Hi Everyone,

It has been a while since I posted but wanted to share some exciting news about PetSitClick. Over the winter we have been hard at work making PetSitClick the easiest to use and best pet sitting software out there. On the administrative side of things we have introduced a ton of new improvements including the ability to copy visits, mark multiple invoices as paid and much more powerful invoicing tools. Coming up, we are introducing a complete redesign of our customer portal at the end of April and apps for your walkers and sitters later in the Spring.

So it is a great time to see what PetSitClick has to offer. Why not start a free trial today?

Hi Everyone,

For our American clients this is the big Thanksgiving weekend. We celebrate Thanksgiving here in Canada as well but we do it in October because its too cold in November to think about eating :). I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to say how grateful we are to work with such amazing pet care companies. The dedication and service you provide to your clients and their pets is truly inspiring. We feel lucky to be associated with such an amazing group. So for that we give thanks!

Hi Everyone,

Up until now you could only process credit cards in PetSitClick using Authorize.net and that had some drawbacks. First of all, it was only available to our clients in the United States. Secondly, it was and is cumbersome to setup. But now that we have integrated with Stripe accepting credit cards just became a lot easier!

Why is that? Well, first of all, you can be up and running with a Stripe account in a few minutes. Secondly its available to all of our clients, not just those in the United States. So if you decide to start accepting credit cards for your business you can get going with just a few mouse clicks. This video explains how to go about it.

I know a lot of pet care companies are reluctant to accept credit cards because of the fees. I agree those can be painful, but overall I think accepting credits is worth it. You get paid faster which means you aren't chasing clients around for payment. Clients also like credit cards because they get to collect their points so you might gain more business that way. Finally, it has become so commonplace these days to pay with a credit card its almost a requirement for any business.

So why not check out Stripe today?

Hi Everyone,

Ready to take your pet business to the next level?

We are sponsoring the upcoming online pet business conference.

Many top pet business experts will be speaking including Victoria Stilwell, Ian Dunbar, Patti Moran, and Andrea Arden, at the upcoming Prosperous Pet Business Online Conference hosted by Kristin Morrison.

The goal of the conference is to inspire pet business owners to break through problems, get unstuck, and move forward on business goals. In short, to empower you to fulfill your dream of working with pets for a living.

Kristin's conference has a unique format. It's no charge (woo-hoo!), international (cool!), and comprised of a series of informative interviews with all sorts of experts in the business and pet field.

You're sure to take a gem away from each of these informal chats, each one built around the theme of making more money while experiencing more ease and more freedom (nice!).

All the details you need are here: Prosperous Pet Business Online Conference.

Hope to see you there!

Hi Everyone,

Today we introduced an exciting new feature to PetSitClick - SMS Texting! In the busy life of a pet care company owner it is sometimes very important to immediately alert your staff or clients, and one of the best ways to do this is by sending a text. For example, you might have had a last minute schedule change and need to alert the walker or sitter. Certain clients might want instants updates when a dog walk or pet sit is completed, and visit reports can now be conveyed by text as well. In short, SMS texting through PetSitClick is a great way to super charge your business communications.

Because PetSitClick has to pay for each text that is sent, we do charge extra for SMS Texts. Credits can be purchased in the software. But if you are not interested in SMS texting it is a completely optional feature. Our goal is to give you the complete range of tools you need to successfully run your pet care business.

I hope everyone is having a great summer!

Hi Everyone,

Since PetSitClick launched in 2011 we have been a big supporter of Pet Sitters International, both having been a regular advertiser and also supporting the idea that organizations like PSI are important to the health and growth of the pet sitting industry. So we were very excited when we learned that a current PetSitClick user, Michelle Miller, owner of At Home Comforts Pet Sitting in Panama City, Fla., has been named Pet Sitters International's 2014 Pet Sitter of the Year! Below is some more information about Michelle from the award announcement:

"Miller joined PSI in 2011 and completed the Certificate in Professional Pet Sitting Program that same year. She is also trained in pet first aid and CPR and has participated in PSI's Locator Designation Program, which offers third-party verification of a pet sitter's clear criminal history. In addition to pet sitting, Miller is also an active volunteer with the Animal Rescue Center of Bay County, is a trained volunteer at her local PetSmart cat adoption center and serves as a spokesperson on her local television and news shows to promote pet adoption and foster programs."

We hope you find Michelle's success as inspiring as we do. Congratulations Michelle! Click here to view the official announcement.

Hi Everyone,

Today we released our new drag-and-drop calendar for a full beta with the PetSitClick community. We are very excited about this new feature. Just like a Google calendar, you can drag-and-drop visits, edit or delete individual visits, and even schedule a new visit as well. We also added a handy undo button and the ability to filter by walker or sitter.

This has been one of the top feature requests for PetSitClick, so we are happy to finally deliver it. We feel it is the best and easiest to use calendar in the pet sitting software industry. So why not start a free trial and check it out today! Click this link to watch a video of the calendar in action.

Hi Everyone,

Just a short blog post today, a couple new features we just introduced.

1) You can now email your walkers and sitters their compensaiton reports. You will find the button on the main Walker/Sitter overview page.

2) We have introduced a new route sheet on the edit calendar.

I hope everyone has a great March and is looking forward to spring as much as I am!

Hi Everyone,

As I write this I am watching snow fall out my window and it is hard to imagine that spring is on its way. I talk to a lot of pet care company owners who come from warmer climates and it makes me think I need to move south!

As always, we have been busy improving and adding new features to PetSitClick. I want to extend a personal shout out to the new PetSitClick Facebook user group who have been instrumental in suggesting changes and new features (now with 100+ members). It has been a great addition to the PetSitClick community.

Some of the new features introduced in the past few weeks include:

1) The ability to schedule overnights in PetSitClick.

2) Better visibility into what time a GPS check-in was done.

3) Mobile Scheduling

4) A new forward-looking income chart to help better project future revenue (screen shot below).

If you are looking for a new pet sitting or dog walking software make sure to sign up for a free trial. It takes only 60 seconds and there is no obligation.

I hope everyone has a great February!

Hi Everyone,

A new PetSitClick user has taken the initiative to setup a Facebook PetSitClick user group. We think this will be a great forum for current and prospective PetSitClick users to engage in discussions around what new features you would like to see, tips and tricks etc. as well as general dog walking and pet sitting discussions. This group is not officially run by PetSitClick, but we have joined as a member to follow along. Please show your support and join here.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Each year I like to write a state of the dog walking and pet sitting industry blog post. Other than major pet sitter associations and training companies like NAPPS, PSI, and Dog*Tec, I doubt there is another type of organization that interacts as much with pet care companies as we do. This gives us a unique insight into what is going on in the industry and I have included my thoughts below.

Some Fun Facts

We did some meta-analysis of the data in PetSitClick. The the top three pet names in order for 2014 where:

Females: Bella, Lucy, Daisy

Males: Max, Charlie, Buddy

63 percent of the animals in PetSitClick are dogs, 21 percent are cats, with the remaining 16 percent other types of animals. 52 percent were male and 48 percent where female. In terms of the overall pet population worldwide there is a much closer split between dogs and cats. But within the pet sitting and dog walking world it makes sense that dog owners would require these types of services more often.

Rates

There is no question that pet care company owners are raising their rates. Generally speaking, these rate increases seem to be relatively modest and seem to be more in keeping with inflation. During the many years of recession a lot of companies kept rates the same, but with the economy perking up a bit they are taking the opportunity to play a bit of catch up.

The "Uber's" of the Pet Care World

Practically everyone has heard of Uber these days, and not surprisingly there are two "Uber" like companies in the pet care space - DogVacay and Rover.com. Both have received substantial venture funding and are spending heavily to grow their business. So what does this mean for independent pet care companies?

The good news is so far it does not seem to be hurting anyone, as most of the pet care companies that we talk to are experiencing a lot of growth. Plus with economy getting better there will be more people going to work and thus more pets to walk and sit. Unquestionably the taxi industry has been negatively impacted by Uber, but taxi companies were operating in a highly regulated environment that effectively shielded them from many forms of competition. Hiring someone to drive you somewhere is much different than trusting an individual with your beloved pet and giving them access to your home.

Going forward I think you will see these two companies start to spend heavily on advertising. But local pet sitters will always have the advantage because no one will know their market as well as they do and can engage in effective targeted marketing. Plus pet care, unlike the transportation industry, is about building long term relationships with their clients, another advantage that independent pet care companies have over Dogvacay and Rover.com. So it will be interesting to see how this all develops!

Technology

Even though I am a bit biased, I do think there is a growing expectation from pet owners that their pet care companies offer certain features. This would include things like being able to update information and book online, emailed invoices and after visit report emails with photos. We have continued to improve PetSitClick so you can offer these features to your clients and you will see this trend continue in 2015.

Another interesting development we have been watching is wearable tracking technology for the dogs themselves. These are special collars that can track movement via GPS and health information as well. I wouldn't be surprised if in the near future pet care companies start getting calls like "How come Bella's heart rate never made it above 100 bpm during the walk?" In some ways it is surprising how a simple dog walk is becoming so enveloped in technology. But I guess you could say that about pretty much any aspect of our lives today.

So that is how things look from our end, and it will be exciting to see what the rest of 2015 brings. I hope everyone has a very successful and safe 2015!

Hi Everyone,

We want to wish all of our amazing PetSitClick clients a safe and happy holidays and a great start to the New Year! Make sure to check out our blog in early January for our yearly "state of the industry" blog.

Hi Everyone,

I would like to talk about two game changing new features that have come to PetSitClick. The first feature, just released today, allows your Walkers and Sitters to send an after visit email report to your clients through PetSitClick. This email can contain visit notes, a link to an uploaded photo, and GPS Check-in and Check-out information. The administrator of the PetSitClick account can decide which clients will receive an email and what the email will contain. We think this can be both a great way to keep your existing clients happy and a great marketing tool as well. By promising each of your clients a personal email with details from the walk including a photo you can offer them a level of service that will delight them.

