The Summer release in February set a high bar: 7 analytics tabs, 60+ insight cards, geographic intelligence, and a complete forecasting engine. Two months later, the Autumn release matches it in a completely different direction.
Where Summer was about understanding your business through data, Autumn is about acting on it. A new pricing tier that removes friction for BYO-terminal businesses. An AI assistant that remembers your conversations and escalates to humans when needed. A pricing tool that uses your booking data to recommend what you should charge. And a communications stack that finally lets you have real two-way conversations with your customers.
Here is everything that shipped between mid-February and mid-April 2026.
1. Business Flex Plan
The Feature
A new plan tier between Business Pro and Business Max, designed for businesses that already have their own payment terminal and want to keep using it alongside Petboost.
The key difference from Pro: $0 fees on cash, bank transfers, and external EFTPOS payments. Business Pro charges a per-appointment fee when a customer pays via cash, bank transfer, or your own Square, Tyro, or bank EFTPOS terminal. Business Flex does not.
Flex includes all the same features as Pro and Max. Online bookings, automations, packages, courses, paperwork, policies, reporting, Grazi AI. Nothing is locked away. It comes with higher appointment and SMS limits than Pro, the same booking fee rate, and the subscription can be waived at a higher card payment volume threshold.
Use Cases
- A grooming salon with a Tyro terminal upgrades from Pro to Flex. Their 40% of customers who pay by card on the Tyro terminal no longer incur per-appointment fees, saving them hundreds per month
- A daycare that accepts a mix of bank transfers and Card on File payments switches to Flex to simplify their cost model: card payments through Petboost have a booking fee, everything else is $0
- A growing business that has exceeded Pro's monthly appointment limit moves to Flex for the higher capacity without jumping to Max pricing
Read the full Business Flex announcement
2. Grazi AI: Conversation History, Escalation & Contextual Suggestions
The Feature
Grazi AI, the in-app AI assistant, received three significant upgrades this release.
Conversation history. Grazi now saves your conversations automatically. Browse past conversations grouped by time (today, this week, this month, older), resume a recent chat with full context, or start a fresh conversation whenever you need to. No more losing your thread when you navigate away.
Human escalation. If Grazi cannot fully resolve your question, a single click escalates directly to the Petboost support team. Your conversation context is included so the human agent knows exactly what you have already tried and asked.
Contextual suggestions. The Quick Command Centre (Cmd+K / Ctrl+K) and Grazi AI now show suggested questions based on which page you are viewing. Open the command palette on the Reporting page and you will see reporting-specific questions. Open it on Settings and you will see settings-specific prompts. The suggestions change based on the active page and tab.
Use Cases
- A salon owner asks Grazi how to set up recurring appointments, closes the browser, comes back the next day, and picks up exactly where they left off
- A business owner asks about a complex billing question. Grazi provides an initial answer but the owner wants human confirmation. One click sends the conversation to the support team with full context
- A new user on the Services page opens the command palette and sees "How do I adjust my service prices?" as a contextual suggestion without needing to think of the question
Bottom Line
Grazi AI is no longer a stateless chatbot. It remembers, it suggests, and it knows when to hand off to a human. This is the foundation for the autonomous AI assistant we outlined in our vision piece.
3. Pricing Assistant with Magic Pricing
The Feature
A new tool under Services that lets you adjust service prices in bulk with four modes.
Fixed Amount adds or subtracts a dollar amount across selected services. Percentage increases or decreases by a percentage with configurable rounding (nearest $0.50, $1, $5, or $10). Build-In Fees incorporates Petboost booking fees into your service prices so customers see one clean number at checkout. Magic Pricing analyses your booking data from the past 90 days and generates pricing recommendations for each service based on demand, utilisation, effective hourly rate, and category benchmarks.
Magic Pricing offers three modes: Maximise (prioritise revenue growth), Balanced (moderate adjustments), and Fill Diary (lower prices for under-booked services to increase occupancy). Every suggestion comes with a confidence level and a rationale.
After applying changes, the assistant can update existing future appointments and notify affected customers by email automatically.
Use Cases
- A grooming salon runs their annual price review. Instead of editing 25 services one by one, they use Percentage mode to apply a 5% increase with rounding to the nearest dollar, preview the changes, and apply in one action
- A daycare operator runs Magic Pricing in Balanced mode and discovers their "Half Day" service is significantly underpriced relative to demand. The suggestion to increase by $8 comes with a "high confidence" rating and the rationale: "demand index is 2.3x average, effective hourly rate is 18% below category mean"
- A business wants their service prices to include the Petboost booking fee so customers see one clean number. Build-In Fees mode calculates the adjusted price for every service automatically
Read the full Pricing Assistant deep-dive
4. 2-Way SMS, Messaging Pro & Bulk SMS
The Feature
Three major communications features shipped in this release window.
2-Way SMS with Messaging Pro. Activate Messaging Pro to get a dedicated Australian mobile number for your business. Customers can reply to your SMS reminders and confirmations, and their replies appear in a threaded inbox inside Petboost. Full delivery tracking, read receipts, and the ability to send and receive messages from your business number.
