Setup and Onboarding

When To Use This#

Use this page to understand how business setup, customer onboarding, customer portal configuration, service setup, and readiness requirements relate to each other.

Business Setup#

• Business setup configures the business profile, services, hours, rooms, branding, staff access, and portal behavior.
• Setup changes can affect what customers see in the portal.
• Owners or managers should use the visible setup and settings pages to confirm business-specific configuration.
• Services can each set a cancellation deadline, with quick presets for common windows. After the deadline passes, customers can no longer cancel that booking from the portal, and the business can optionally charge a fee for late cancellations if its plan and policy allow it.
• Booking windows are set on a weekly grid, one row per day of the week, with up to two windows a day. Boarding services get two grids, one for arrival windows and one for pickup windows. Other service types get a single weekly booking-window grid. A service with no custom windows uses the business hours instead, and the page says so.
• Boarding services can also offer reservation add-ons: other active services that a family or staff member can attach to a stay. Each add-on gets a price used only when it is added to that boarding service, so the add-on service's own standalone price is unchanged. Each one is charged either once per stay or for each selected date, and can be set to apply to the entire stay only, to specific dates only, or to let the person booking decide.
• Add-ons are organized into choice categories, so alternatives such as a half day and a full day sit in one category. Within a category a dog can have one option per day, and a family can still choose from other categories during the same stay. Each add-on can be made selectable by families during online booking, and a category can be set to require one choice for every day of the stay. Staff can always add or edit an add-on on a booking.

Example Data#

• Example data adds removable demo families, dogs, bookings, messages, and billing activity so every feature can be explored safely. Owners or managers manage it on the Example data page in Settings; other staff roles do not have access to that page.
• Adding example data back is not always available. If it is not switched on yet, the app answers "Adding example data back is not available yet. Removing example data is always available." A business that is not on an active trial is also turned down.
• Removing example data is not held back by that switch or by the trial rule. It does depend on the account being able to make changes at all: if the trial has ended or the subscription was canceled, changes are blocked until a plan is chosen, and the app says "Your trial has ended. Choose a plan to make changes."
• Example data never emails, texts, or charges anyone, and it stays out of business metrics.
• While example data is on, a notice appears in the app, and owners or managers also see a one-click Remove example data button in that notice. Removing it clears the example families, dogs, and staff along with any bookings, messages, or payments created for those example records. Real records the business added itself are kept.
• Adding and removing example data both take a short time to finish, usually under a minute. The page shows a preparing or removing state, and refreshing the page shows the latest state.
• Hello Sniff also removes example data on its own in two situations: when a business moves onto a paid plan, and after a qualifying data import finishes. In both cases the example records are cleared without anyone pressing a button, so demo families, dogs, bookings, messages, and billing activity disappear on purpose.
• If preparing the example data does not finish, the app shows a "Sample business needs attention" notice saying to try again or contact Hello Sniff support. The Example data page treats that unfinished batch as still on, so the button it offers there is "Remove example data and start clean" rather than a retry. Removing it and adding it again is the way to retry from that page, and Hello Sniff support can help if adding it back is not available.
• During first-time setup, the example business is prepared before the dashboard opens. This happens both when the wizard is finished normally — the button reads "Preparing your sample business..." while it runs — and when "Set up later" is used. If that preparation does not succeed, the wizard stays open with a message so it can be tried again.

