Notifications & Emails

Goodstay sends automated notifications to keep pet owners informed and to keep facility owners in the loop on key activity. Notifications can be sent via email and, optionally, via SMS text message.

The Settings → Notifications page is split into two subtabs:

• Customer Notifications — what your clients receive (reminders, confirmations, vaccination alerts, etc.).
• Facility Notifications — what you receive about activity in your kennel.

Vaccination Reminders

Automated emails are sent to pet owners at 60 days and 30 days before their pet's vaccinations expire. These reminders include the pet's name, vaccine type, expiration date, and a prompt to schedule a vet visit.

The daily run is controlled by the Vaccination expiration reminders toggle in the Email Automations panel (Settings → Notifications → Customer Notifications), alongside the daycare and grooming reminder switches. Turning it off stops only these automatic 60/30-day owner emails — the vaccination alerts page's per-alert Notify button, the staff expired-vaccine digest, and booking-time compliance checks all keep working.

Daycare Reminders

If enabled, automated reminder emails (and SMS, if configured) are sent to pet owners the evening before a recurring daycare day. For example, if a dog is booked for Wednesday, the owner receives a "Reminder: Buddy is expected for daycare tomorrow" message on Tuesday evening (the reminder run goes out at 7:00 PM). Reminders cover every confirmed daycare visit — recurring or one-off.

To enable or disable daycare reminders, go to Settings → Notifications → Customer Notifications and use the Daycare reminders toggle in the Email Automations panel.

Grooming Appointment Reminders

If enabled, automated reminder emails (and SMS, if configured) are sent to pet owners the evening before a grooming appointment (7:00 PM). The message includes the pet name, appointment date and drop-off time, the services booked, the assigned groomer, and your facility name and phone number. Only confirmed appointments are reminded — a pending grooming request gets no reminder email or text until your team confirms it.

To enable or disable grooming reminders, use the Grooming reminders toggle in the same Email Automations panel.

One Reminder Per Owner

If an owner has several pets booked on the same day, they no longer get a separate message for each pet. Daycare reminders, grooming reminders, and check-in reminders are sent once per owner, per day, per service type — and the single message names all of that owner's pets booked that day. (Daycare and grooming reminders go out as email and text; the check-in reminder is text-only.)

For example, if Sam has Buddy and Luna both booked for daycare on Wednesday, Sam receives one reminder mentioning both pets, rather than two near-identical messages.

This deduplication applies separately to each service type. An owner with both a daycare booking and a grooming appointment on the same day still receives one daycare reminder and one grooming reminder — just never more than one of each.

Package Balance Notifications

When a daycare package is running low, automated emails are sent to the pet owner at three thresholds:

• 5 days remaining — Friendly heads-up with current balance
• 2 days remaining — Urgent reminder to purchase a renewal
• 0 days remaining — Package depleted notification with renewal pricing

These notifications are triggered automatically when a dog is checked in and a package day is deducted.

Pre-Check Auto-Send

Automatic sending of Pre-Check forms can be turned on or off per service type — Boarding, Daycare, and Grooming each have their own toggle in the Email Automations panel under Settings → Notifications → Customer Notifications. This lets you, for example, require a pre-check for boarding stays but skip it for quick grooming visits.

See the communication article for full details on configuring Pre-Check auto-send and what the form covers.

Booking Confirmations

Goodstay can confirm bookings to your clients automatically — an email (and a text, when SMS is enabled and the client hasn't opted out) that names the pet, the service, and the details: check-in and check-out dates for a stay, the visit date for daycare, date and time for a grooming appointment.

Off by default — to turn confirmations on, open Settings → Notifications → Customer Notifications and enable Send booking confirmations (in the Email Automations panel), then choose which services they cover with the Boarding / Daycare / Grooming switches beneath it. Confirmations then go out whenever a booking is created or confirmed for a client — staff-created reservations and portal bookings alike. Portal and online bookings arrive as pending requests, so their confirmation is sent at the moment your team confirms them — never before anyone has looked.

