By default, all services in BusyPaws are organized by type. Within your booking portal, services are listed under the default headers Daycare, Training, Grooming, Boarding, and Other. As your service list grows however, you may wish to customize this organization to better suit the needs of your business and make your service list easier for clients to navigate. This can be achieved by creating one or more custom categories to which you can assign your services.

Your Custom Category list can be accessed through your main Services page. First, open the ellipses menu in the left-hand menu bar, then select "Services".

Then click the "Actions" button at the top of the page and choose "Custom Categories" from the drop-down menu.

This will open your Custom Categories list, where you can edit and reorder your existing categories as needed. Edit any listed category by selecting its name, or delete it by clicking its trash can icon. To adjust the order of the listed categories, click the two lines at the left-hand side of any category and drag it to a new position.

To create a custom category, select the "New Category" button at the top of the Custom Categories page.

From the New Category page, simply enter a name into the "Category Name" field then click the "Add Category" button.

Back on the Custom Categories page, a green banner will display, confirming the successful creation of the new category. The new category will be added to the bottom of the list. Click and drag it to adjust its position in the list if desired.

Once you have created one or more custom categories, you can begin using them to organize your services. By default, services in your booking portal are organized into categories by type (Boarding, Daycare, Grooming, Training, Other). When a service has been assigned to a custom category, it is listed under that custom category instead of its default. Any service without an assigned custom category will remain listed under its default (i.e. its service type).

To assign a service to one of your custom categories, start by navigating back to your main Services page.

Then locate the service you want to categorize and click either its name or the gear icon at the right end of its list entry.

From the service's settings page, locate the Sorting and Onboarding section. There, you'll find the "Category" field.

Select that field to open a drop-down with all of your custom categories. Choose one from the list to assign the service to that category.

After making your selection, the updated setting will save automatically. The service will then be listed under the chosen custom category in your Booking Portal.

Each custom category has its own Direct Link, which can be used to provide clients with access to book any publicly listed services assigned to that category. From the Custom Categories list, select the "Direct Link" button for any category to copy its URL to your clipboard. You can then use the link on your website to provide customers with access to your service lists.

If only private services (i.e. those with their Publicly Listed toggles turned off) are included in a given category, any client following that category's direct link will see only the message "No services available to book online for [Category Name]".

Use your custom categories to better control how your service list displays for your clients and make it easier for customers to find the services that best suit their needs. If you'd like more information on the other settings available when configuring your self-serve booking process, check out our help guide on Configuring Self-Serve Bookings.