While your business grows and you hire more people certain aspects of your business become exponentially more difficult to manage. Today we are releasing two major features that aim to ease two of the big ones: Schedule Management and Quality Control.
Approvable Messages
Using Time To Pet’s built in messaging system to communicate with your Clients is a great way to keep track of what is being said between your staff and clients. It allows for near instantaneous communication that is forever stored and attached to that Client’s profile.
Since messages are sent directly to the Client it is important that they always reflect the professionalism and brand that you want your business to project. Compound the busy schedules our staff keep with the inevitable mistakes that are made typing on a mobile device and it can be challenging.
Approvable messages allow you to configure Time To Pet so that all messages sent from your Staff are first added to an approval queue. An admin or office manager can then view the message and make any changes before ultimately approving or rejecting the message. Only once a message has been approved will it be shown to your clients.
By default messages do not require approval. To enable this feature:
- Visit your Permissions Configuration page.
- Locate the option labelled “Post Messages Without Approval”. If checked this will allow staff members to send messages directly to clients without first requiring approval.
- Uncheck “Post Messages Without Approval”.
- You will be notified by email whenever there is a new message that needs approving. You can see all messages that require approval by visiting your Approvals Dashboard.
Approvable Time Off Requests
As your head count grows it can become increasingly difficult to ensure that all of your clients are always covered. Especially when the holidays come around. Just as your needs from Clients increase, the time off requests from your staff increase.
Time To Pet now gives you the ability to screen time off requests from staff and determine their appropriateness before ultimately accepting or rejecting them. By default time off requests do not first require approval. To enable this feature:
- Visit your Permissions Configuration page.
- Locate the option labelled “Request Time Off Without Approval”. If checked this will allow staff members to request time off without first requiring approval.
- Uncheck “Request Time Off Without Approval”.
- You will be notified by email whenever there is a new time off request that needs approving. You can see all time off requests that require approval by visiting your Approvals Dashboard.
- Staff members will receive an email once their time off request has either been approved or rejected. If rejected you can leave an optional message with more details.
Company Time Off Calendar
You can now optionally give staff access to a read only version of your entire company’s time off calendar. When enabled this can give your staff members a better understanding of who is already off and allow them to make more informed requests.
By default the Company Time Off Calendar is not enabled. To enable this feature:
- Visit your Permissions Configuration page.
- Locate the option labelled “Can View Company Time Off Calendar”. By default this is unchecked for Staff members.
- Check “Can View Company Time Off Calendar”.
- Staff will now have access to the Time Off Calendar underneath the My Schedule link.