The next really cool feature is our new mapping suite. You can now geocode your clients and view all of them at the same time on a map. We just introduced this feature a couple of weeks ago and it has already proven very popular. One of the companies using PetSitClick was able to see their 400 clients at the same time on a Google Map! Beyond just this basic mapping view, we have given you the ability to see which parts of your territory are making you the most money, and you can also see the entire day's schedule on a map too.

At PetSitClick we are constantly working on new features and improvements to help empower your business. Why not sign up for a free trial today to see what all the fuss is about?

Hi Everyone,

On October 11, 2014 PetSitClick will officially have been in business for 3 years! It has been an exciting time for us at PetSitClick to watch the software grow and evolve with our great clients. I can remember when the first pet was added back in 2011 we we thought that was pretty cool. Now the software tracks millions of pet sits and dog walks a year and at any given time people are logging in from throughout the world. So it has been a fun ride so far!

We would not be where we are today without our fantastic pet care companies and the great care they provide to pets. So I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks for your support over the years. We have lots of great things planned for later this fall including some new mapping technology, and we will be reaching out to everyone to help us plan the features we should develop for 2015.

I hope everyone is having a great fall and here is to three more great years.

Hi Everyone,

There are many pet sitting software products on the market, and as we have noted in an earlier blog post it is important to find the one that best meets your needs. But one aspect that you should consider carefully in your search is whether the pet sitting software product was built in-house or built by external IT professionals. If the owners of the pet sitting software hired an external team to build the product, then it can be hard to for them to make updates and changes because every modification requires more money. Even worse, the original developers of the product may move on to other jobs, leaving no one at the pet sitting software company with knowledge of the source code. Thus over time the software product will become dated and few new features will be introduced.

We built PetSitClick in-house from the ground up, so there is no danger that the technical knowledge of PetSitClick will go walking out the door some day. We are software professionals first; it is our passion and what we enjoy doing. Combine this with being able to work with the great people who run pet care businesses and you have a great place to work.

Hi Everyone,

Alas I am not one of those lucky individuals who has a summer time getaway place in the mountains or at the lake. So I have been sweltering in the city, although on the east coast this has not been too hot a summer so far. I hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

Just a short update today. We have introduced a new feature that allows you to create PreService Invoices without balances or credits showing, an oft requested feature. You can find the links to do this on the main PreService Overview screen at the bottom of the page. We also fixed a small bug that happened occasionally when new customers where signing up on the new customer portal.

Next month we will be upgrading our software operating system so we can continue to roll out great new features.

Back to work!

Hi Everyone,

I have been racking my brains to think of an industry that has more complex scheduling requirements then pet sitting and dog walking and so far I can't think of any that are more difficult to manage. Pet sitting and dog walking businesses need to deal with multiple services for one customer in the same day, overnight visits, irregular weekly visits, short-term visits, long-term visits - the list of variations go on and on. Think how easy it must be to run a lawn care company. Most clients would be a weekly visit for one hour. And if you accidentally miss a visit the worst thing that happens is the grass gets a little longer. But with pet sitting, a missed visit can lead to serious consequences for the pet.

Of course on the flipside it is very rewarding to work with animals, and more visits mean more money. A pet sitting and dog walking business would need fewer clients than a lawn care company to make the same revenue because they would have much more revenue per client. So every cloud has a silver lining!

So if your scheduling frustrations have led you to seek out a pet sitting software, then PetSitClick can help you stay organized and on top of your pet care business. There have been millions of visit scheduled in PetSitClick and we can help you with any scheduling need you might have. Just email us or give us a call!

Hi Everyone,

It is no secret that there are competing dog walking and pet sitting software products on the market. Despite the competition, we have experienced tremendous growth in our user base at PetSitClick over the last couple of years so we are obviously doing something right! But I'm going to make a bold statement and say that there is no such thing as a perfect pet sitting software product. For example, a software application that is chock full of features will not appeal to someone looking for a very simple product. For other business owners price might be the most important factor. So I guess what I'm saying is there is no one-size-fits-all product for the extremely versatile and dynamic pet sitting industry.

At PetSitClick our philosophy is we want happy customers. That is why we have our 30 day free trial to make sure our product is right for you. Because of our strong growth we know we have created a software that appeals to a large group of dog walking and pet sitting business owners, but it is not perfect for everyone. So make sure to take advantage of our 30 day free trial to explore all that we have so offer to see if it's right for your business. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask!

Hi Everyone,

Many of you have Facebook pages that you use to promote your business and keep your customers informed about what's going on. It can be a great way to to interact with your clients in a friendly social media environment. Here at PetSitClick we have made our Facebook page one of our key components of client communication and it has been a great tool to keep everyone up to date with what's going on with PetSitClick. But unfortunately I think Facebook has lost some of its value from a business perspective.

Prior to this winter any posts you made on your Facebook page would automatically enter the newsfeed of anyone who has liked your page. But recently, Facebook has introduced an algorithm that only shows your posts to some of the people who have liked your page. If the select few who see your post interact with it in a meaningful way such as liking it or sharing it, Facebook will subsequently increase how many people are seeing the post. Apparently Facebook introduced this change because people were being overwhelmed with too many posts on their newsfeed.

As a result of this change we have noticed that the fun or silly posts get a lot of traction but anything more mundane such as announcing a server upgrade barely gets noticed. So what does this mean? Facebook will remain a good tool to build awareness of your brand if you can post things that are fun and lighthearted and will draw people to your posts. But as a client communication tool it has lost some value because any post that is "boring" but provides meaningful information to your clients won't be seen by many. Of course Facebook gives you the option to pay to boost your post, but part of the attraction with Facebook was always a free and easy way to interact with your clients.

So this is what we have seen on our end, I would be curious to know if any of you have seen a similar pattern with your Facebook pages?

Hi Everyone,

Since we launched PetSitClick in 2011 it has been amazing to watch the software grow. Hundreds of companies now rely on PetSitClick to run their pet care businesses. Companies that have used PetSitClick for a long time have begun to amass quite a bit of data - some have well over 5000 invoices in the system!

As a software grows and matures it is not always about adding new features. Sometimes it is making life easier for your long-term customers. With that in mind we have added a new feature that allows you to archive old invoices. You can archive invoices by going to the invoice overview screen. Archived invoices will no longer be visible on the main invoice overview screen or on the payment screen where you select which invoice you would like to pay. This should make life a lot easier for companies trying to manage their invoices and payments on a daily basis. It is important to note that invoices that have been archived will still be visible on all the reports and on the customer history page. Archived invoices can be viewed by clicking the link on the main invoice overview page and they can easily be restored to active whenever needed.

We hope this new feature will make PetSitClick easier to use!

Hi Everyone,

I hope everyone has had a great start to 2014. It has been a brutally cold start to the year here in Toronto - even my dog Charlie doesn't like going outside. I have to say I'm really looking forward to the spring!

One of the advantages of running a dog walking and pet sitting software company is that we are uniquely positioned to see different trends emerging in the pet care industry. So I thought I would take some time and write a blog post about some of the interesting things that are going on right now.

Industry Growth

It is pretty clear that the demand for pet care services continues to grow at a pretty decent rate. Through our interactions with hundreds of different pet care companies I can tell you that the prevailing momentum is towards not just more customers, but customers who are spending more. Pet care companies are offering more services beyond just the standard dog walking and pet sitting but other things as well such as selling pet supplies, pet taxis, and other home care services. Some pet care companies have reached the size where they are now exploring franchising options for their business or are setting up corporately owned satellite offices in different cities. So it is definitely an exciting time to be in the pet care industry and if you have a lot of ambition you can build a very large business if that is your goal.

Prepaid Packages

This is a trend we are seeing a lot more of. A lot of companies are starting to offer discounts to their customers if they buy a prepaid set of walks or pet sits. In a sense this is similar to gift cards sold by retail stores, because you get the money up front prior to the service be delivered. So it is a really attractive business model on many levels and one I recommend pet care company owners consider. PetSitClick has a great way to track these packages.

Price Increases

After many years of stagnant prices due to the economic downturn, many pet care companies are starting to raise their prices again. Anecdotally in my conversations with different pet care company owners there has not been too much customer resistance to these increases. So it seems like the market is ready to absorb additional cost. I think this is a good trend for private pet care companies because it shows that websites like dogvacay.com and rover.com, which can attract amateurs willing to do dog walks and pet sits for less than standard market rates, are not having a deflationary effect on prices. Pet owners treat their pets like children and I think are willing to pay a premium to have a professional take care of them. So this will be an interesting trend to watch.

GPS Tracking

PetSitClick has a GPS check-in and checkout feature that has proven quite popular. However, it does not track the actual route of the walk nor is this information visible to your customers through PetSitClick's portal. There are, however, competitors of PetSitClick that do offer the feature of tracking the walk and showing the results to the customer. When the GPS tracking feature emerged in the pet sitting software market about two years ago we were very keen to see where it would lead. But after two years we have seen almost no demand to track the actual route of the walk from existing customers of PetSitClick. Nor have we had a lot of inquiries from potential PetSitClick customers as to whether we have this feature. So it seems that viewing the actual route of the walk is not something the market is demanding. Plus, we have heard there have been many technical issues getting smart phones to accurately track the walk. So for now PetSitClick is not going to offer this type of feature.

Well I hope that provided a bit of insight into what we are seeing. I think 2014 is going to be another great year for the pet sitting industry!

Hi Everyone,

It is becoming a bit of a New Year's tradition that we release a blog entry that talks about the year the just passed and what's upcoming for the new one. So why break tradition?

Overall 2013 was a big year for PetSitClick. A lot of great pet care companies signed up to use our software and it's been fun bringing them on board. As usual, we are constantly amazed at the different ways there are to run a dog walking and pet sitting business.

On the technical side of things we did a lot of major upgrades both behind the scenes and on the front end as well. Our customer interface and our service interface both received major upgrades that reflected a lot of feedback we have received over the years. Most notably our mobile interface was completely revamped and so far has earned great reviews overall. Behind the scenes PetSitClick is now running on the most modern hardware available, and our engineers have done a great job of keeping the site running with near-perfect uptime.

