep your calendar full and track your most popular services and series. Inform your clients the moment new spaces become available on your booking calendar.