Migration and Portal Invites#

• Businesses moving from other software can review their imported records — families, contacts, dogs, bookings, attendance, billing records, documents, vaccine records, and message history — on the Data migration page in Settings, and can request migration help from that page.
• Owners and managers use the same page to invite migrated families into the customer portal. They can send a first wave of setup emails, remind families who were invited but have not finished, retry emails that failed to deliver, and renew expired setup links. Every send previews both the email and the exact list of recipients before it goes out, and the first invitation can include an optional personal note that the business writes and previews first.
• The invite list can be filtered and searched by family, contact, or email. The filters cover where a family is in setup — Ready to invite, Invite sent, Setting up, Needs card, and Ready — and the reasons a family needs follow-up — Email failed, Email problem, Link expired, Balance review, Missing email, No active dog, Service review, and Inactive / archived.
• Families without an email address on file are held until an email is added, families with no active dog are held until a dog is active, and families with an open balance are set aside for balance review before an invite goes out. Families whose dogs do not yet have a bookable service stay eligible for their invite and are flagged for service review as a secondary follow-up, so staff can set up a bookable service without holding up the invite. Inactive or archived families are skipped from broad sends.
• When the business requires a saved payment method before booking, an active family with no saved card is prompted to add one, whether or not they were migrated. That prompt waits until nothing in onboarding is still blocking booking, so it appears only once the family is otherwise ready.

Customer Onboarding#

• Customer onboarding collects household, dog, and document information needed by the business.
• Customer readiness can depend on both customer-entered information and business-reviewed items.
• Approved onboarding usually moves routine updates to task pages such as Family, Dogs, Documents, Billing, and Bookings rather than keeping onboarding as the normal editing surface.
• Migrated customers start from a setup email sent by the business. They follow the setup link (or paste the setup code from the email), create a password, and then review their household, dogs, notifications, and payment setup. Their household and dog records may already be waiting.
• New families who start from a business's public enrollment link fill in guardian and dog details and submit the form. They see a confirmation with a reference for their request, but they do not have portal access yet. That request goes into the business's onboarding review, where staff look over the submitted records and any uploaded files. The review list separates applications that are new, invited, in progress, and ready for review, so staff can tell who still needs an invitation from who is actively finishing setup.
• When a family uploads a vaccination record during onboarding, Hello Sniff reads the vaccine names and expiration dates from it so staff can verify them.
• When staff are ready, they invite the family to finish setup. The family then receives a setup email, creates a password, and completes the remaining checklist — household and dog records, agreements, and payment details — in the customer portal.
• After the family finishes the required items, staff review the application again, can ask for anything still missing, and approve it. At approval, the business chooses which services or classes the dog is allowed to book, so booking access begins only once the application is approved.
• If a setup link expires, the best next step is a fresh setup email from the business. Customers who already finished setup should use sign in, or the forgot-password option if they lost their password.

Readiness#

• A readiness blocker is a visible setup, document, dog, service, or account issue that prevents the next action.
• Each blocker is shown in the portal, and the matching task page is where it can be resolved.
• Required onboarding fields, service rules, document rules, capacity rules, and review timelines are whatever the business has configured and the app shows.

Policy Boundaries#

Onboarding requirements, service rules, document requirements, capacity rules, and review timelines may be business-specific. The fields, statuses, and actions shown in the app reflect that business's setup and are not universal policy.

Troubleshooting#

• If customer portal behavior is unexpected, review business setup and portal settings.
• If onboarding does not complete, check household, dog, and document blockers.
• If a service cannot be booked, confirm the service is configured and available.
• If a migrated family has not received portal access, check their invite status on the Data migration page — Missing email, No active dog, Invite sent but still Setting up, Email failed, and Link expired are all shown there, and failed or expired ones can be retried or resent.
• If a booking cannot be canceled from the portal, the service's cancellation deadline may have passed; changes after the deadline go through the business.
• If unfamiliar families, dogs, or bookings appear that nobody created, they are probably example data. An owner or manager can check the Example data page in Settings, which shows whether it is on and removes it.
• If demo families, dogs, bookings, or messages disappeared without anyone removing them, that is expected after moving onto a paid plan or after a data import finishes — Hello Sniff clears example data in both cases. The Example data page in Settings shows the current state. Real records the business added itself are not affected.
• If a boarding add-on cannot be selected during online booking, check that the add-on is allowed for families and that another option in the same choice category is not already selected for that day.
• If a setup step depends on a policy decision, the answer comes from the business.