Manage Business Settings

When To Use This#

Use this page when you need to find the right Settings area after first-time setup. Settings is the hub for business profile, hours, branding, services, customer onboarding, access, billing, migration, and website-related configuration.

Before You Start#

• Sign in as an owner or manager.
• Use focused articles for page-level instructions before changing a specific setting.
• Review business-approved policy before changing anything customer-facing, billing-related, migration-related, or notice-related.

Settings Overview#

The Settings overview groups the most common configuration pages. Use Business setup for the business profile (including the logo), operating hours, and migration support. Use Operations for services, rooms and fields, Status & notices, Customer onboarding, and Attendance billing. Use Account for staff access, plan and billing settings, customer payment setup, and example data; the customer payments card is visible to owners only.

Open the card that matches the setting you need, then use the focused article for the page-level workflow.

Example Data#

The Example data page under Account controls the demo families, dogs, bookings, messages, and billing activity that let you explore the app before your real roster is in place. Example data never emails, texts, or charges anyone, and it stays out of your business metrics.

While example data is on, every staff page shows a notice saying you are viewing removable sample data, with a shortcut to remove it. Removing it clears the example families, dogs, and staff, along with any bookings, messages, or payments created for those example records; real records you added yourself are kept. Removing example data is available to owners and managers, and it is not limited by the eligibility rule that governs adding it back. Adding it back is not available on every account, so the page explains it when the request cannot be completed. Both directions take a moment, and the page shows a "Preparing" or "Removing" notice while the change finishes; the notice tells you it usually takes under a minute and asks you to refresh the page to see the latest state, because it does not update on its own.

Migration And Family Portal Invites#

The Data migration page shows a summary of imported records, such as families, contacts, dogs, bookings, attendance, billing history, documents, vaccine records, and messages, and includes a button to request a data migration or refresh from Hello Sniff.

The same page includes the invite center, "Invite Families to Hello Sniff," which previously lived on the Families page. Use it to send portal setup links and track who still needs email, a payment card, or follow-up. Families are grouped by setup stage, with a live count on each: Ready to invite, Invite sent, Setting up, Needs card, and Ready. A separate Follow-up menu holds the families that need attention for another reason: Email failed, Email problem, Link expired, Balance review, Missing email, No active dog, Service review, and Inactive / archived. A family can sit in a stage and one or more follow-up groups at the same time, and each row shows those labels alongside an Open family link. You can search the selected group by family, contact, or email; long lists show the first 50 families and tell you how many more match. A family flagged for service review still counts as ready to invite; that flag is only a secondary reminder for staff to confirm which services the family's dogs can book, not a hold that blocks the invitation.

Each group offers the one group email that fits it: first invitations for Ready to invite, setup reminders for Invite sent, completion reminders for Setting up, card reminders for Needs card, email retries for Email failed, and fresh setup links for Link expired. Groups with no matching group email say so and point you to open the family instead. Setup reminders only include families whose invitation went out at least two days earlier. Every group email opens a review first, where you can check the email preview and the recipient list before anything sends. On first invitations and setup reminders you can also add a personal message; it replaces the standard message for that send, while the greeting and the setup button stay in place. The other group emails always use the standard message. A single group email covers up to 500 families at a time, and the recipient list is not trimmed for you, so if a group holds more than that the send is turned down with a message asking you to choose between 1 and 500 families for each batch. When you confirm a batch, Hello Sniff queues the emails and works through them in the background, so you can keep working. The status panel shows live counts that update on their own as the batch processes, then settles once it finishes, sometimes with a few that need follow-up.

Setup emails that bounce or cannot be sent are split into two follow-up groups. "Email failed" holds the ones worth retrying, and the email-retry group email covers exactly those. "Email problem" holds the ones a retry cannot fix, so open the family and correct the address first; the clearest example is an address already in use by an active staff account, which needs a different email address for that family. Families without an active dog are held out of invitations and listed under "No active dog" rather than being emailed, and the same applies to families with no usable email address and to families with an open balance to review before their first setup email. If the current communication settings block customer email, the batch is not queued at all and a message explains that; after a batch that did send, the results say how many went out and how many need follow-up. Only staff with permission to invite users can send these emails.

Reading The Cards#

Each Settings card shows an icon, a title, and a short description. Cards do not show readiness or status labels. Open the focused settings page to see the live status before deciding whether the business is ready to announce a change.

Access, Billing, And Customer-Facing Changes#

Staff access changes belong on the Access page. Billing and plan settings should follow approved billing guidance. Customer-facing changes, such as Status & notices or onboarding copy, should use owner-approved language before being published.

If access changes are needed, use Manage Access and Invites.

When Settings Are Missing#

• If Settings sends a staff member back to the Dashboard, ask an owner or manager to review their role and access on the Access page.
• If an action is missing inside a settings page, ask an owner or manager to review access for that specific area.
• If a setting affects customers, review the customer-facing result with a test family before announcing the change.