Changelog

Happy Thursday! This update is all about smoother workflows, a better product experience, and a little something that lets you spread the Scritches love while earning free time on your subscription.

Refer a Friend

Give a month, get a month
Scritches now has a referral program! When you share your unique link and a friend subscribes, you both get a free month.

How it works:

1. Share your referral link from the new “Refer a Friend” page

2. Your friend signs up and gets their first month free

3. Once they complete their first paid month, you’ll get a free month too

Your link can be shared anywhere: email, text, or social media. Rewards are currently managed manually, so once your referral completes their first month, I’ll apply your credit.

👉 You’ll find your personal referral link right in your settings under Refer a Friend.
Referred a friend without a link? Let us know at support@scritches.io

Quality of Life Updates

Instant Booking Confirmations
For businesses that want a faster booking flow, there’s now a toggle to auto-confirm bookings. When enabled, clients booking online will immediately receive a confirmation message and email. On your end, the booking will be created with a “Confirmed” status right away. Configure in your Online Booking Settings.

Reduced “An Error has Occurred” Messages
Fixed a long-standing issue where app deployments triggered a confusing “Error has Occurred” message that only went away after a manual page refresh. Scritches will now auto-refresh in these cases, reducing perceived errors dramatically.

Archiving Instead of Deleting
Clients, Pets, and Services can no longer be deleted outright; they’ll now be archived instead. This protects related data like bookings and invoices, preserves historical records, and prevents potential errors. It is also useful for immediately revoking client portal access, as well as reestablishing clients/services that were previously discontinued.

Booking Page Cover Photos
You can now reorder cover photos for your booking landing page to better match your branding

Easier Report Card Sharing
Added an option to share Report Cards via link or through your phone’s native sharing tools (like Messages or WhatsApp). Great for those who prefer texting updates directly.

Review Booster Improvements
Added a toggle to skip clients who already have a review on file. This keeps automatic review requests focused only on new or unreviewed clients and avoids excessive email sending. Configure in your Review Booster Settings.

Booking Landing Page Service Description Truncation
Clients can now view your full service option descriptions without the text being truncated.

Swiss Localization
Added proper Swiss formatting for addresses, phone numbers, and currency (CHF).

Report Card Design Tweaks
Polished the layout and design for a cleaner, easier-to-read presentation.

Invoice Control
You can now manually mark invoices as Draft → Unpaid. This will make the invoice visible to your client and enable online payments if Stripe is connected.

And of course…
Plenty of smaller bug fixes and refinements under the hood.

That’s all for this round! Thank you, as always, for the continued feedback.
If you haven’t yet, check out your referral link and help your friends discover Scritches ✌️

Big update today! We’re rolling out a refreshed pricing structure to better match where Scritches is headed, plus introducing a new feature that makes your visit updates more personal than ever.

Report Card Videos

Report Cards are now even better. On the Solo Pro plan, you can attach up to three 1-minute-long videos to Report Cards.

Videos are fast to upload, mobile-friendly, and integrate into the same clean Report Card design.

Updated Pricing Plans

Until now, Scritches has offered just two options: Free and Pro. Moving forward, you’ll see four tiers:

• Free – A great starting point to test the waters

• Solo – Essential tools for running your business. This is the equivalent of the previous Pro plan

• Solo Pro – Expanded features for those who wish to have them

• Growth – Coming soon, for those managing staff and larger teams

View full details on the pricing page.

Free Plan Improvements

We’re giving everyone a little more breathing room:

• Client limit raised from 4 to 5

• No more booking limits, schedule as many as you need each month

Feature Changes

To keep the new tiers balanced, a few features are moving:

• Review Booster and Google Calendar sync are now a part of the Solo Pro plan

• If you already purchased the old Pro plan, don’t worry, you’ll be grandfathered in with continued access to these features.

• If you’re on Free and thinking of upgrading soon, reach out to support and you can be grandfathered too. The final date for grandfather requests is October 24th.

Online Payments Just Got Cheaper

Previously, Scritches added a 5% fee on online payments. That’s gone! Now you’ll only pay Stripe’s standard fee of 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction.

You can choose whether to absorb the fee yourself or pass it through to clients at checkout.

That means more money stays in your and your client’s pocket, and you have flexibility in how you handle payments.

Promotion 🎉

The 20% promotional code is still running, now on monthly plans as well! Use code SCRITCHES2025 when checking out.

• Active now through October 18th

• Works on both new subscriptions and upgrades

That’s everything for this update! As always, thank you for being part of Scritches and for sharing the feedback. ✌️

Happy Friday, everyone! Today, we’re releasing an exciting new feature to simplify your onboarding and make collecting information from clients a breeze.

Intake Forms give you one clean flow to gather client info, pet details, and signed agreements, and integrate with existing Scritches features: online booking, the pet parent portal, and client & pet profiles to keep your process smooth and info centralized.