SMS Confirmation & Cancellation by Reply. Customers can now confirm appointments by replying "YES" to their SMS reminder, or cancel by replying "CANCEL". Cancellation respects your cancellation window and fee policies automatically.
Bulk SMS Announcements. Send SMS messages to multiple customers at once. Filter recipients, preview messages before sending, and track delivery status. Includes opt-out handling, content analysis for compliance, and a history view of past announcements.
Use Cases
- A grooming salon sends a reminder: "Buddy's groom is tomorrow at 10am." The owner replies "Thanks, see you then!" The reply appears in the Petboost inbox, no separate messaging app needed
- A daycare sends a holiday closure notice to all regular customers via Bulk SMS: "We'll be closed for the Easter long weekend (18-21 April). Book your pup in for Tuesday 22nd!" with one click
- A customer needs to cancel. They reply "CANCEL" to their reminder SMS. Petboost checks the cancellation window, applies the fee policy, updates the appointment status, and notifies the business
Bottom Line
SMS is no longer one-directional. Your customers can reply, confirm, cancel, and have real conversations with your business, all from the same number. Bulk SMS means you can reach your entire customer base in seconds for announcements, closures, or promotions.
5. Pet Owner Photo Gallery & Map View
The Feature
Pet owners can now browse every photo from every appointment in a dedicated gallery on their portal. Photos can be viewed in a grid, filtered by pet and date, and saved as favourites. An interactive map view pins photos to their location, creating a visual timeline of where and when each pet was cared for.
Use Cases
- A pet owner scrolls through their gallery after six months of regular grooming appointments and sees the transformation from scruffy rescue to well-groomed family pet
- A daycare customer filters by their youngest dog to see all the daycare photos, then saves their favourites to share with family
- A boarding kennel's customers see photos from each stay pinned on a map, giving them confidence about where their pet spent the night
Bottom Line
Photos are one of the most powerful ways to build trust and loyalty with pet owners. The gallery turns appointment photos from one-off emails into a permanent, browsable collection that keeps customers engaged with your business.
6. Pet Management: Bulk Edit, Emergency Contacts & Grooming History
The Feature
Three significant additions to how you manage pet records.
Bulk Edit Pet Details. Edit pet details across your entire customer base in a spreadsheet-style grid. Update names, breeds, weights, genders, desexed status, and birthdates in bulk. A "missing data" filter shows only pets with incomplete records so you can fill gaps systematically.
Emergency Contacts. Store vet or clinic details, backup phone numbers, and alternative contact people on every pet owner profile. Emergency information appears prominently on pet owner and pet summary cards with one-tap call actions.
Grooming History Timeline. A visual timeline of every completed grooming appointment on each pet's profile. See dates, services, team members, notes, and photos at a glance. Filter by Australian season (Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring) to compare patterns across the year.
Also shipped: Played With Pets Tracking for daycare sessions, Enhanced Pet Notes & Attachments at the pet level (not just appointment level), and Notes Templates that pre-fill appointment notes from service and course template defaults.
Use Cases
- A salon migrating from another system uses Bulk Edit to clean up 300 pet records in an afternoon instead of a week
- A dog has a reaction during grooming. The groomer taps the owner's profile, sees the vet's phone number on the emergency contact card, and calls with one tap
- A regular customer asks "what did we do last autumn?" The groomer opens the pet's grooming history, filters to Autumn, and sees the exact services, notes, and photos from the previous year
Bottom Line
Pet profiles are now comprehensive care records, not just name-and-breed fields. Emergency contacts, grooming history, notes, attachments, and bulk editing give you the tools to manage hundreds of pets without losing the personal touch.
7. Public Holidays, Vaccination Alerts & Scheduling
The Feature
Public Holidays Management. Automatically populate Australian public holidays by state and territory. View upcoming holidays in a visual week grid and apply them as blocked time across your team with one click. Holiday presets appear when creating blocked time so you never accidentally book over a public holiday.
Vaccination Alerts on Scheduler. Pets with overdue or expiring vaccinations are flagged directly on the scheduler. Staff see compliance warnings on appointment cards without needing to open the pet profile.
Calendar Week View: Group by Day alongside existing team member, resource, service, and category groupings. Per-day appointment counts show daily load distribution at a glance.
Also shipped: Smarter Blocked Time Overlap Detection, Service Capacity Mode for managing concurrent appointment limits, Proactive Appointment Conflict Detection, Convert to Recurring Series, and Follow-Up Booking Prompt after completed appointments.
Use Cases
- A salon owner opens Public Holidays, sees Anzac Day is coming up, and blocks the entire team with one click. Customers attempting to book that day are automatically redirected to the next available slot
- A groomer glances at the scheduler and sees a vaccination warning badge on an appointment. Before the dog arrives, they notify the owner that the C5 vaccination is overdue
- A daycare operator switches to Group by Day view on Monday morning and immediately sees Tuesday has 24 bookings while Wednesday has only 8, prompting a targeted promotion
Bottom Line
Scheduling got smarter at every level. Holiday management prevents costly mistakes, vaccination alerts keep your business compliant, and new view modes give you the situational awareness to manage capacity proactively.
