Understand Hello Sniff Features

When To Use This#

Use this as a neutral orientation to the main Hello Sniff product areas. If you are a staff member, manager, or owner who wants a current map of the product before opening a more detailed workflow article, start here.

Before You Start#

• This is a high-level orientation, not a pricing, plan-limit, trial, or sales-comparison article.
• Confirm you are in the correct business before troubleshooting a missing page or action.
• For detailed workflow questions, see the focused support article for that area.

Public Feature Summary#

The public features page presents Hello Sniff as one system for staff work and dog parent self-service. It groups the product into staff tools, customer portal tools, platform setup, and a workflow that moves from planning to care, payment, and follow-up.

Use the public feature list as a broad orientation only. For step-by-step guidance, rely on the current staff app and customer portal articles.

Staff Operations#

What appears in your sidebar depends on your role. Owners and managers see every sidebar area, though a few settings, such as customer payments setup, are limited to owners. If you sign in as an employee, you see Today View, Schedule, Families, Dogs, Rooms & Fields, Documents, and Messages, and the other areas below are not part of your sidebar.

Home is the starting point for owners and managers, with operational follow-up, messages, document review items, public status attention, and links into the detailed workflow pages.

Use Today View for the daily check-in and check-out board, Schedule for service signups, approvals, and upcoming visits, Onboarding for new applications and approvals, Families and Dogs for customer and dog records, Rooms & Fields for areas and occupancy, Documents for vaccine records and expirations, Billing for balances, invoices, and payments, Messages for family and staff conversations, Support for product issues and requests, and Reports for operational summaries and exports.

The Admin area covers the rest of the business setup: Services for the service catalog and scheduled class sessions, Employees for the staff list, invites, and permissions, Status & Notices for open or closed status, closures, and public notices, Access for invites, account links, and password recovery, and Settings for profile, hours, branding, access, and plan.

Analytics is listed in the sidebar with a "Next" label, and that sidebar entry isn't clickable. The Analytics page itself does exist, though, and if you land on it another way it explains that the feature is either reserved for a paid plan or still being prepared, and points you back to Reports for now.

Customer Portal Features#

The customer portal supports customer-facing workflows such as booking requests, billing and payment views, messages, documents, dog and family profile details, and onboarding tasks. Families only see their own household, dogs, bookings, and billing.

Setup, Settings, And Reports#

Settings is available to owners and managers, and it is organized into three groups:

• Business setup — business profile, operating hours, and migration support.
• Operations — services and classes, rooms and fields, status and notices, customer onboarding, and attendance billing alerts.
• Account — staff access, the Hello Sniff plan page, customer payments setup (owners only), and example data.

Migration support covers the source system and export handoff, plus an "Invite Families to Hello Sniff" area for sending customer portal invitations to imported families and following up afterward. The follow-up view groups families by where they are in the process, such as ready to invite, invite sent, setting up, needs card, and ready. It also flags families that need attention, such as a delivery failure you can retry, an email problem that needs someone to look at it, an expired link, a missing email address, or an open balance to review.

Example data is a set of demo families, dogs, bookings, messages, and billing activity to explore. It never emails, texts, or charges anyone, and it does not count toward your setup progress. In Dogs, Families, Schedule, and Billing, demo records carry a "Demo" badge and stay visible in your lists until you remove them; example messages don't carry that badge. The balance, invoice, and payment totals shown on the Billing page add up everything currently in your list, demo rows included, so treat those totals as inclusive of example data until you remove it. When example data is on, the page offers "Remove example data and start clean", which clears the example families, dogs, and staff along with anything created for those example records, and keeps the real records added by the business. Whenever example data is on, you can remove it. When it is off, the page offers "Add example data", but adding it back may not be turned on for your business yet. If it isn't, confirming the action returns a message saying it is not available. Only owners and managers can change example data, and while a change is in progress the page shows a short "Preparing example data" or "Removing example data" notice. That usually takes under a minute, and you refresh the page to see the latest state.

See the setup articles for first-time owner configuration. Use Reports for operational summaries and exports, and treat downloaded reports as sensitive business and customer data.

When A Feature Is Missing#

• If a feature card or action is missing, confirm you are in the correct business, and ask an owner or manager to review your access on the Access page, which Settings lists as "Staff access".
• If dashboard counters look empty, open the destination page to check the underlying workflow.
• If a public feature claim and an in-app workflow appear to disagree, follow the current app behavior, and ask an owner to review the public claim.
• The prices and fees you charge families are your own, and you set them on your services. They are separate from your Hello Sniff plan.
• Pricing, trial availability, plan limits, staff limits, dog limits, savings, and included-package details depend on your plan, so they aren't covered here.