Building your service catalog

Sidebar: Services. The filter tabs across the top are All, Appointments, Apt Add-ons and Boarding Add-ons. Press Add Service to create one.

The fields that matter

• Service Name and an optional short Code (up to 10 characters, such as STD or DOG-F) used on kennel cards and reports.
• Service Categories — this is the important one, and you can tick more than one:
• Standalone Appointment — bookable on its own, such as a full groom.
• Appointment Add-on — offered during an appointment, such as a nail trim.
• Boarding/Daycare Add-on — offered during a stay, such as play time.
• Can be added to — for appointment add-ons, restrict which parent services they attach to. Leave it empty and the add-on is available everywhere.
• Duration (minutes) — 5 to 480. Required unless the service is add-on only.
• Price. Turn on Variable Pricing and this becomes a starting price that staff finalise at the appointment, which is how you handle "depends on the coat".
• Buffer Time (minutes) — blocked out after every booking of this service for clean-up and turnaround. Buffer time is invisible to clients but protects the schedule.
• Requires Exclusive Attention — the assigned staff member cannot be double-booked while this runs.
• Staff Commission (%) — feeds commission calculations in payroll.
• Active — inactive services stay in history but disappear from booking.

Pricing beyond the base price

Alaga does not price services by breed or size. Three other levers exist:

• Variable pricing, above, for judgement calls.
• Weight-based rates for boarding and daycare, under Business Settings, Facility Settings.
• Pricing Rules under Business Settings, Pricing Rules, for holiday, peak-date and day-of-week surcharges. A rule has a type (holiday or special date, day of week, or date range), what it applies to (all, appointments, boarding or daycare), a price multiplier such as 1.15 for a 15 percent surcharge, and an optional flat surcharge on top.

Deleting a service

Alaga checks whether the service has ever been used. If it appears on an appointment, an invoice line or a waitlist entry, it is deactivated instead of deleted, so historical revenue keeps its labels. Only a service that has never been used is fully removed.