See the Help Center for detailed feature information 👉 https://help.scritches.io/collections/1432531-intake-forms

What’s Included

Everyone can create one intake form for free. To build multiple forms and for full flexibility, you’ll need a Solo Pro membership. This is a new subscription tier to help Scritches scale, and will house more advanced features in the future (think email marketing, SMS, report card videos, etc.). Keep an eye out for the upcoming pricing model update early next week to learn more, or check out the Scritches Pricing Page.

Fully Customizable Forms

From the new Intake Forms link in your sidebar, you can create fully customizable forms. Start with default fields from client and pet profiles, then rearrange, require, or remove them as needed.

Add unlimited custom questions:

• Short/long text

• Dropdowns, radio, and checkboxes

• Date, time, or both

• File uploads

• Vaccination records with expiration tracking

When a form is submitted, you’ll be notified right away. You can view, process, or delete it. Processing creates a new client/pet profile or merges details into an existing one. If the client is logged into their portal, forms auto-populate with their current info so they can just review and confirm.

Agreement Requirements

You can attach required agreements directly to intake forms. If a client doesn’t already have a signed copy on file, they’ll be asked to sign before submitting the form.

Agreements + intake = one smooth onboarding flow.

Online Booking Integration

Each service can have its own tailored intake form. Need extra details for overnights? Assign a special overnight intake. Want one universal flow? Assign a single form across all services.

That means when clients book online, they’re prompted for the exact information you need.

Portal Integration

On the new Portal settings page, you can set an intake form as required for registration.

This ensures new clients provide everything you need before accessing the portal. Existing “Active” clients or anyone with a submission already on file won’t need to repeat it.

Now, once that portal welcome email is sent, you can be sure your client will give you all of the info you need.

Vaccine Tracking

You can now require vaccination records as part of your intake forms, or upload them directly on a pet profile. Both clients and business users can add vaccine documents and set expiration dates.

Once saved, Scritches takes care of the rest:

• Expiration Tracking – An icon will appear around the app 30 days before a vaccine expires, giving you and your client plenty of time to update records.

• Expired Status – A different icon makes it clear when a vaccine is no longer valid

• Flexible Uploads – Documents and expiration dates can be submitted through intake forms during onboarding or added later on the pet profile at any time.

This feature works hand-in-hand with Intake Forms, online booking, and client profiles to give you a full picture of each pet’s health requirements.

Real-World Use Cases

Intake forms help you move away from paper packets and scattered spreadsheets, putting all client and pet information into one place inside Scritches. They’re especially valuable for:

1. Onboarding & Compliance

   • Replace emailed questionnaires or paper contracts by gathering client details, pet profiles, and signed agreements in one digital flow.

   • Require vaccination records with uploads and expiration dates before confirming bookings.

   • Integrate forms directly into online booking for a polished first-time experience.

   • Or require them at portal signup to guide clients through a structured onboarding flow.

2. Ongoing Updates & Records

   • Send existing clients a pre-filled update form each year to refresh addresses, emergency contacts, medications, and routines.

   • Collect info even from clients who don’t want to create an account, simply share a link or send an email.

3. Leads & Specialty Needs

   • Add lightweight inquiry forms to your website to capture new leads right where they find you.

   • Create focused forms like “New Pet Add-On” or “Training Goals” that feed directly into Scritches, keeping requests out of messy email threads.

   • Repurpose forms for any type of information you need, not just client intake.

You’re not locked into a single workflow. Use them however you want: send them one-off, or standardize them into your business’s process. This is smarter, automated data collection that adapts to your business and contributes to Scritches’ larger vision of not boxing you into rigid processes.

Other Updates

• Calendar styling and bug fix – The monthly view should be much more usable now that the weeks properly align, and styling has been tweaked to fit more info

• Pet Profile Picture Placeholders – Updated the default profile picture for pets to match the Scritches brand. They’re super cute, trust me.

• Pet Profile Changes - When creating a pet, the only fields required are now Name and Species for greater flexibility. Additionally, Vet Name, Vet Phone, and Vet Address have been added to pet profiles.

• Lots of bug fixes, as always

If you experience any issues with this new update, please share them or any feedback to the feedback portal! That’s it for now folks ✌️

This week, we have an update with more refinements than sweeping additions, but these changes should noticeably smooth out your daily workflow.

Expect larger feature additions like Intake Forms and Staff Management in the coming months!

Flexible Invoicing

Invoicing is no longer locked to one booking per invoice. You can now:

• Group multiple bookings onto a single invoice (perfect for weekly or monthly billing)

• Add new bookings to an existing invoice

• Reassign bookings between invoices

• Or skip invoicing altogether for things like Meet & Greets

For example, you might run a client’s dog walks all week, then send them one invoice on Friday. Or you could bill monthly for a standing boarding arrangement. And if a client just books a casual Meet & Greet? No need to generate an invoice at all.