We have been pretty happy with our social media efforts this year, especially on our Facebook page and we will continue to work on engaging our users in as many ways as possible. We have tried to use our Twitter feed a bit more actively as of late, and look for that to continue in the new year.

So what is upcoming for 2014? I think the general consensus at PetSitClick is that we are pretty happy with the fundamentals of our software. There are not many changes that we have planned for the customer, scheduling, or accounting features of the product. But the good news is that this will allow us to focus on more "fun things." We will definitely be introducing some new reports to help you run your business better. Trying out some new mapping features that will integrate with Google maps is also something we have planned and I think will be very exciting. We are also planning to freshen up our welcome page when you login and make the alerts more prominent. First up, however, will be updates to our help videos and user guide to include the latest changes we have made the software.

Will that's about it for now. I am still recovering from my turkey coma! I want to wish everyone a very happy and fruitful 2014!

Hi Everyone,

We're excited to announce that we have launched our new mobile platform in something we call a "soft launch." What does this mean exactly? Each day thousands of dog walkers and pet sitters log into PetSitClick to get their schedules on their mobile phones. What we did not want to do is to introduce a new mobile platform and find out it didn't work on half the phones and cause people to miss important appointments. So currently the de facto mobile login is still our old legacy mobile system.

To try our new mobile login you need to log into our current (old) mobile site and go to the homepage. There you will find a link to take you to our new mobile site where you can try out our new interface. It's perfectly usable and you can mark visits complete and find customer information. All of the existing security has been applied. The link for our current mobile site is https://www.petsitclick.com/login_mobile.a5w

Over the next two weeks we are going to ask everyone to try the new mobile site because on Monday, December 16th we are going to switch to the new mobile platform. Our legacy mobile interface will remain for customers who prefer that version, although the auto redirect to your current day's schedule will be the new mobile platform.

Please try it out and let us know what you think!

Today PetSitClick is excited to announce that we have released our new service interface. We have taken all the feedback that we have received from our customers over the years to create what we think is a huge improvement over our current one. Some highlights include:

1) The ability to specify which pets will be on the service.

2) A new more intuitive time picker.

3) Services can now be edited with a starting date in the past.

4) Deleting and discontinuing services can now be done right on the main service screen.

5) Editing different services does not require re-filtering the grid.

6) A fresh new look.

If you decide to specify which pets will be on a service, these pets will show up on the edit calendar and the mobile service screens for your walkers and sitters. We will also be adding this new field to the daily email in a couple of days. Please note that we will always show one pet name even if pets have not been specified as a reminder for both you and your walkers and sitters about which customer the service is for.

We are also sensitive that our service interface is probably one of the most critical parts of PetSitClick. So if you don't like our new interface you can continue to use the old one. You just won't be able to specify specific pets or edit services with the start date in the past (as it currently is now).

As you use our new service interface, please let us know about any issues you encounter right away. This is just one more improvement that we plan to make over the next few months.

Hey Everyone!

We are updating the PetSitClick ad that will run in this winter's issue of Pet Sitter's World. Our current dog in the ad needs a vacation, so we are auditioning four great pups to take his place. We need your help to pick the right little guy or gal. We have posted pictures of all four - Champ, Molly, Tiger, and Ronnie and will continue to do so over the next couple of weeks on our Facebook page. The one with the most likes and positive comments will be our winner. Please help us make this difficult decision :)

I hope everyone had a nice summer! I wanted to share some exciting news with you about PetSitClick. Since we launched almost 2 years ago we have had a great time working with pet sitters and dog walkers from around the world and we have tried to improve PetSitClick based on your feedback. We think this has really improved the product.

At this point, however, we feel we have reached the end of the road in terms of the improvements we can make based on our current technical architecture. Just like you need to upgrade your operating system on your computer from time to time, we need to do the same for our software. So this Fall we are going to completely upgrade our technical stack.

Most of this involves behind the scenes work and you probably won't notice much difference once the change occurs. But once we've implemented it, we will be able to introduce exciting new features that we hope will really knock your socks off. We are already working on our new mobile interface and we have included a demo video here. Please follow the link to see what the new mobile experience will be like. In addition to our completely revamped mobile interface, we plan new customer and pet screens, improved calendar functions, and greater PayPal integration. You will see these new features come online in the Fall and the early Winter.

Well that's it for now, I need to get back to work!

Cheers,

Scott
smoore@petsitmail.com

New Feature Alert! You can now create service confirmations directly from the scheduled services overview screen. Even better, you can create up to 10 it once, which will save you a lot of time when you need to create a lot of service confirmations.

Because some services can have hundreds of calendar entries, this new feature will only create service confirmations with a maximum of 50 calendar entries. If you need to create service confirmation that has more than this, you can use our regular service confirmation create feature. Also, this feature creates service confirmations but does not email them automatically. You can email them in bulk from our service confirmation overview screen.

We hope this feature will save you a lot of time!

Today we introduced a great new feature at PetSitClick. Now you can send an email message to all of your walkers and sitters at one time out of PetSitClick. So this will be a great way to keep your contractors and employees informed of what's going on. For example, you may decide to copy your walkers and sitters on all customer communications so that they are up to date on the promotions and information you are offering your clients. Or you may have staff announcements that are just for them. We've had many requests for this feature from some of our larger companies and are happy to deliver it. You can find this new feature on our customer email page.

I hope everyone is having a great summer! We have been busy here at PetSitClick doing some behind the scenes work to ensure the servers and database are working smoothly. We plan to roll out some great new features in the fall. Enjoy the rest of the summer!

It is very important when choosing a dog walking or pet sitting software to find one that is a good fit for you. That is the great thing about PetSitClick's 30 day free trial. It allows you to explore all that PetSitClick has to offer without making a final decision on whether to purchase. There is no credit card required and you can sign up in 60 seconds.

Our philosophy at PetSitClick is that we want happy customers. We understand that what is perfect for one pet care company won't work for another. It still amazes us how many different ways there are to set up and run a dog walking or pet sitting business. Even when it comes to billing there are at least 10 variations. So in designing PetSitClick, we tried to build a comprehensive, easy to use software that would accommodate most business practices without being too complex.

So if you're considering using PetSitClick, why not sign up for a 30 day free trial? It's a great way to get to know us and decide whether we would be a good fit for your business.

This past May my wife and I became honorary pet sitters of a sort. It had been a cold and wet spring here in Toronto and as a result we had not made it into our backyard much. When it finally got a little nicer I went back to clear some weeds and noticed that a robin had built a nest right above our deck. The minute she spotted me she became agitated and chirped loudly so I quickly retreated.

A quick search on Google with my wife revealed that if we wanted the robin and her eggs to do well we wouldn't be able use the backyard. A robin will abandon the nest if you try and move it, and if they sense that too many predators are around (i.e. my wife and me) the will also abandon it.

So for the next four weeks my wife and I warned anyone who came by our house not to go in the backyard, and we had to take our dog Charlie on extra long walks since he couldn't romp around the backyard. Through the window we watched the eggs hatch into chicks and eventually leave the nest a few days ago. While it was frustrating not to be able to use the backyard during Canada's short summer it was overall a very rewarding experience.

I know this blog post isn't really specific to pet sitting software, but the experience made me think about how important it is to treat animals with respect (both wild and domestic) and how essential the dog walking and pet sitting profession is to providing good care for all types of animals. As a software development company we couldn't think of a better industry to work with and support!


Cheers,

Scott
smoore@petsitmail.com

Phew! It has been a busy few months at PetSitClick. This week we introduced our latest feature, a new sign up portal for your new customers. Now new customers of your dog walking or pet sitting business can create their own account on PetSitClick, agree to your terms of service, log into your portal, and then add all of their personal and pet information. It allows you to completely automate the customer intake process. We think this will be a great time saver for you. Video #13 on our welcome page when you login provides more details.

On the housekeeping side of things, please note that PetSitClick will be down for routine maintenance on Saturday June 8th, starting at 9:00 pm EST for four hours. Please do not expect to have access during this time. This is our first scheduled downtime since October of last year. Any questions please contact us at answers@petsitmail.com

dog*tec, an industry leader in training dog walkers and other pet care professionals, and PetSitClick, a major provider of pet sitting and dog walking software, are pleased to announce a joint agreement to bring exciting new benefits to their respective clients. These benefits will include discounts on each company's respective products and spreading awareness about their services. You can read more about it in our joint press release here.

Our goal at PetSitCLick is to help your business grow as much as possible, and we feel teaming up with dog*tec is great step in that direction. PetSitClick members will receive a $50 discount on dog*tec's Business CD For Walkers & Sitters, a complete set of ready-made business administration and workflow documents every dog walker and pet sitter needs to run their business. Below is a guest blog post from Veronica Boutelle, founder of dog*tec

For better or worse we work in an unregulated industry; anyone can hang a shingle and take on canine clients to care for. But many dog professionals yearn for a more professional approach - for professional training and certification in their field. We launched the dog*tec Dog Walking Academy program ten years ago this month to serve aspiring and experienced dog walkers alike who desire formal training in dog behavior, including reading body language, learning theory, basic training, and understanding and handling problem behaviors such as leash reactivity. We also teach effective business and marketing practices, giving our graduates an edge over their competition. And our grads find their Certified Dog Walker seal sets them apart to prospective clients. Get more information about the Dog Walking Academy, including class dates and locations around the country.

We are pleased to announce that PetSitClick now has a customer key management feature. We have had a lot of requests for this option and we are sure it will be very popular. Our key management tools let you track all of your customer's keys, including who is in possession of them and where they are stored. You can also run a report to show which walkers or sitters are missing a customer key for an upcoming visit. On their mobile logins, your walkers and sitters can also lookup customer key information. Overall, it has been our goal to integrate key management as much as possible into PetSitClick.

