When a regular client brings their dog in after three months, do you remember what blade length you used last time? What the coat condition was like? Whether the owner asked for something different?
Most groomers rely on memory, paper notes, or scrolling through past appointments to piece together a pet's grooming history. It works when you have 30 clients. It falls apart when you have 300.
The Grooming History Timeline puts every completed grooming appointment on the pet's profile in one visual timeline.
What you see
For each completed grooming appointment, the timeline shows:
- Date of the appointment
- Services performed (e.g. full groom, wash and blow dry, nail trim)
- Team member who performed the groom
- Session notes recorded during or after the appointment
- Photos attached to the appointment
The timeline is ordered chronologically so you can see the complete care history at a glance.
Seasonal filtering
Australian seasons affect coat condition, shedding patterns, and grooming frequency. A double-coated breed in summer needs different attention than the same dog in winter.
The timeline includes a season filter with four options: Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Filter by season to compare grooming patterns across the year. This is useful for:
- Tracking seasonal coat changes: Compare summer and winter grooms side by side
- Identifying patterns: Does this dog always come in matted after winter? Note it and prepare accordingly
- Adjusting service recommendations: If summer grooms consistently take longer, you know to schedule more time
For daycare and boarding too
While the feature is named "Grooming History", it works for any service type. Daycare operators can see a timeline of every daycare session, and boarding kennels can review past stays. The timeline shows whatever appointments have been completed for that pet, regardless of service category.
How it fits with other pet profile features
The grooming history timeline complements other recent additions to pet profiles:
- Enhanced pet notes and attachments: Store pet-level notes (allergies, preferences, handling instructions) alongside the timeline
- Emergency contacts: Vet details and backup numbers on the same profile
- Bulk edit: Update pet details across your customer base efficiently
Together, these features make the pet profile a comprehensive care record rather than just a name and breed field.
Available to all Business Pro, Business Flex, and Business Max accounts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should go on a dog's grooming record?
Whatever the next groomer needs to repeat the groom without ringing the owner. Start with the cut, written as numbers rather than adjectives: the blade and comb on each part of the dog, and how the face and feet were finished. Note the coat on arrival and where any matting was, because you will have that conversation again. Add handling notes, like a dog that will not tolerate the dryer near its face or needs a second pair of hands for nails. Record anything you found and told the owner about, such as a hot spot or a lump, and any product the skin reacted to. Before and after photos finish it off, along with the time the groom really took if it ran long.
Keep contact details and payments out of it. They already live on the owner's record, and the shorter the grooming note, the more likely it is read at the table.
In Petboost, the parts that carry forward sit on the pet. Blade and comb sizes are attributes, like allergies and behaviour warnings, so they show on every appointment. The cut itself goes in the Head and Face, Body and Tail and Feet and Legs templates on the Care & Grooming Templates tab, with reference photos. What happened on the day goes in that appointment's notes and photos, and shows up on the pet's timeline.