This flexibility should match more real-world workflows while still staying compatible with the old one-to-one approach if that’s your style.

Automatic Availability Blocking After Limit

Thanks to your feedback, stay services like Overnights and Boarding now respect booking limits automatically.

Here’s how it works: set a daily limit for a service in your Availability settings. If you configure Overnights with a limit of “1 per day,” and a client books September 1–5, your calendar will automatically show you as unavailable on September 2–4. No more manual blocking, no more double-bookings.

This feature gives you the same control as Service Window Limits, but applied across full days. It’s flexible enough to use on any service, and should cut down on administrative overhead.

Client & Pet Notes

You could previously add a single note per client or pet, but the experience wasn’t great. Now you’ll find centralized note views on bookings, client profiles, and pet profiles.

You can create as many notes as you’d like, with full text formatting, and review them in the right places without hunting around. Think medication instructions, temperament updates, or quick reminders, all neatly organized where you need them.

Smaller Improvements

• Calendar performance boost – Events now load month by month instead of all at once. This cuts down on large queries and makes the calendar feel much faster.

• Pet Parent Portal fix – Client statuses now properly switch to Active the first time they log in.

• Branding upgrade – Your online booking logo now carries through to invoices, receipts, and PDFs

A Public Roadmap

I’ve started maintaining a public roadmap: feedback.scritches.io/roadmap.

This is where you’ll see both major feature efforts and smaller user-submitted improvements. You can also upvote what matters most to you, which I weigh heavily when deciding what to build next.

Check it out, follow along, and let me know what you’d like to see!

That’s all for now. Thanks as always for using Scritches and for sharing the feedback that helps me keep improving it ✌️

Sending visit updates should feel delightful, not like homework. Pet parents want to know how things went, see a happy face or two, and feel confident about what’s next. Report Cards make that easy. They’re clean, friendly, and built to turn “How was the visit?” into “Aww, that’s perfect.”

With Report Cards in Scritches, you can share exactly what matters and skip what doesn’t. Photos, checklists, moods, notes, and even next appointment booking & review requests to invite pet parents into action.

How It Works

After a visit wraps up, open the booking and create a Report Card from the calendar event or the booking details page. For stay-based bookings like overnights, boarding, and daycare, you can send as many Report Cards as you want during the stay. Think nightly updates, morning check-ins, or a final summary at pickup.

Each Report Card can include:

• Photo showcase

• Visit checklist

• Pet moods like happy, calm, anxious, playful

• Freeform visit notes

• Next appointment info with a clear Book Now call to action

• Review Booster integration so you can invite feedback when the moment feels great

Every section is optional. Turn pieces on or off to match the visit and your style.

Customizable for Every Service

Create Report Card templates for different services so you never start from scratch. A dog walk can have a tailored checklist and mood set, while a cat drop-in can focus on litter box, feeding, and enrichment. Templates help you stay consistent while still feeling personal.

You control the layout too. Customize sections, hide what you don’t need, and focus attention on the story you want to tell.

Designed For Delight & Momentum

These Report Cards were built mobile-first. Photos load quickly, text is easy to read, and buttons are sized for thumbs. Pet parents get a polished, modern experience that makes your care feel premium.

The next appointment section lets you keep pet parents in the loop and includes a Book Now button that points them right where they need to go. Fewer back-and-forth messages, more confirmed bookings. And when you enable Review Booster inside a Report Card, you can gently ask for a rating once the good vibes are high. Positive reviews can flow to Google, Facebook, Yelp, or Nextdoor, while private feedback still comes straight to you so you can improve with confidence.

Quick Start

1. Open any booking, then choose Create Report Card from the calendar event or the booking details page

2. Pick a template or start fresh

3. Add photos, check items, & jot notes

4. Preview to make sure everything looks perfect, then send the report via email!

In Other News

Here are some other improvements I’ve made along the way:

• Get a QR code for your online booking page

  

• Update the bookings display for better management of pending/upcoming/in progress bookings

• Improved design of the Clients page

• Added Nextdoor as an external site to the Review Booster

• Minor improvements to the calendar view for better tracking of dates

• As always, more UI tweaks and bug fixes

See an Issue or Have Feedback?

I try to make everything perfect before releasing, but the reality is that things will be missed. If you see any issues or have ideas for improvement, head over to the Feedback Forum and let me know!

That’s all for now folks ✌️

Let’s be real, asking for reviews can feel a little awkward.

Even when you know a client loved your care, it’s easy to overthink when to ask or how to say it. But the truth is, reviews are one of the most powerful tools for growing your pet care business. They build trust, boost bookings, and show new clients they’re in good hands.