Staff keep per-booking control on the reservation form: the Send confirmation to client checkbox is pre-ticked from these toggles, can be unticked to suppress a one-off send (backfills, test bookings), and can be ticked to force a send even when the facility toggles are off.

A reservation only ever receives one confirmation — creating it confirmed and then re-confirming never double-texts anyone. With the master switch off, Goodstay keeps its legacy behavior: a text-only confirmation when staff confirm a booking that arrived through online booking.

Facility-Owner Notifications

As a facility owner you can opt in to email alerts for the events that matter most to you. Open Settings → Notifications → Facility Notifications and toggle each event on or off. Alerts go to your facility's email address; set a Notification email on the same tab to send them somewhere else (one address, applying to every event).

Supported events:

(The table shows the toggles' exact labels; the Vaccination Record Uploaded alert is described in Vaccinations.)

SMS for facility owners is wired up but currently gated behind Twilio carrier approval. Email delivery works today; SMS will switch on automatically once approval lands — no action required.

Email Deliverability Alerts (Bounces & Spam)

When an email Goodstay sends to one of your clients bounces (can't be delivered) or is marked as spam, you're alerted right away by email (if the event is enabled) — so a bad address or deliverability problem never goes unnoticed.

The alert is written in plain English, not raw mail-server jargon. For a bounce you'll see a non-technical headline (for example, "The email address doesn't appear to exist"), which customer and original subject it concerned, and what to do next — confirm the correct address with the client, then re-send. The email provider marks confirmed-bad and spam-flagged addresses inactive and refuses further mail to them, protecting your sending reputation; Goodstay logs those skips rather than failing the send.

Trial Lifecycle Emails

New facilities on a free trial receive automated emails as their trial approaches and passes its expiration:

• 3 days before expiry — Friendly heads-up with remaining time and a link to subscribe
• 1 day before expiry — Urgent reminder to subscribe before the trial ends
• On expiry day — "Your trial has ended" with pricing and a subscribe link
• 3 days after expiry — Follow-up reminder that your data is still safe, with feature highlights (the sweep runs daily, so this typically lands two to three days after expiry)

These emails are sent to all facility owners. Each notification is sent only once per facility to prevent duplicates.

Subscription Payment Failure Alerts

If your Goodstay subscription's renewal payment fails — an expired or declined card, usually — the facility's owners receive an email right away with a subject like "Action needed: your payment didn't go through." It names the grace window, the exact date the account would become read-only, and links straight to your Subscription page to update the card.

Nothing is restricted when this email arrives: the grace period keeps your account fully working, and Stripe automatically retries the card over the following days. The email is sent once per failure — the automatic retries don't re-email you — and it re-arms after a successful payment. See Account & Billing for what happens if the grace period runs out.

SMS Notifications (Twilio)

Goodstay can send SMS text messages to pet owners alongside email notifications. SMS covers booking confirmations, check-in reminders, daycare and grooming reminders, and report cards.

Enabling SMS

1. Go to Settings → Notifications → Customer Notifications and find the SMS Settings panel.
2. Switch on Text customers about their bookings.
3. SMS credentials (Twilio) are configured at the platform level — contact Goodstay support if your facility needs SMS set up.

How SMS Opt-Out Works

• Pet owners can opt out of SMS from the Customer Portal notification preferences or by replying STOP to any text message.
• To opt back in, they can reply START or toggle SMS back on in their portal preferences.
• The opt-out belongs to the client: they change it in the portal or by texting STOP/START. (Staff-side, the owner page's Notifications card toggles the daycare and grooming reminders only.)
• All sent SMS messages are logged with delivery status for troubleshooting.

Per-Client Notification Opt-Out

Individual pet owners can opt out of specific notification types without disabling all communications:

These are per-client opt-outs. The facility-wide switches — including Vaccination expiration reminders — live in the Email Automations panel.

Staff can toggle the two reminder types from the pet owner's detail page (the Notifications card); the Text messages switch lives in the Customer Portal's Notification Preferences page, where clients manage all three themselves. Toggles auto-save immediately.

Email & SMS Summary

SMS column: ✓ = also sent via SMS when SMS is enabled and the owner has not opted out.