As we noted in a blog entry this past February, this is one of the new features we had planned to introduce in the Spring. Next up is a new customer intake form that you can link to your website. Look for it this May. Our goal is to be the best pet sitting software out there and we are already planning our new summer features. Stay tuned!

PetSitClick has a mobile WebApp that is used by pet sitters and dog walkers to access PetSitClick. They can view their schedule and lookup customer and pet information. It is designed to work on smartphones and can be accessed at https://www.petsitclick.com/login_mobile.a5w.

But one complaint we have heard about our mobile app is that it takes too many "clicks" to get to your schedule for the day. This can be very inconvenient when walking a group of dogs. Today we introduced "Single Click Login". Turning on this feature for your walker or sitter will take them directly to their day's schedule right after logging in. So it makes the login process much easier! You can turn on this feature for them on their walker/sitter record. They can still access the main mobile menu with this feature turned on.

I think this change shows that at PetSitClick we are not just introducing new features, but working to improve our existing ones as well!

PetSitClick is happy announce it has renewed its sponsorhip of the National Association of Professional Pet Sitters (NAPPS). All of us here at PetSitClick feel very strongly that pet sitter associations such as NAPPS are great resources for both the public and pet sitters alike. They provide great educational tools and work hard to advance the pet sitting and dog walking profession. If you are not already a member, think about joining NAPPS today!

Today we released our new email feature. It allows you to send nicely formatted HTML emails to all or some of your customers with a click of the button. This can be a great tool for things such as newsletters, announcements, pet birthdays...the list goes on and on. This feature can also save you money. You can pay at least $10 to $20 a month for a standalone mass customer email tool, and with PetSitClick this feature is included.

One thing I am really excited about is the ability to share email templates. I know our users are very creative and I am sure people will come up with some great looking email templates. Hopefully we can share a few of them with other PetSitClick users who might be interested. A great looking pet birthday card email comes to the top of my mind as one that would be fun.

Let us know what you think of our new feature!

Hiring qualified new staff members is an essential part of running a successful pet care business. With that in mind, Kristin Morrison, founder of the Six-Figure Pet Sitting Academy, has extended an invitation to PetSitClick members to attend a free webinar entitled "Hiring Pet Sitters: Everything You Need to Know to Hire (and Keep) Great Staff Members."

The webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, April 10th at 5:00 pm PST/ 8:00 pm EST. **NOTE** Date has been moved to April 9th ** Kristin, as many of you know, is renowned for her expertise, so I definitely recommend checking it out. You can sign-up here.

We are back with our series on PetSitClick tips and tricks. Here are some other great things about PetSitClick that you might not know about.

Pet Info Sheet

On the main customer overview screen you will see a button beside each customer called "Pet Info Sheet". If you click that button it will produce an Adobe PDF that contains the customer and pet details. This can be a great way to produce a customer/pet info sheet that you can print when needed.

Inactive Walkers and Sitters

When a walker or sitter leaves your company, it is not a good idea to delete them from the system. This is because you want to keep a history in PetSitClick of what they did for your company. On their walker or sitter record you can set them to "Inactive". You will no longer see them on picklists when setting up or changing services, but they will remain for historical purposes in PetSitClick.

Expenses

Did you know you can track your expenses in PetSitClick? If you navigate to Accounting->Expenses, you can start tracking things like gas, salaries, and rent. A great way to stay on top of your accounting.

If you have found other great ways to use PetSitClick that other people might not be aware of, let me know. Look for other great tips over the next few months!

It is Valentine's Day so maybe that is making us a little more amorous around the office, but we just want to say how much we love the great pet sitting companies that use PetSitClick and how excited we are to tell you about the new features we are working on right now. Since PetSitClick launched almost two years ago we have been constantly rolling out new features to our dog walking and pet sitting software, and we have no intention of stopping anytime soon! Here are three new features you can expect to see in the late Winter/early Spring.

Group Emails

This new feature will allow you to create nicely formatted emails that you can send to some or all of your customers. New promotion? Holiday Greeting? Monthly Newsletter? Our new group email function will be perfect for the marketing and customer care aspects of your business.

Key Management

Need to track a customer's keys and which walker or sitter has them? Then our new key management tool will be a great feature for you.

New Customer Intake

Our customer portal is great for existing clients, but what about new customers visiting your website? We are going to introduce the ability for you to create a customer intake form for new customers to sign up and provide basic information. This will make it much easier to bring new customers online.

In addition to these major features, we are also going to continue to make small improvements along the way, so look for those as well. As these features are introduced, we will make sure to let you know.

Well it is mid-winter and I have to say I am looking forward to the Spring! I hope everyone is keeping warm and dry.

Did you know that PetSitClick has a referral program? If you are a paying customer of PetSitClick and you refer us a new paying client, we will give you two free months of PetSitClick. And there is no limit on how many clients you can send our way. Collectively companies have already save thousands of dollars through our referral program. We want to spread the word about PetSitClick and save you a bit of money as well!

For more details on our referral program please contact us.

Up until now with PetSitClick, when you sent an invoice or service confirmation to your customer it came from the PetSitClick email account. While we did include you company name, it was not a perfect situation. This is because if a customer hit reply they get an automated message saying no one had received the email.

Today we are happy to announce that you can now send your customers invoices and service confirmations from your own email address! If a customer hits reply you will get the response. And the great part is we handle it all for you. You do not require a mail server, simply alter your settings under our basic settings (My Company->Settings) and you can start sending emails.

A couple of important things to note. First, your emails to your walkers and sitters will still come from the PetSitClick email. Second, if you do opt to use your own email to send invoices, you can greatly decrease any chance of the email going into a customer's spam folder by having them add your email address to their address book.

I think this change shows how 2013 will be about focusing on improving how PetSitClick allows you to interact with your customers. Look for more in the future!

PetSitClick has customers from all over the world, and depending on the country you are from each has some special requirements. We have designed PetSitClick to accommodate these needs seamlessly, and I thought it might be fun to outline some of the differences and how PetSitClick works with each one.

United States

The United States uses a date format of MM/DD/YYYY for the most part, whereas pretty much the rest of the world uses DD/MM/YYYY. In PetSitClick we allow you to choose the date format that works best for your country. Also, if your business works across multiple states, you may need to have different sales taxes. In PetSitClick you can setup and use an unlimited number of different sales taxes.

United Kingdom

This is a small but important one. We allow our customers in the United Kingdom to display their financial data using the £ sign.

Australia

Did you know in Australia they do not have a penny? All transactions are rounded up or down to the nearest five cents. For companies in Australia that add sales tax, we automatically round all totals to the nearest 5 cents.

Canada

In Canada some companies need to charge two different sales taxes' for every service they provide. In PetSitClick this is easy to do. Similar to Australia, Canada is also getting rid of the penny and we will make adjustments as needed.

2012 has been a great year here at PetSitClick. We have met a lot of fantastic people, introduced plenty of new features to the software, and been fortunate enough to do what we love every day. Pet care companies from all around the world have chosen PetSitClick as their business software, and we feel very humble to have earned your trust. As the year comes to a close, it seems like a good time to review what we did in 2012 and what we are thinking about for 2013.

From a new feature perspective, 2012 was one heck of a year. Let me list some of the major new features added to PetSitClick in 2012:

• Customer portal

• PreService invoicing

• GPS check in/check out

• Service confirmations

• A "Google style" calendar

• Daily automatic emails to your walker and sitters

And those are just some of the major features we added. In addition, we also released our comprehensive User Guide for PetSitClick.

So what is in store for 2013? The PetSitClick team has spent the last few weeks mapping out our strategy for next year. While I can't give too much away, let me give you some high level points from our upcoming plans:

• New and better ways to email your customers from PetSitClick

• More reports

• New alerts similar to our upcoming pet birthday alert

• Improving our use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook to better communicate with our clients

• ...and lots more!

So even though 2012 was a busy year, I think 2013 will be even busier and we couldn't be more excited. We look forward to working with our current clients and meeting new ones. I want to wish everyone a very prosperous and happy 2013!

PetSitClick, Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Software, has a lot of great reports to keep you on top of your business. Today we released a couple of new compensation reports. PetSitClick has always had easy to use compensation reports to show you what you owe your walkers and sitters for completed services. Our new compensation reports are forward looking and allow you to determine walker/sitter compensation based on services they are assigned to in the future. This can be a great way to estimate your future compensation costs. You can find them in our Reports section.

As you might have read from some of our earlier blog posts (see October of this year), PetSitClick is currently beta testing its GPS check in/check out feature. As I noted, some of PetSitClick's clients have been using it for internal tracking of their walkers and sitters, but it is hasn't been as heavily used as we might have thought.

The funny part about all this is that when I am speaking to pet care company owners it comes up a lot in conversation. People are very curious as to how it is being used and what other pet care companies think of it. GPS tracking is not a central component of PetSitClick's business model so I feel I can give an honest perspective based on all the people I have spoken to about it and the research we have done.

On the face of it, GPS tracking seems like a great idea. You can prove to the customer that you showed up at the house, and with some tools even show where you walked to dog. Should be a no-brainer right? But it might create more problems then it solves. The general consensus seems to be that most customers would see it as a novelty and not check the GPS information after the first few times. But the customers who are already high maintenance would latch on to the GPS information and check every day to ensure that the dog is picked up at exactly the right time. So GPS would do nothing for most of your customers and for your high maintenance clients they will only get more demanding. So from the perspective of a pet care business owner what are you gaining? You could argue that you could use GPS tracking as part of your marketing, but you might end up attracting more high maintenance clients.

There does seem to be some valid reasons to use it internally to track your walkers and sitters. You can make sure that are getting to the client's house at the right time but you won't mind if they are a few minutes late as a client might. But in terms of showing this data to their clients, most pet care company I have spoken to currently have no plans to so.

In the end the market will drive whether GPS tracking is widely embraced in the pet sitting industry. If more and more customer's demand it then pet care companies will have to start providing that information. But for experienced pet care professionals used to the fluid nature of the dog walking and pet sitting industry I think most would prefer if GPS tracking did not become a standard. We shall have to see what the next few years bring.

