One of the most frustrating experiences for pet owners is contacting a sitter who has marked their calendar as available, only to discover that they are actually unavailable. Maintaining an accurate calendar is the best way to make a great first impression on pet owners, and is one of the keys to success on Rover! That’s because accepting requests that match your calendar availability and preferences improves your chances of getting more requests in the future.
While pet owners typically request services two to three weeks in advance, you’ll also receive a mix of short notice requests--“I need a dog sitter this weekend,” and requests further out into the future--“I need a sitter in two months.” Since requests can come at anytime, it’s crucial that your calendar is kept up to date.
Calendar basics
Your calendar availability defaults to the days you said you were generally available and to the services you said you would like to offer when you originally created your sitter profile.
Pro tip: You can sync your calendar to Google calendar or iCal! To do this, select Sync your calendar below your service availability.
Your calendar view in the Rover app will show different colours and textures depending on bookings and availability.
Here's how to read the calendar:
- White: Fully available (with 0 bookings)
- Yellow: Partially booked
- Red: Fully booked
- Grey, diagonal slashes: Unavailable
To update your calendar once, as you would for a holiday, do the following:
1. Select the day you want to edit on your calendar, or click and drag your mouse to edit multiple dates at once.
2. A pop-up window will appear. You can choose to edit each service individually and select Save. Or, if you won’t be available for any services, just select Mark all services as unavailable. To reset the number of spaces you have to your default number of spaces, select reset to default.
3. Your edits will now reflect on your calendar.
For more tips and tricks on how to manage your calendar, check out this article.
Additional recommendations
We recommend that you start out by offering a couple of services with fewer spaces and increase your capacity as you gain more experience and confidence. As a new sitter, it’s important to consider the following:
- What services can you realistically offer? Did you originally mark that you could provide all services when really you’ll generally only be able to provide one or two? If so, make sure to update what services you can offer, so you don’t end up turning away requests that aren’t compatible.
- How many pets can you comfortably host? To start, we recommend that you accept fewer pets until you get the hang of things. You can adjust your service preferences, including how many pets you’d like to care for at a time, here.
Note: If you frequently don't book requests you receive for days you're available, some of your services may be automatically set to Away mode. This is why it's important to keep your calendar up to date. To learn more about keeping your profile and services active, visit this article from the Rover Blog.