PetGroomBossPro Blog — Repeat Appointments

The Recurring Clients List: Every Repeat Grooming Series in One Place

Pending Jobs is about the next few days. The Recurring Clients list is about the long run. It is where every active repeat grooming series lives, and it is where you go when something about a client's schedule changes for good. If Pending Jobs is the daily screen, this is the weekly or monthly one.

Series Versus Visits

Confirming individual visits is covered in Keeping Each Visit's Planned Day, Time and Van With One Click. That is work on the visit level: one appointment at a time, usually tomorrow's.

The Recurring Clients list works on the series level. A series is the agreement behind the visits: this client, this address, this service, this frequency, this weekday, this time, this van, this price. Change something on the series and every upcoming visit follows. Change something on a single visit and only that visit changes.

What You See on the List

Each row on the Recurring Clients list is one active series. At a glance you can see who the client is, what they get, how often, and the slot they are on. That makes the list useful just to read, before you change anything:

• How many repeat clients each van carries.
• Which weekdays are heavy and which have room.
• Who is on every 4 weeks, every 6, every 8, monthly or custom days.
• Which series are getting close to their last written visit.

The Five Things You Can Do

From a client's series on the list, you can:

• Change the van for upcoming visits, for example when you add a second van and split the routes.
• Change the day for upcoming visits, when a client's week changes.
• Change the time for upcoming visits, when they need you earlier or later.
• Change the price for upcoming visits, for a yearly price change or a new add-on they want every time.
• Extend the series to write more visits on the same slot, or stop it when the client is leaving.

Every one of those works going forward. Visits already groomed, and their invoices, stay exactly as they were. Each has its own article in this series; the day, time and van changes are in Changing a Repeat Grooming Client's Day, Time or Van Going Forward.

A Monthly Review Habit

The Recurring Clients list rewards a quick look once a month. Some things worth checking:

• Series running low. Extend them before the last visit so a good client never drops off.
• Overloaded days. If one van's Tuesday is packed and Thursday is light, think about moving a client or two the next time you talk to them.
• Old prices. If you changed your service list, check which long-standing series are still on the old price, and decide whether to update them.
• Clients who left. If someone told the groomer they are moving, stop their series so their visits stop showing up on Pending Jobs.

Fifteen minutes with the list once a month is usually enough. The payoff is a book of repeat clients that stays current, rather than one that slowly fills with old prices, missing extensions and clients who left months ago.

Where the Pets Fit In

The pets are not set on the series row itself; they live with the client's visits. Each visit holds the pets at that home with name, Dog or Cat, breed, size, coat, rabies due date and cut notes, and the next visit fills in from the last one. So when the groomer updates a cut note or the office types in a new rabies due date, the following visits carry it.

That is why changing a series on the Recurring Clients list never makes you re-enter a pet. You are changing when and where and how much, not who. More on that in Pets Carried Onto Every Visit: Why Nobody Re-Types the Dog on a Repeat Grooming Schedule.

Who Should Use It

In a one-van business, the owner usually handles the Recurring Clients list along with everything else. In a bigger shop, it makes sense to give it to whoever runs the office, using office user roles so the right people can make changes. Groomers themselves work from their phones and do not need it; if a client tells the groomer they want a new day, the groomer passes it along and the office changes the series.

To see how the Recurring Clients list fits with fixed slots, Pending Jobs and billing, go back to the recurring grooming software page.