So there you go! If you are intersted in joining this discussion send me your comments and I will post them on the blog.

The past two months at PetSitClick have been a busy as we have been writing and editing our new User Guide. Up until now, to help you learn our software we have included plenty of help videos and tips throughout the site. But we always felt that we were missing a comprehensive guide that someone could refer to when learning PetSitClick, Dog Walking and Pet Sitting software. So we are happy to announce our new User Guide has arrived and can be downloaded here as a PDF.

Our new User Guide is more than just step-by-step instructions. It contains detailed chapters with helpful information on how the software works, tips and the best ways to use PetSitClick to run your pet care business. We have done our best to make it as close as possible to a software help book you would buy in a store, and we feel this will be a great tool for all of our users going forward.

Our goal at PetSitClick is to not only have the easiest to use and feature rich Dog Walking and Pet Sitting software out there, but the best supported as well. Our new User Guide is one more step in that direction. Let us know what you think! You can see some screen captures below of some pages from our new User Guide.

The loyal customer base that you have built for your dog walking and pet sitting business can a great source of other forms of revenue. Your clients place immense trust in you and value your opinion, and this can be an opportunity to sell other products that compliment your business. For example, you could offer to sell them a particular form of dog treats that you have found work well with the dogs you walk. Or you could have one of your walkers or sitters deliver food each week for a fixed price.

As long as it is done in a friendly manner, I think most clients would welcome the extra services you could provide. I know personally I am always asking the walkers and sitters I see in the dog park for advice on my own pet. Some of the brands I use are based on that advice. Of course you need to believe in the products you are selling, but not having to drive to the pet store all the time would probably be very attractive to most people (myself included). You could also approach manufacturers about getting free samples for your clients.

If you do decide to sell products, PetSitClick, dog walking and pet sitting software, can help you with your accounting. It is super easy to create an invoice with the products you sell. So you can use PetSitClick for more than just service-based accounting.

The other night I was walking my dog Charlie and I accidentally dropped the leash when he decided to chase a squirrel. Fortunately he ran onto a yard instead of onto the street.

I usually don't put a coat on Charlie unless it is very cold out (he has a pretty thick coat) but I might start putting a reflective vest on him in the future. Cars in my neighborhood tend to drive pretty fast so if he ran on to the street at night or at dusk they probably wouldn't see him. I find especially in the Fall most people aren't quite used to driving in the dark at 5:00 pm

In other news we are currently putting the finishing touches on a professionally written guide to PetSitCLick. This is not just a step-by-step printout, but an actual book with descriptions of how the software works and helpful graphics. Think of it as something similar to the "... for Dummies" series. Look for it soon!.

The great thing about Halloween is that almost everybody loves it and it is a secular holiday. So it can be a great opportunity to market your Dog Walking and Pet Sitting business. Here are some great ideas you can think about implementing.

Trick or Treating

Leave a wrapped treat for a pet at a potential customer's house that includes a flier for your business.

Costumes

If they are willing, have your dog walker or pet sitter wear a costume on Halloween when they are out walking their dogs. It will certainly generate a few conversations with potential customers who are out with their own dogs.

Current Customer Marketing

Have your walker and sitters leave treats at all of your customer's houses for both the pets and the owners. Discreetly include a Halloween themed flier with a list of some of the extra services your provide.

Gotta run, I feel a ghost looming over my shoulder!

At PetSitClick a lot of our clients and their customers live on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, so we at PetSitClick hope everyone made it through Hurricane Sandy safe and sound. It is amazing how powerful and destructive nature can be.

After family members, keeping pets safe is the number one priority of most owners. I thought it would be a good time to post some storm safety tips from the Red Cross:

A week ago we introduced our new GPS Check In/Check Out feature. You can read our blog post about it below (post on October 16, 2012), but in short it allows a walker or sitter with a GPS enabled smartphone to mark the exact time and location that they arrived and left from a client's home. This information can then be viewed on a map.

Technically speaking it seems to be going well, but in terms of overall interest from our Dog Walking and Pet Sitting companies in this new feature I would rate it as pretty low. A lot of pet care company owners to whom I have spoken to have expressed some curiosity about the feature and maybe tried it out, but no one is racing to get this feature up and running.

This reveals some really interesting things:

1) At this point it would appear that a GPS feature is not something pet care companies or their clients are really interested in right now. If there was a real demand for this type of feature we would have expected to see much more trial and usage.

2) Most people (both pet care professionals and their customers) trust their walkers and sitters and don't feel the need to use GPS to monitor them.

3) Pet Care software companies that have built their software around GPS tracking might not find as responsive a market as they thought.

On the PetSitClick side of things, we plan to continue with the GPS Beta and fix any technical issues we come across. Even though there has not been that much interest, we do plan to roll out it out as a complete feature in November. Although a lot of pet care companies don't plant to use it anytime soon, they did like knowing that PetSitClick has this feature if their competitors start advertising GPS tracking. Plus they also thought it might useful when training or trying out new walkers or sitters. But as far as we can tell here at PetSitClick, the GPS revolution is more of a small skirmish.

It is a rainy day today here in Toronto. They rest of the week will be a bit above normal, but it looks like on the weekend it is really going to get cold. I can't believe it is almost winter, where does time go!

I thought today I would pass along some great tech tips you might not be aware of. These are not necessarily related to PetSitClick, Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Software, but might be something you can use.

1) Did you know a lot of smartphones can be turned into a WiFi hotspot? I know a lot of you have tablets that are not necessarily internet enabled via a cellphone subscription. But, you can use your smartphone to connect your tablet to the internet. For example, on the iPhone if you go under settings you will see an option to turn your phone into a WiFi hotspot. This can be a great way to use PetSitClick in the field on your tablet.

2) If you have a smartphone and are logging into PetSitClick a lot, you can have the browser remember your password. It is different for each browser, but all of them have the option to turn on password recall of some sort. Just look for it under the settings for the browser, and the next time you log into PetSitClick you will be prompted as to whether you want it to remember your password. From that point on you will no longer need to type your password each time. A great time saver.

3) You don't have to spend a lot of money to have a great looking website for your pet care business. If you have little bit of technical skill or like to get your hands dirty, then I recommend checking out sites like www.squarespace.com. For only a few bucks a month you can have an incredible looking website that you can build and maintain yourself

Over the past year or so we have seen the introduction of GPS tracking in the dog walking and pet sitting industry. It comes in various formats, but the basic idea is that you can use the GPS capabilities of a smartphone to prove to either the owner of the dog walking or pet sitting business, or the customer, that the walker or sitter arrived at the correct location at the right time, and left the right location at the right time. Some take it one step further and actually show a map of the walk.

We have been observing these developments with interest but also a bit of skepticism. It does seem in a lot of ways like it goes a bit overboard. After all, if a customer needs that level of verification and has that little trust in their pet care provider, maybe they should find another company. And after the initial interest, I wonder how many customers actually continue to check the GPS information over the long term. It can also cause more headaches for the owner of the dog walking or pet sitting business, because customers who do track this information will want to see the walker or sitter arrive and leave at exactly the same time each day. But with the fluid nature of the dog walking and pet sitting business this is practically impossible.

But we want to approach this with an open mind and see where it takes us. So today we have introduced a new feature (currently in Beta) that allows walkers and sitters to check in and out of each walk or pet visit. When they check in, for example, PetSitClick will register their exact location and time they checked in. The owner of the dog walking or pet sitting company can then view this information in PetSitClick. Currently we have not allowed customers to view this information on the portal, but based on how our testing goes we will enable this feature as well (you will have the option to turn it off so your customers can't see the information).

Needless to say for this to work the Walker or Sitter needs a GPS equipped smartphone. When they login on our mobile login screen, they will see a new option at the bottom. If they click this link they will see the exact same view as our simple day display, but there will now be two extra buttons - GPS Check In and GPS Check Out. They only need to click the buttons to check in and out, PetSitClick does the rest.

At this point PetSitClick will not actually draw a map of the walk. There are two reasons for this. The primary one is it is a big drain on smart phone batteries and we don't want walker and sitters stuck in the field with no access to their schedule because their phone went dead. Secondly, showing the map of the walk doesn't actually prove the dog was walked, it just proves the walker went out. But we may introduce a map component in the future.

So now we want to ask our PetSitClick clients for their feedback. Try it out! Let us know if you think it will be useful. Also let us know if you find an issues. We are eager to hear your opinion.

Anyone who follows the pet industry knows that Rhode Island recently caused a stir when they added a 7 percent sales tax on pet care services. This includes boarding, grooming, sitting and training. While some dog and cat owners may find it annoying that they will now have to pay a little extra tax wise, I personally don't think anyone would not have their pet taken care of simply because of having to pay extra sales tax. So hopefully this will not impact the growth of the Pet Sitting industry in Rhode Island.

On the accounting side of things, PetSitClick, Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Software has got you covered. If you need to start charging sales tax, simply setup your services to include a sales tax. When you generate your invoices PetSitClick will automatically include the tax, and invoices sent to your customers will include the tax broken out. For reporting your sales tax to the government, we have a sales tax report that will make meeting your reporting and remittance requirements a snap.

If you would like any assistance on this topic please make sure to give us a call.

Think your a PetSitClick wizard? We have worked hard to make PetSitClick, Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Software, easy to use, but here are some great little tips and tricks that you might not know about.

Column Sorting

When looking at an overview screen (i.e. customers, invoices etc.), did you know that each column is sortable simply by clicking on the column header? If you click it a second time it will sort the other way. It even works with amount columns so you can quickly see who owes you the most money.

Drop Down Box Picklists

When setting up a service or invoice, you need to choose a customer from a drop down picklist. Did you know if you type in the first letter of the customer name PetSitClick will automatically take you to that section of the picklist? This can save you a lot of time scrolling down the list.

Automatic Daily Email

Your Walkers and Sitters can get an automatic daily email of their schedule for the next day. You can enable this on their Walker or Sitter profile.

