Repeat Bookings

If you have clients you see on a regular basis, repeat bookings save you from recreating the same bookings week after week. You define a weekly pattern once, and Scritches keeps your calendar filled automatically.

Think about the clients who make up the backbone of your business: the family whose two labs get walked every weekday at noon, the cat owner who needs a Monday/Wednesday/Friday drop-in while they're at work, or the puppy client who books a biweekly socialization walk. Instead of booking these individually every week, you set up the pattern once and it runs on autopilot.

Finding Repeat Bookings

Repeat bookings live under Bookings -> Repeat Bookings in the sidebar. This page is your hub for all recurring services.

The list shows each repeat booking with the client name, pets, schedule pattern, status, and next visit date. You can filter by status using the tabs at the top: Active, Pending Approval, Paused, Ended, and All. Each tab shows a count so you can see at a glance how many repeats are in each state. Use the search bar to find a specific repeat by client name or booking name.

Click any row to open the repeat's detail page.

Creating a Repeat Booking

You create repeat bookings through the same booking wizard you already use for one-time bookings. Start by going to Bookings and clicking New Booking (or New Repeat Booking from the Repeat Bookings page).

Step 1 — Select Client & Pets. Choose the client and select their pets, just like a regular booking.

Step 2 — Choose Service. Pick the service. Repeat bookings support per-visit services like dog walks, drop-ins, and similar visit-based services. Overnight services are not supported for repeats.

Step 3 — Schedule Dates. At the top of this step, you'll see two options: Individual Dates and Repeating Schedule. Select Repeating Schedule to switch into repeat mode.

In repeat mode, you'll see:

• Which days? Toggle on the days of the week for this recurring schedule. For example, tap Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a standard dog walking schedule.

• Daily Visit Schedule. Set the service and preferred start time for visits. You can add multiple time slots per day if the client needs more than one visit (for example, a morning and afternoon walk).

• Settings sidebar. Configure the repeat's frequency, start date, and end date:

  • Frequency: Every week, Every 2 weeks, or Every 3 weeks

  • Start date: When visits should begin generating

  • End date: Choose "No end date" for ongoing clients, or "End on specific date" for seasonal or temporary arrangements

  • Auto-confirm: When toggled on, generated visits are automatically confirmed. When off, they're created with a Pending status so you can review each one.

• Upcoming Visits preview. Shows the next few visit dates so you can verify the pattern looks right before proceeding.

Step 4 — Billing. Choose how invoices are created for this repeat. See Repeat Booking Billing & Invoicing for details on the three billing strategies.

Step 5 — Review & Confirm. The review page shows your repeat pattern (selected days, frequency, start/end dates), the service and time for each visit, billing strategy, and auto-confirm setting. Click Create Repeat Booking to finalize.

After creation, Scritches immediately generates your first few weeks of visits and you're taken to the Repeat Bookings list.

The Repeat Detail Page

Click any repeat booking from the list to open its detail page. This is the single place to view and manage everything about a recurring service.

Summary. The top of the page shows the repeat's name (auto-generated from the service and days, like "Dog Walk (30min) MWF"), the client with a link to their profile, pets, status, frequency, and billing strategy.

Weekly Schedule. Shows every event in the pattern, organized by day. Each event lists the day, service, variant, preferred start time, and assigned staff (if any).

Upcoming Visits. A list of all future generated visits, grouped by week. Each visit shows the date, service, time, assigned staff, status, and cost. From here you can:

• Confirm a pending visit

• Cancel a visit (opens a scope-aware dialog, see below)

• Restore a cancelled visit

• View on calendar to jump to that date on your schedule

Past Visits. A collapsible section showing completed visits with their date, status, staff, price, linked invoice, and report card (if your plan includes report cards). You can create or view report cards directly from this section.

Editing a Repeat's Pattern

To change which days, times, or services a repeat uses, click the Edit Pattern button on the detail page. This opens the Edit Pattern dialog where you can:

• Toggle days on or off (Sunday through Saturday)

• Change the start time for each day's visits

• Change the service or service variant

• Add or remove additional visits on a day using + Add visit

• Change the frequency (Every week, Every 2 weeks, Every 3 weeks)

When you save changes, Scritches deletes all future unmodified visits and regenerates them with the new pattern. Any visits you've manually modified (changed the time, reassigned staff, etc.) are preserved. You'll see a confirmation like "Pattern updated — 12 visits regenerated."