Review Booster takes the pressure off by helping you collect feedback in a natural, automated way, so you can get more great reviews without chasing them down or making it weird.

How It Works

After a booking ends, you can send a review request to the client, either manually or automatically. They’ll see a quick message where they can leave a star rating and optional feedback. It’s simple and smooth, designed to feel like a natural part of the care experience.

You control what counts as a “positive” review (like 4 stars or higher), and set different follow-up messages depending on the rating.

• Positive reviews? You can guide clients to post them on Google, Facebook, or Yelp.

• Not-so-positive? You’ll still get the feedback privately so you can take it in, make improvements, and move forward without it being public.

💡 Coming soon! You’ll be able to request reviews directly inside Report Cards too. This will catch pet parents at the most opportune moment!

Fully Customizable to Fit Your Voice

Inside your Review Booster settings, you’ll find full control over how Review Booster works for you:

• Choose when requests get sent (manually or auto after bookings)

• Write your own request message and follow-up responses

• Set your star threshold for what’s considered “positive”

• Pick which external platforms to promote (Google, Facebook, Yelp)

You’ll also see stats about reviews sent, received, and your average rating in your dashboard.

Build Trust Right on Your Booking Page

Once you start getting reviews, you can put them to work. In your landing page settings, add a review showcase or just a clean star rating and count right on your public booking page.

That way, new clients don’t have to guess whether you’re the real deal, they’ll see the love from past clients right away.

Why Reviews Matter in Pet Care

When pet parents are choosing a sitter, walker, or caretaker, they’re looking for someone they can trust. And while credentials and pricing matter, nothing builds confidence like seeing other people vouch for your service.

Reviews are emotional proof. They help clients feel good about booking with you, and they can seriously grow your business over time.

👀 Keep an eye on the Scritches Help Center for full details on how to use the Review Booster.

In Other News

When not working on new features, I’m always looking to improve the Quality of Life in Scritches based on your feedback. Here are some smaller improvements that have been made:

• Automatic Booking Status Completion - Booking statuses will now automatically be marked as “Completed” when the last service’s end time is past. This keeps things in sync for the new Review Booster and means a little less manual organizing work for you.

• Service Window Booking Limits - Better manage your availability and avoid getting overbooked by setting a limit on the bookings that can be made in a service window.

• Quickly add multiple time slots per day - You can now quickly apply multiple service time slots to each day when making a booking as a provider. Setting up a client with two weeks of morning and evening dog walks? This should be much faster now.

• International support - Scritches was initially made with the US support first in mind. However, I want to support all major English-speaking countries. You’ll now see better formatting for phone numbers and addresses based on where you live.

• Reset Password - A basic but necessary feature now works for you and your clients

• Better mobile support - You're on the go, and Scritches should be too. I’ve made lots of tweaks to make using the browser app on your phone a bit less painful. This is an ongoing process, and something I hope to keep improving on!

• And as always, lots and lots of minor bug fixes and UX tweaks

See an issue, want to leave some feedback, or request a feature? Head over to the Feedback Forum and let me know!

That’s all for now folks ✌️

Today brings a much-requested improvement to scheduling for stay-based services like overnight sitting, pet boarding, and dog day care.

You can now enable Stay Scheduling for any service and choose whether it's billed per night (like overnights or boarding) or per day (like day care). This changes how these services are booked, billed, and displayed, making things feel a lot more natural and real-world-friendly.

With stay scheduling enabled, you and pet parents schedule with a range of days or nights, and you can capture specific arrival and departure times. Your calendar stays cleaner too: stays show as full-day events and float above your regular appointments instead of cluttering up your hour-by-hour view.

Pet Parent booking:

You can also configure arrival and departure windows for each day of the week, super handy if you want to control drop-off and pick-up times for these stays.

This is just the start. While this update might seem small on the surface, it’s a big step toward properly supporting these common pet care services with a lot going on under the hood. I’ll keep building on it over time, especially based on your feedback and real-world use!

New Support Widget

Need help? Click the little widget in the bottom-right while logged in.
It includes handy links, instant messaging, and a new AI chatbot. The bot's still getting its paws under it (it learns from the help center, which is still growing), but you can always ask it to connect you to a human or email me directly at support@scritches.io.

Other Improvements

• Lots of small bug fixes

• Fixed a few issues with automatic surcharges

• Redesigned provider booking flow. It’s now cleaner, smoother, and supports both appointments and stay services

• Cancelled bookings no longer show up in Scritches or Google Calendar

• Mini calendar in the sidebar now has dot indicators to help visualize busy days

• You can now toggle 12-hour vs 24-hour time format in Calendar Settings

• Miscellaneous UI tweaks and polish

• “Time Off” is renamed to Blocked Time. Update your blocked time here