If you have found other great ways to use PetSitClick that other people might not be aware of, let me know. Look for other great tips over the next few months!

You have to hand it to the marketing folks at Quickbooks, because it seems that any time someone wants to start a new business (pet sitting or otherwise) they immediately feel they need to get Quickbooks setup. Quickbooks has its merits, but using a standalone accounting program (even with integration) can cause a lot of overhead and extra work for Dog Walking and Pet Sitting companies. There is the need for double entry and reconciling with other systems (i.e. scheduling software), and even with integration issues can arise.

The beauty of PetSitClick, Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Software, is that it comes complete with an entire accounting suite built right in. With PetSitClick you can not only create invoices, but also track revenue, payments, credits, expenses, walker/sitter compensation, and sales tax. Everything a small or medium sized company needs to keep on top of their business. And come tax time, simply download your data to Microsoft Excel and provide it to your bookeeper or accountant (trust me, accountants love Excel). Moreover, the integration with the rest of PetSitClick is completely seamless. Delete an invoice, and the customer's balance is immediately updated to reflect the reduced amount. So there is no need to worry about making sure everything is in synch.

PetSitClick's accounting features are also very easy to use. We have had numerous accountants who have logged in on behalf of their pet sitting or dog walking clients, comment on what a great accounting setup PetSitClick has. In fact, our accounting suite is so easy to use we have had companies sign up just to use the accounting features!

So if you are currently labouring with multiple systems (and spending extra money), break free of Quickbooks and let PetSitClick handle it all for you.

One of the great things about being a client of PetSitClick, Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Software, is that you get to take advantage of all of the new features we are always rolling out. If you have had a chance to read through this blog, you will see that over the past couple of years we have constantly been adding new and innovative features. And the great thing is that they are always included in the price. I thought I would take a moment to list a few of our recent ones...

Automatic Daily Email: Now your walkers and sitters can get an automatic email each night with their schedule for the next day. This new feature is already proving very popular.

Email Multiple Invoices with a PayPal Link: At the click of a button you can email out invoices to multiple customers with a PayPal link included.

Add Custom Fields to the Customer and Pet Screens on the Portal: Now you can add custom fields to the customer and pet screens of our customer portal. So when a customer logs in, they can add information about themselves or their pets that you want them to include.

Those are just three features of many we have added recently. Over the next month we plan to introduce a lot of new features to make our Customer Portal even more robust, so keep an eye out for that.

If you are in the market for Dog Walking and Pet Sitting software then you know that you have a lot of options to choose from. All of PetSitClick's competitors have their advantages and disadvantages, with various features to consider. At PetSitClick we think we offer the most robust and easy to use software package out there, but I am sure our competitors undoubtedly feel the same about their products as well! But what clearly sets PetSitClick apart is price.

At PetSitClick, our top rate is $49.99 a month for unlimited walkers and sitters (we have lower rates as well for smaller companies). So no matter how large your business grows, you know your software costs will remain fixed. We have companies with over 100 Dog Walkers and Pet Sitters using PetSitClick and enjoying this great rate. If you look at the prices our competitors charge, you can easily be spending hundreds of dollars a month once you get above 10 Walkers or Sitters. I can tell you from a software perspective that it makes absolutely no sense that subscription rates should increase this quickly as walkers and sitters are added to the system, so most of this additional revenue is likely ending up as profit for the company offering the software.

Now we are business of course and our goal is to make a profit too. But we are satisified that our pricing allows us to deliver an exceptional product with excellent customer service at a rate we are happy with. But please don't think our marketing strategy is just based on price! I urge you to try PetSitClick and compare us to our competitors, and I am confident you will find us superior. But if they do offer a feature or two that you like better than PetSitClick, ask yourself if this is worth the possiblity of spending hundreds or even thousands of extra dollars a year. That's a lot of dog walks and pet sits to earn that money, which would be better off in your pocket or reinvested in your business.

I want to wish everyone a successful Fall season, probably the nicest time of the year to be out walking - if you ask me :)

The nice thing about PetSitClick is that it has been designed to work on all major browsers, tablets and smartphones. Most of our customers use a laptop or desktop when they are doing a lot of data work on PetSitClick, and rely on a smartphone when they are in the field working and visiting customers.

But some of our customers have also started using PetSitCLick on tablets (i.e. iPad) and have been giving us great feedback. The nice thing about a tablet is that it allows you to use the full power of PetSitClick with the portability of a smartphone. Now you can certainly run the main PetSitClick site on a smartphone, I do it all the time with an iPhone. But after a while a screen that small can be hard on the eyes, especially when you are typing in a lot of information. The beauty of a tablet is it has a large screen but is very light so you can pretty much take it anywhere.

The use of a tablet can change a lot about how you run your business. When visiting a new client, you can type their information right into PetSitClick (assuming the tablet is internet enabled). So no more duplicate entry and keeping track of paper records. It is also easy to add new services, and you can whip up an invoice as you drink a coffee at a cafe. So it can really change things for you and let you spend more time in the field with your walkers and sitters.

Obviously a business needs to decide where to spend limited resources, but if you are looking for a business tool that can really make you mobile consider purchasing a tablet to use with PetSitClick.

I hope everyone is having a nice summer - it is hard to believe we are already in August now. Pretty soon it will be scarves and dog booties, but we still have a few weeks of summer left!

I thought I would take a quick moment to talk about software. Or to be more specific, designing software. When we set out to build PetSitClick, our goal was to create an easy to use to use yet powerful Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Software. I think we have achieved that goal, but that doesn't mean we are resting on our laurels; we are always looking to add new features and improvements. But it can be a tricky balancing act to. Seasoned users who are familiar with PetSitClick usually love new features because they can easily learn them. But, if you have too many features than new users feel overwhelmed and find it hard to grasp the basics. So you always want to make sure that new features integrate well with the existing platform.

In this vein, I thought I would talk a bit about a couple of the decisions we made when designing PetSitClick. Just to give you a peek behind the curtain so to speak :)

The inability to delete multiple customers at once.

We occasionally get complaints about this one since in PetSitClick you have to delete each customer manually one at a time. The reason we do not allow the ability to delete multiple customers at once is purely for safety reasons. In PetSitClick when you delete a customer you completely wipe out their history with PetSitClick - invoices, services, everything. So we did not want someone to accidently delete all of their customers when they were tired late at night trying to make some quick changes. In PetSitClick, if you want to delete a lot of customers, you will definitely be aware that you are doing it!

Customers can't book directly on your calendar through the customer portal.

In PetSitClick's customer portal, your customers can request a service but they can't book it directly on your calendar - that is up to you to do. We get a lot of questions about why this has been done this way so let me provide my perspective. I think asking a customer to try and set up the schedule themselves is inconvenient for them and can lead to mistakes. It is not the same as booking a hotel room online - the customer might want multiple visits during the day with different services each time. Or they want it on irregular days and different times. Or they might want it only if a specific dog walker or pet sitter is available. All of these complexities make it practically impossible to design an easy to use interface for the customer. So it really makes sense for you as the Pet Care company owner or administrator to confirm and enter the service in PetSitClick. It also leads to a happier customer since they don't have to fiddle around trying to get the services setup themselves. Sometimes you can try and automate things too much.

In the end, when choosing a Dog Walking and Pet Sitting software that is right for your business you will find the one that best fits your needs and budget. But I can assure you that the design of PetSitClick has received extensive attention in ensuring it can meet your needs as best as possible.


Cheers,

Scott
smoore@petsitmail.com

At PetSitClick we are always interested to hear from our clients who use PetSitClick to run their Dog Walking or Pet Sitting business. The following blog entry comes from Aubrey, who works for Who's Your Walkie?, owned by Tiffany Thorsen.

Tiffany Thorsen has run Who's Your Walkie?, a successful dog walking business in Santa Cruz, since September of 2008. Tiffany's passion for active living and compassion for animals and humans alike made dog walking a natural fit. A career in dog walking allows Tiffany the ability to establish lifelong connections with appreciative pet parents with the added benefit of being outdoors.

Tiffany is a bright, enthusiastic woman committed to her clients and a healthy lifestyle. As a graduate from Columbia University Teachers College in health counseling, along with studies in marketing, coaching, and customer relations, Tiffanys educational experiences foster the continued growth of her business. Little by little, Who's Your Walkie? grew into a full-time business operation employing other dog walkers to support its continued growth.

"My goal is for my employees and me to create lasting bonds with the dogs for whom we care, and to connect pet parents with a lifelong friend for their furry family member."

Finding Your Pack by Aubrey

Walking dogs lifted me up from a time of listlessness and loneliness and gave me something to look forward to every day.

When I first came to Santa Cruz I knew no one, had no connection to the city, and felt a distinct lack of roots. After a few months of looking and interviewing for your standard office jobs and finding myself incapable of getting excited about working 9 to 5 in an office, I found Who's Your Walkie.

Finally, I had found my pack.

At first, the idea of walking dogs seemed like a distraction from my goal of finding employment in my field of study, just a placeholder until I found something better to move on to. I have come to realize over the past few months, however, that these happy jaunts in the forest are more than a way to get paychecks. I feel physically, mentally, and communally healthier than I have in a long while.

The experience of being genuinely anticipated and appreciated by the dogs is a bonus all its own. Who knew that wagging tails and puppy kisses could be so fulfilling? But beyond this, my pack, including my two coworkers, has made Santa Cruz home for me. The crazy poodle, the hopping labradoodle, the eerily intelligent lab mix, and the old gentleman border collie, among others, bring a spirit to my days that I cherish.

At a BBQ recently, I was introduced to a few people who inevitably asked what I "do". As always, I smiled and said, "I walk dogs", expecting some of the raised eyebrows or a few "Oh, good for you" remarks I've encountered before. Instead, the group as a whole responded supportively and excitedly, admitting jealously of the hours I log outside or with such great dogs every day, and I felt great pride in my job. I know that it's great, but it is nice to have others acknowledge my fortune as well.