You can also update other settings from the detail page: frequency, auto-confirm, end date, and notes.

Pausing, Resuming & Ending Repeats

These actions are available from the actions menu on both the repeat detail page and the repeat bookings list.

Pause. Temporarily stops new visits from being generated. Existing confirmed and pending visits remain on the calendar. This is useful when a client goes on vacation or needs a temporary break. When you pause, you'll see the option to also cancel upcoming visits if needed.

Resume. Restarts a paused repeat. Scritches generates upcoming visits starting from tomorrow. The frequency cycle resets from today, so if you had a biweekly schedule, it starts counting from the resume date. You'll see a confirmation like "Repeat booking resumed — 8 visits generated."

Stop Repeating. Permanently ends the repeat. No new visits will be created. When you stop a repeat, you choose between:

• Stop Only: Ends the repeat but leaves any existing upcoming visits on the calendar.

• Stop & Cancel Upcoming: Ends the repeat and cancels all future pending and confirmed visits.

Use "Stop Repeating" when a client cancels their regular service or when you need to rebuild a repeat from scratch.

Cancelling Individual Visits

When you cancel a visit that belongs to a repeat, Scritches asks how much you want to cancel. You'll see a dialog titled "Cancel Visit" with two options:

• Skip this one visit. Cancels just this visit. The repeat stays active and future visits are unaffected. This is perfect for when a client has a one-off conflict, like a vet appointment or holiday travel.

• Stop repeating entirely. Permanently ends the repeat booking and cancels all upcoming visits.

Cancelled visits can be restored from the detail page by clicking Restore, which brings them back as confirmed or pending (based on the auto-confirm setting).

How Visits Are Automatically Created

You don't need to do anything to keep a repeat booking's calendar full. Every night, Scritches looks at your active repeats and creates upcoming visits a few weeks out. As each day passes, new visits are added to the end of that window so you always have upcoming visits on your calendar.

Here's what happens behind the scenes:

• Consistent scheduling. For weekly repeats, visits appear every week. For biweekly or every-3-weeks repeats, Scritches tracks the cycle based on the repeat's start date so the pattern stays consistent, even across month boundaries.

• No duplicates. If a visit already exists for a given date and time, it won't be created again. You'll never see double bookings from a repeat.

• Surcharges applied automatically. Weekend and holiday surcharges are calculated when each visit is created, just like one-time bookings. If a Tuesday walk lands on a holiday you've configured, it gets the holiday rate.

• Staff auto-assigned. If you set a preferred staff member for a day in the pattern, they're automatically assigned to each new visit on that day. For example, if Sarah always handles the Monday walks, she'll be assigned every Monday without you lifting a finger.

• Google Calendar sync. Generated visits sync to Google Calendar if you have sync enabled, so your team sees them right away.

Calendar Integration

Repeat-generated visits appear on your schedule calendar alongside regular bookings. They look and behave like normal bookings, with one key difference: clicking a repeat visit's details shows a "Repeat" badge and a link to View Repeat Booking, which takes you to the repeat detail page.

Repeat visits do not appear in the regular Bookings list (the one-time bookings tab). They're managed entirely through the Repeat Bookings section and the repeat detail page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I assign different staff to different days? Yes. Each day in the repeat pattern can have its own preferred staff member. Set this when editing the pattern, and new visits for that day will be auto-assigned to that staff member.

What happens if I edit a single visit's time or staff? The visit is marked as a "repeat override." When you later change the repeat's pattern, override visits are preserved instead of being regenerated.

Can I create repeats for overnight services? No. Repeat bookings are designed for per-visit services like dog walks, drop-ins, and similar daytime visits. Overnight and multi-day stays should be booked individually.

How far ahead are visits created? A few weeks out. Scritches generates new visits each night to keep your calendar filled with upcoming visits.

Will the repeat keep going forever if I don't set an end date? Yes. If you choose "No end date," visits continue generating indefinitely until you pause or stop the repeat.

Can I have multiple repeat bookings for the same client? Yes. A client can have multiple active repeats, for example one for morning walks and another for afternoon drop-ins.

What happens to visits when I stop a repeat? It depends on which option you choose. "Stop Only" leaves existing visits in place, while "Stop & Cancel Upcoming" removes all future pending and confirmed visits.