Completing Appointments & the Rebooking Habit

The life of an appointment

Every appointment in Woofle has a status that tells you where it's up to. It starts life as Booked when you add it to the calendar, and from there it moves along as the day plays out. The natural path is simple:

• Booked — it's in the diary and hasn't happened yet.
• Complete — the groom is done.
• Paid — the client has settled up.

And for the appointments that don't go to plan, two more endings:

• Cancelled — the client called off, or you had to.
• No Show — they simply didn't turn up.

You change an appointment's status from its action menu — click the appointment on the calendar (or open it from a client's record) and you'll see the actions that make sense for where it is right now. A booked appointment offers Reschedule, Remind and Complete; once it's complete you'll see Paid and Nudge; and Rebook is always there, whatever the status. Woofle only shows you the next sensible steps, so you can't get lost — but it won't box you in either. If you need to jump back or skip a step, the app won't stop you. It guides; it doesn't police.

Marking a groom complete

When a dog's finished, open the appointment and choose Complete. The complete window confirms the service, the price and any notes — a last chance to tidy up the details before they're locked in — and it offers something genuinely useful: a ready-written payment request text.

Here's the lovely part. The message is already filled in for you, with the client's name, the dog's name and the amount due all dropped in from your template. You read it over, and if you'd like it to go out, flick the send switch on and complete the appointment — the text lands on the client's phone as they're walking back to the car. If you take payment in person, just leave the switch off and complete it without a text. Nothing is ever sent unless you choose to send it.

Taking payment

Once a groom is complete, the action menu offers Paid. Mark it paid when the money's in, and Woofle records the appointment as settled. This one also offers a message — handy for a quick "thanks, payment received" if you like to send a receipt — but, as always, only if you switch it on.

Keeping payment status up to date isn't just tidiness. It's how you can glance at a day or a week and see at a glance what's still outstanding, which is far easier than trying to remember who's paid and who hasn't.

Cancellations and no-shows

Not every appointment ends happily, and Woofle gives you a clean way to record the ones that don't.

Cancelled

If a client cancels, open the appointment and choose Cancel. The slot is freed up and the appointment is marked as cancelled rather than deleted, so you keep a record of what happened. You can offer a short message here too — an "no problem, hope to see [PetName] soon" goes a long way to keeping things warm.

No Show

When someone just doesn't appear, mark it as a No Show. Again, the appointment stays on record, which matters — over time you can spot the clients who make a habit of it. There's an optional message here as well, should you want to send a gentle nudge.

Both of these keep your history honest without cluttering your live calendar, and because they're recorded rather than wiped, you've always got the full picture of a client's reliability.

The rebooking habit

Now the part that pays the bills. The single biggest difference between a salon with a full diary and one that's always scrambling for bookings is whether the next appointment gets made before the client leaves. A client standing at your counter with a freshly groomed, happy dog is the easiest rebooking you'll ever get. The same client three weeks later, who's been meaning to call — that's the hard one.

Woofle builds this straight into the flow. The Rebook action is available on any appointment, whatever its status, so you can fire it off the moment you've finished tidying up.

1. Choose Rebook

   Open the appointment you've just completed and pick Rebook from the menu.

2. Pick the timing

   Tell Woofle roughly when the next groom should be — ASAP, or a number of weeks out (6, 7, 8 and so on). If you've set a regular schedule for that dog, Woofle suggests it for you, so a six-weekly poodle just takes a tap.

3. Pick the slot on the calendar

   Woofle drops you onto the calendar around the date you chose. Click an open slot that suits and a booking window opens with the dog's usual service, length and price already carried across — you give it a quick once-over and confirm, and the next visit is in the diary, ready to tell the client there and then.

Because the service, duration and price come through automatically, rebooking a regular is a handful of taps. The whole thing is designed to be fast enough that you'll actually do it every time — which is the whole point.

Keeping the diary full when you forget

Of course, some clients won't commit on the day, and that's fine. This is where Woofle's re-book nudges come in. If a dog is overdue for its next groom and has nothing booked, Woofle quietly surfaces a friendly prompt on your dashboard so you can send a "time for [PetName]'s next groom?" text. Think of it as the safety net for the ones that slipped through — the in-the-moment rebook is still the gold standard.

Putting it together

So the rhythm of a finished appointment is: mark it Complete (with a payment request if you'd like one), take the money and mark it Paid, and — before the client steps away — hit Rebook and get the next visit in the diary. Cancellations and no-shows have their own clean buttons so your records stay honest. Get the rebooking habit going and you'll feel the difference in a fortnight: a calendar that fills itself, instead of one you're forever trying to top up.

For more on the texts these actions can send — templates, tokens and credits — have a read of the rest of the guides index.