I know that I work hard each week, completing multiple hikes and having to mentally anticipate the dogs' behavior and needs. My job description and responsibilities are very different from the majority of my friends and family who are working, but the basic fact is that I take great pride in my work and strive to provide the best (and most trustworthy) service possible. It is easy to take pride in things that you love, and I genuinely care about each of our pups.

I am incredibly grateful for the changes that dog walking has brought about in my life and continue to be excited for work every day.

We have people trying PetSitClick, Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Software, all the time and it gives me the opportunity to speak to the owners of a lot of Dog Walking and Pet Sitting companies. Some are just starting out, others have large established companies, and others are in the middle of growing from a small company to a larger one. While business growth is not a bad problem to have, many owners I talk to in this situation are starting to feel overwhelmed. The basic tools that they relied upon when starting out are no longer enough to keep everything going. Walks and pet sits start getting missed, invoicing has become an unwieldy chore, and information is scattered all over the place.

When starting a new Dog Walking or Pet Sitting business, most people focus on great customer service and landing new clients. To keep their business organized, they rely on a collection of available tools, such as Microsoft Excel, appointment books, Google Calendar, emails, and other similar products. This works fine when you have 10 clients, but when you get to 50 or 100, it can become almost impossible to keep track of everything. If a Dog Walking or Pet Sitting company has 50 clients, and performs roughly 5 services a week per client, that works out to 250 individual services per week that need to be scheduled, completed, and invoiced properly. It is no wonder that the administrative side of running a Dog Walking and Pet Sitting business can make you feel like pulling your hair out!

If you are in this situation I can guarantee PetSitClick will make your life much, much easier. I have heard on numerous occasions from our clients that PetSitClick has changed their life. Because everything is one place, such as customer information, scheduling, and accounting, your entire business is integrated properly. The scheduling takes care of itself, and invoicing can be done in minutes when it used to take hours (or days). So while it can be a bit of work to start using any new software product, PetSitClick can help your business transition smoothly from a small company to a larger one and beyond.


Cheers,

Scott
smoore@petsitmail.com

PetSitClick's Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Software has all of the key things you need to keep your busy pet care business running smoothly each day. But what about growing your business as well? One feature that is not used as much as it could be is our lead's tracking functionality. It has been well documented that tracking and nurturing a leads list can significantly increase the sales of a business over time. How can you take advantage of PetSitClick to help you with this key component of growing a business?

The next time you are out for a walk with your pack and a potential customer hands you a business card and says they might be interested in your services, don't just file the business card in your wallet or purse. When you get home enter the person's information in our leads sections (Marketing->Leads) and make sure to include a follow up date. The follow up date will vary depending on the conversation you had with the potential client. For example, they might tell you they are going back to work in two months, or are interested in starting next week.

Once or twice every month, review your list and see who you need to follow up with (the leads overview screen shows the follow up date and you can simply click the column header to sort it). Not every lead you follow up with will become a customer, but you will be surprised at how impressed people will be that you remembered to contact them at the appropriate time. And if they do become a customer, you can simply edit the lead and click a button to turn them into a customer automatically in PetSitClick. Tracking which leads convert to customers will also help you figure out how you are obtaining most of your customers.

It may seem like a small thing, but tracking leads can be a great way to grow your business!

I would like to wish all of our customers in Canada a belated Happy Canada Day and our American customers a happy Fourth of July!

For the past few days this heat we have been having has been really something. If you take a look outside you will see a lot of our furry friends with their tongues hanging out. For Dog Walkers and Pet Sitters this can be more than an incovenience, since the health of your pets under your care can be affected by the warm weather. I thought I would post a couple of links to some great resources on keeping your pets cool in the hot summer sun! If anyone else has some great tips let me know and I will post them.

Hot Weather Tips from ASPCA

Ten Tips for Keeping your Dog Cool in Hot Weather

Check out our new Welcome Video here. I particularly like the dog hanging out the window.

Having worked with many Dog Walking and Pet Sitting companies, I am always amazed at the different ways companies like to manage and operate their business. Some like to invoice their customers before hand, others like to invoice after the service has been performed. PetSitClick has been designed to accommodate all of those needs. It basically falls into three main categories:

Invoicing Before the Service is Performed

Selling PrePaid Packages (i.e. $200 for a 10 walk package)

Invoicing After the Service has been performed

No matter which option you use (or a combination of all three) PetSitClick can support all of them! Log in and check out our various options today.

PetSitClick is happy to announce that is has become a Gold Level Corporate Partner with the National Association of Professional Pet Sitters (NAPPS). The mission of NAPPS is to:

•provide tools and support to foster the success of members' businesses
•promote the value of pet sitting to the public
•advocate the welfare of animals

While becoming a corporate sponsor of NAPPS provides marketing opportunities for PetSitClick, we also feel very strongly about supporting organizations such as NAPPS. Dog Walking and Pet Sitting is a growing industry and is becoming increasingly recognized as a profession. Customers place a large amount of faith in their Pet Care providers, and organizations such as NAPPS can help to build and foster this trust. If you own a Dog Walking or Pet Sitting business I highly recommend becoming a member of NAPPS to access all of their great resources.

Anyone who has read through our blog can see it has been a very busy Winter and Spring at PetSitClick. We have rolled out a ton of new features, and today I would like to talk about three more.

Customer Portal

Our new Customer Portal has arrived and is included in our monthly price. We have already had a lot of positive feedback about our new portal, and I think it is best in class. Your customers can login and request new services, view invoices and payments, and update their personal and pet information. They can even add a pet. And the great part is you have full control over what functions they can perform when setting up your portal. Please make sure to check it out!

PrePaid Tracking and Accounting

I have always felt our PrePaid service features were a little weak and needed some work. With the arrival of our new PrePaid Service module, I am confident that Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Companies that sell prepaid packages will be delighted with our new feature. PetSitClick takes care of all of the accounting for you automatically, and tracking what prepaid services a customer has remaining is a snap.

Multi Same-Day Scheduling

Although this is a smaller change, it has already proven very popular. Now you can schedule the same service up to five different times in one day (or days). It will save Dog Walking and Pet Sitting Companies a lot of time.

If you add up all the features we have implemented recently, I think you could make the case that no other Dog Walking and Pet Sitting software on the market offers as many, easy to user features for the price. Or for any price for that matter. Please make sure to sign up for our free trial to give all of our new features a spin!

It has been a while since my last blog update, almost two months! Since the launch of our rebranded PetSitClick we have all been super busy here at PetSitClick working on some new great features. Some are already available and more are coming soon. Below are a some updates.

Display Calendar

We have had a lot of requests for a calendar with a more visual feel. One that will allow company owners to get a quick overview of their company's day or upcoming week. Our new display calendar delivers on this need. With a simple easy to read layout and color coding features, keeping on top of your busy schedule will be snap. You can try out this new feature right now under our Calendar menu item.

Credit Card Billing

Now you can bill customer's credit cards directly from PetSitClick. This requires an account with Authorize.net, a major credit card gateway and is currently only available to our customers in the United States. With this feature enabled you can automatically pay a customer's invoice in seconds, with a payment record automatically created. Invoicing and payments can now be done in just minutes a month. For more details on this great new feature and how to get started please contact us at answers@petsitmail.com

Customer Portal

Our new customer portal is coming soon. This new portal can be customized with your own images and text. Customers will be able to login and make booking requests as well as view invoices, payments and completed services.

So as you can see we had a lot on our plate! More info on these features and others to come soon.

Sometimes in life (and business) you need to take one step back before you can take two steps forward. Since we launched our software last year we have received great feedback from Dog Walking and Pet Sitting companies from around the world about our product. But our branding could have been better. When we initially started PetSitClick, we launched it under the brand name of the company that owns and operates it - Bizz Support Solutions. While we still like the name of our company, as the name of our Dog Walking and Pet Sitting software it left a lot to be desired.

So late last Fall we decided to re-brand our software under a new name - "PetSitClick". And today on February 4th, 2012 we are launching our new site. While it has all the same functionality as our old software, we feel it has a much more appropriate name

But today's launch is not just about a new name. During the build of our new site we greatly increased the server architecture to ensure that all of our current customers (and new ones) will always get the great performance and reliability they have come to expect. So it is not just an investment in branding, but the future as well.

So I would like to thank all of current customers for supporting us and we look forward to sharing with you all of the great new features we have planned in the coming months!

It has been a busy but fun year around Bizz Support Solutions. I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of great people and we have produced what I think is a fantastic software product for Dog Walkers and Pet Sitters. But we are not one to rest on our laurels and we have a lot of exciting things planned for 2012. I can't go into too many details right now but as a hint one of the new features will involve GPS.

I have also had the pleasure of speaking with many owners of Dog Walking and Pet Sitting companies and it is one of the true joys of my job. It is really interesting to hear and understand how Pet Care Professionals approach their businesses. The complexity of running a company that works with animals never ceases to amaze me. But people are entrusting Dog Walkers and Pet Sitters with members of their family, so it is no surprise you have to be on top of your game in this industry.

So as 2011 draws to a close I would like to thank all of our customers for signing up and making us a trusted partner in your Pet Care business. We at Bizz Support Solutions wish everyone a safe and happy holidays and look forward to working with everyone in 2012!

Hard to believe it is already December! Where did 2011 go? I'm sure everyone is really busy right now with the Holidays but wanted to let you know about a new online payment feature we offer. All you need is a free PayPal account to make it work.

Here is how it works:

1) Add the email associated with your PayPal account to your settings (My Company->Settings->First Link on page).

2) When you are ready to email an invoice to a customer, you have an option to email the invoice with a PayPal payment link (it is a new button on the Invoice screen). When the customer gets the invoice, they can click on the link and it will take them to a PayPal screen with the invoice amount, currency and Invoice # already populated. The customer can either pay with their PayPal account or a credit card (and they don't need to have a PayPal account to use a credit card).

