Grooming
Book grooming appointments, capture release agreements, and run mobile grooming with geolocation.
Booking a grooming appointment
-
Go to Grooming → + New appointment
Click Grooming in the sidebar, then + New appointment. You can also book from the patient's profile.
-
Select the patient, services, and groomer
Choose the patient, the grooming services (bath, haircut, nail trim, ear cleaning, etc.), and the groomer. Services and prices are configured in Settings → Grooming → Services.
-
Set the date and time
Pick from available slots. The groomer's calendar shows existing appointments so you can avoid double-booking. Appointment duration is the sum of the selected services' configured lengths. Each service can run longer for a large-breed full groom than a cat bath, matched by the patient's species and size class. A service with no length set for that species/size falls back to 60 minutes.
-
Save
The appointment is booked. A reminder is sent to the owner 24 hours before (if reminders are enabled). The release agreement will be required before the appointment can start.
Requests from online booking
An appointment an owner requests from the public booking page or the owner portal lands as a pending request on the Grooming → Online requests tab (the notification bell also links to a standalone Grooming requests page), not as an immediate booking. Confirm a request to turn it into a scheduled appointment with the requested patient, services, and time; decline it with a reason sent back to the owner.
If your clinic requires a deposit for online bookings (Settings → Grooming → Online booking deposit), the request is held pending payment until the owner pays through a hosted checkout link.
Release agreement
A signed release agreement is required before any grooming appointment can be marked as In progress. The agreement covers liability for reactions to products, matting, pre-existing conditions, and anesthesia-free grooming risks.
To collect the agreement:
- In-person: open the appointment, click Collect release, and the client signs on a tablet or phone
- Remote: click Send release link to send the owner a link they can sign from their phone before arriving
Once signed, the agreement is stored on the patient's record and does not need to be re-signed at every appointment by default. If your clinic wants owners to renew it periodically (e.g. once a year), set an expiration on the release template in Settings → Forms & consent. Past that many days, the signature stops counting and the owner is prompted to sign again. You can also require a fresh signature whenever you publish a new version of the release template.
Chartling blocks moving a grooming appointment from On site to In progress if no signed release agreement exists for that patient. Collect the agreement at check-in.
Report cards
Send owners a quick before/after update the same way boarding and daycare do. From a completed or in-progress appointment, add a note, demeanor tags, and before/after photos. Publish to portal makes it visible in the owner portal with no notification; Send to owner publishes it and lets you choose email, SMS, or both.
Mobile grooming
Grooming appointments can be marked as Mobile to use Chartling's mobile grooming mode. Mobile grooming features include:
- Route tracking: an opt-in setting your clinic turns on; when enabled, a groomer holding
grooming.route.trackcan record their own route while on mobile appointments. It's private to that groomer. This isn't a shared dispatch/audit view for managers. - Service radius: your clinic's service radius (configured in Settings → Clinic profile, alongside your distance-unit preference) controls which addresses are eligible for mobile bookings. Radius is stored in km but displayed in your clinic's distance unit (mi or km)
- Mobile schedule view: groomers can view their day's mobile route from the mobile-optimized grooming view
| Appointment status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Scheduled | Appointment booked; reminder queued |
| En route | Mobile only: groomer is traveling to the address |
| On site | Client has arrived (in-facility) or groomer has arrived at the address (mobile); release required next |
| In progress | Grooming underway; release agreement confirmed |
| Drying | In-facility only: grooming done, pet drying before pickup |
| Ready for pickup | In-facility only: pet is ready; owner can be notified |
| Completed | Appointment finished; invoice drafted |
| No-show | Client never arrived |
| Cancelled | Appointment cancelled; no charge |
Mobile appointments flow through en route → on site; in-facility appointments skip straight to on site and add drying → ready for pickup after grooming is done.
FAQ
Not automatically. By default, a signed release is stored indefinitely and reused for future appointments at the same clinic. If you want a fresh signature on a schedule (e.g. once a year), set a validity period on the release template in Settings → Forms & consent: once a signed copy passes that age, it stops counting at check-in and the owner is prompted to sign again.
Go to Settings → Grooming. The services themselves come from Chartling's platform catalog (bath, full groom, nail trim, etc.). You don't create custom services or descriptions. What you can do is add price and duration overrides per species and/or size class for any catalog service, so a large-dog full groom can cost more (and take longer) than a cat bath. The species list matches your patient records exactly (dog, cat, rabbit, bird, ferret, guinea pig, small mammal, reptile, equine, other). Anything without an override charges the platform's default price and uses a 60-minute default length; the online booking page always requests a slot long enough for the longest matching row per service, never shorter than the actual work.
Yes. Each groomer has their own calendar. The booking form shows all groomers' availability for the selected date. Appointments are assigned to a specific groomer and appear separately on each groomer's schedule view.
Set your service radius in Settings → Clinic profile. It's a general org setting shared with your distance-unit preference, not a grooming-specific one. When booking a mobile appointment, Chartling checks the client's address against your clinic's location. Addresses outside the radius show a warning (you can still override and book). The radius is stored in km; your distance unit setting controls whether it displays as miles or kilometers.
Status steps and Back one step
On the grooming board, Ready (which texts the owner) and Picked up (which closes the groom) ask you to confirm first. Every card has Back one step to fix a wrong tap.