As with all payment types, you do need to record the payment manually in Bizz Support Solutions. But PayPal will send you an email when the customer pays and you can get the payment details (and Invoice # for each payment) from your PayPal account.

We also have some other great features coming up.

Please login and try it out.

A lot of our Pet Care Companies have been pushing us for this one so I am happy to announce that our new Dog Walker and Pet Sitter compensation tracking has been implemented. Now when you setup a service there is a field where you can indicate how much your employee will be compensated for providing that service. Plus a new report now shows you exactly how much each employee has earned for a given period of time. It is a great way to track how much each employee is owed and should save you a lot of time figuring out what to pay each employee.

Please login and try it out.

There is no doubt that there are a lot of great accounting packages out there for small business. So why choose Bizz Support Solutions? Well, first of all, Bizz Support Solutions does a lot more than just accounting. Yes we can track your customer balances, create invoices, and record payments. But it is our scheduling and automatic invoicing features that really make us perfect for Dog Walking and Pet Sitting companies.

Dog Walking and Pet Sitting companies have unique challenges beyond your average service business. The first is frequency of service. If a dog walker takes out six dogs (in a group walk) three times a day, that is 18 separate customers services to track. Multiply that over a month and you are talking a one heck of an invoicing problem. The second major challenge is scheduling your staff. It is not just telling them where the house is, your dog walkers and pet sitters need to know extra information about the pet. So it is a lot of information and coordination to keep everyone on the ball.

The beauty of Bizz Support Solutions is it solves those problems for you. The software tracks all of your services, so creating your invoices is as simple as clicking a button (literally!). From a scheduling perspective, your employees can check their schedules on their computers, smart phones, and tablets so there is no need to bother with email and printed schedules.

How much time do you spend a month figuring out customer invoices? On the scheduling side, how many hours do you spend trying to keep all of your dog walkers and pet sitters going and at the right spot with the right information? For $24.99 a month Bizz Support Solutions can greatly reduce the time lost on these non-productive activities and give you more time to grow your business and service your customers.

Give us a try and see what a major impact we can have on your business.

If I didn't love working with software so much my second career would be as a dog walker or pet sitter. I love working with animals of every stripe so I must admit I get envious of the dog walkers I see in our local parks. Being a dog walker has a lot of advantages. You get to spend time outdoors and stay in shape. Watching the seasons change throughout the year is also a nice perk. And every day you go to pick up your dogs they are excited to see you. Plus you can make a nice living as well. So all in all a pretty nice career to have, especially when most of us are stuck in cubes.

In other news, Bizz Support Solutions is now ranked #2 on Google for the search term "Dog Walking Software". So apparently the word is getting out about what a great product we have.

Today we officially launch Bizz Support Solutions-Online Software for Dog Walkers and Pet Sitters. You can read the press release here.

I would like to take a moment to thank everyone on the Bizz Support Solutions team for helping to make this happen. It has been an exciting year developing and building what I think is a fantastic product for Dog Walkers and Pet Sitters. I would also like to thank all the Dog Walkers and Pet Sitters who have signed up so far and given us great advice on how to make our product even better.

But just because we launched doesn't mean we have stopped adding improvements! We have plenty of great suggestions to incorporate in the future.

Have a great week and happy walking

At Bizz Support Solutions we take the design and accuracy of our software very seriously. For the past few months we have had a great team of testers checking out every aspect of Bizz Support Solutions. We tested the accuracy of reports, scheduling features, accounting features. Basically every aspect of Bizz Support Solutions was gone over with a fine tooth comb.

To celebrate the end of our testing phase and the upcoming official lunch we had a team celebration at a local Toronto restaurant yesterday. The food was great and it was fun after all of our hard work to have a night out. (My wife was good enough to take the photo). I just want to thank everyone again for a job well done!

When I am out walking my dog Charlie at my local dog park, I notice that the vehicles used by Dog Walkers vary greatly. I have seen groups of dogs transported in minivans, SUVS, and little hatchbacks. Depending on the style of car I can imagine each presents its own challenges. I am curious to hear from Dog Walkers out there who transport their pooches in a car. Let me know what you think is the best car for the job and I will post some of your responses. You can send me an email at my address below.

At Bizz Support Solutions we want to help you take full advantage of all our software has to offer. This has included plenty of help videos and help texts. But you just can't beat training from a real, live person. Bizz Support Solutions offers a free, one hour live training session that will get you off and running in no time.

Here is how it works. Contact Bizz Support Solutions at 1 855-777-2499 or email us at answers@bizzss.com requesting a training session. We will setup a time that is convenient for you. At the appointed time we will give you a call and start an online session to share our screens. Then the training can start.

I personally have conducted some of these sessions and I can tell you that after one hour most business owners come away with all of their questions answered and are ready to start using all Bizz Support Solutions has to offer. I think what people like most about these sessions is that they can ask any question they want and don't have to go hunting around for an answer.

So give us a call or send us an email to setup a session!

Hi everyone who has been following along as we work towards the Bizz Support Solutions launch. I am happy to tell you that we have announced our official launch date....October 11th! It has been a very busy spring and summer around Bizz Support Solutions as we finalize the software and support the companies that have already signed up. I am very confident we have a fantastic online software product for dog walking and pet sitting companies and can't wait to share it with as many as possible.

When we started Bizz Support Solutions our goal was to create a powerful, yet easy to use business software for dog walkers and pet sitters at a great price. Over the past months I have had the pleasure of speaking to people in the pet industry from around the world who have signed up to use our software. Everyone has had great suggestions for new features, and in the past couple of weeks we have introduced a bunch of them...let me list some of them for you:

Customer Portal Your customers can now log into their own portal and view invoice, payment and service information.

Support for Different Currency Display Our customers from the UK and Europe can now see currency data using their respective currency symbols.

Custom Fields You can now add custom fields to the customer screen. When employees view their assigned services on their mobile phones they will be able to see them as well.

In keeping with our promise, these new features are available now and at no extra cost. If you have an idea for a new feature, send us a suggestion!

The job is not complete until you get paid. Your relationship with your customer is a contractual one - either formal or informal. You provide a service, such as dog walking or pet sitting, and the focus of all successful entrepreneurs is to deliver excellence every time. This builds repeat business and a positive reputation. The customer is responsible to pay you in full and on time.

Too often entrepreneurs don't place the necessary emphasis on the financial aspect of their business. They are slow to invoice, allow customers to fall into arrears and lose the benefits of strong cash flow.

Invoicing should be timely and regular as clockwork. On an individual project invoicing must be done immediately upon completion of the work. When providing an on-going service, invoicing should be executed on the last day of each calendar month and every two weeks if the dollar value warrants its.

Receivables must be monitored continuously and once an account is 30 days past due, a courteous professional call is necessary to ensure payment is received promptly. If an account should fall 60 days past due, all services should be terminated until the outstanding balance is paid in full. Remember you provide a service and you cannot repossess it.

Strong cash flow is a direct benefit of proper management of your receivables. Cash in the bank allows you to take advantage of cash discounts from your suppliers, earn interest and draw down any bank loans you may have incurred.

Remember to close the loop on each job and ensure you get paid for your services.

A customer who is a dog walker asked me the other day what made Bizz Support Solutions special. Why were we worth her hard earned money? After all, she pointed out, while Bizz Support solutions is very reasonably priced, she could easily buy some desktop accounting software for a couple of hundred bucks and be done with it.

In response I gave her three reasons why I think Bizz Support Solutions is a great product for her service business...

1) The first reason is mobility. Bizz Support Solutions instantly turns your company into a web-based enterprise. Your dog walkers and pet sitters can now access all they need to on their smart phones and tablets. With desktop software you have no way to get in touch with your employees other than phoning them or texting.

2) Number two is security. Bizz Support Solutions allows you to assign different security levels to your dog walkers and pet sitters. It would make no sense to develop an application where everyone can see your important data. So Bizz Support Solutions allows you to easily adjust what data employees can see.

3) The final reason is price. Bizz Support Solutions offers these features at a price that is 80 to 90 percent cheaper than our competitors. While I won't name names, just google "online service software" and you will find them. I calculated the other day that to web enable five employees on one of these services could cost over $2,500 per year!

She seemed pretty happy with my answers and is currently giving our Beta a try. Why not try logging in and seeing what Bizz Support Solutions can do for your company?

Up here in the great white north our postal workers just went on strike. I have been struck by how there has been relatively little news coverage about it. But I guess it makes sense since most of us only get bills and flyers in the mail. Keeping in touch is a lot easier now with all the different forms of digital communications out there.

But for a lot of small businesses who rely on the postal service the strike could have a big impact. Direct mail advertising will be affected and checks in the mail will remain checks in the mail. One advantage of Bizz Support Solutions is you can email invoices and estimates, so if up till now you have been sending paper invoices, now might be a good time to try and get your customers to receive their bills through email. Plus it saves you the cost of a stamp and envelope.

I also thought that I would take the time to introduce our "unofficial" mascot here at Bizz Support Solutions - Charlie. He is a noble cock-a-poo, descended from a long history of guardian cock-a-poo's that served ancient royalty in Europe. Well that's what the breeder told me anyway. But he keeps things light around Bizz Support Solutions and reminds us that its not all business.

No matter how your run your pet business, whether its a shoebox with receipts or an expensive accounting system, you want to keep your data safe.  Losing your data could mean lost business and the nightmare of trying to reconstruct your missing information.

At Bizz Support Solutions I know you are entrusting us with your data and I take that very seriously.  Our servers are provided by Zebrahost, which utilizes state of the art datacenters across the United States to keep your data safe.  They are experts in keeping our servers running and are on the job 24/7.  Beyond this, we make daily encrypted backups of our databases and the information is stored in separate datacenters.  We use SSL encryption and our servers are protected by a robust firewall.

Because of all this I am confident that if, God forbid, a meteor were to destroy our primary datacenters, we could access our backups and have things up and running in a couple of days. So if you are considering choosing Bizz Support Solutions but are a little uncertain about using a cloud based solution, I hope this information will help you make a better informed decision.