8. Payments, Billing & Transparency
The Feature
Billing History & Transaction Breakdown. A new tab in Settings showing your Petboost costs broken down by subscription fees, booking fees, Stripe processing fees, and SMS charges. View by month, quarter, or financial year with charts and downloadable PDFs.
Business Flex Plan (covered above) introduces $0 non-card payment fees.
Cancellation Fee Payments. Enforce cancellation fees with payment links sent via SMS. Configurable cancellation windows and fee amounts per service.
Bank Transfer Payment Confirmation. Mark appointments as paid by bank transfer with automatic confirmation to the pet owner.
Per-Client Payment Settings Override. Override your global payment settings for individual pet owner accounts.
Also shipped: SMS Confirmation & Cancellation by Reply (payments and scheduling intersection), Interactive Pricing Calculator on the website for comparing plan costs, and the Pricing Assistant for adjusting service prices in bulk.
Use Cases
- A business owner opens Settings, Billing and sees their total Petboost costs for the quarter broken down: $195 subscription, $840 booking fees, $1,260 Stripe processing, $49 SMS. They download the PDF for their accountant
- A customer cancels within the cancellation window. The system automatically sends a payment link for the cancellation fee via SMS. The customer pays, the appointment is updated, and the business is made whole
- A loyal customer always pays by bank transfer. The business overrides their payment settings so they are never prompted for card details at booking
Bottom Line
Full visibility into what you pay, why you pay it, and the tools to enforce your payment policies consistently. No surprises, no ambiguity.
9. Communications & Notifications
The Feature
Beyond the SMS features covered above, this release shipped a broad set of communication improvements.
Abandoned Booking Email Notifications. Receive automatic hourly email alerts when a customer starts a booking but does not complete it, so you can follow up and recover the sale.
Customer Note Notifications. Get notified by email or SMS when a team member adds a note to a customer profile.
Notification Preview. Preview exactly what your customers will see before sending any SMS or email notification.
Communication Preferences. Pet owners can manage their marketing consent and communication preferences, visible in the CRM.
Appointment Update Notifications. Automatic notifications when appointment details change (time, date, service, or team member).
Use Cases
- A potential customer gets halfway through booking a full groom, enters their pet details, then abandons. The business receives an email within the hour: "Sarah started booking a Full Groom for Buddy at 3pm Thursday but didn't complete." They follow up with a quick call and secure the booking
- A receptionist adds a note: "Buddy is anxious around loud dryers, use the quiet room." The groomer receives an SMS notification before the appointment so they are prepared
Bottom Line
Every communication touchpoint is now covered: from abandoned bookings to appointment changes to team notes. Nothing falls through the cracks.
10. Platform & Quality of Life
The Feature
A collection of improvements that make the daily experience smoother.
Quick Command Centre (Cmd+K / Ctrl+K). A unified search and action hub for finding any pet, service, team member, resource, package, or page. Includes recent items, deep settings links with breadcrumb paths, and natural language handoff to Grazi AI.
Simulation Mode. Browse your business as a pet owner would see it. Test the booking flow, review your public profile, and verify settings without creating a real account.
Care Colouring Mode. Colour-code your scheduler by care status so you can see at a glance which pets are checked in, being groomed, drying, or ready for pickup.
Mobile Performance Upgrade. Faster rendering and smoother interactions across the entire mobile experience.
Simultaneous Edit Handling. When two team members edit the same appointment, the system detects the conflict and prevents data loss.
Also shipped: Team Member Password Reset, Admin Bookings Show as Confirmed (fixing confirmation email behaviour for admin-created bookings), First Appointment Celebration notification UX, Enhanced Onboarding Checklist, Business Showcase Pages (public SEO-optimised microsites), Quick Copy Links for booking, showcase, and review URLs, and Upcoming Appointments PDF generation.
The Full Picture
Between mid-February and mid-April 2026, Petboost shipped:
- Business Flex Plan with $0 non-card payment fees for BYO-terminal businesses
- Grazi AI conversation history, human escalation, and contextual suggestions
- Pricing Assistant with four bulk pricing modes including Magic Pricing
- 2-Way SMS with dedicated Australian numbers and threaded inbox
- Bulk SMS announcements with consent handling and delivery tracking
- SMS Confirmation & Cancellation by reply
- Pet Owner Photo Gallery with interactive map view and favourites
- Bulk Edit Pet Details in a spreadsheet grid with missing data filtering
- Emergency Contacts on pet owner profiles with one-tap calling
- Grooming History Timeline with seasonal filtering
- Public Holidays Management with one-click blocking
- Vaccination Alerts on scheduler appointment cards
- Billing History with full cost breakdown and PDF downloads
- Interactive Pricing Calculator for comparing plan costs
- Cancellation Fee Payments via SMS payment links
- Bank Transfer Payment Confirmation
- Per-Client Payment Settings Override
- Abandoned Booking Email Notifications
- Quick Command Centre (Cmd+K)
- Simulation Mode for testing the customer experience
- Care Colouring Mode for scheduler status visibility
- Notes Templates for services and courses
- Follow-Up Booking Prompt after completed appointments
- Played With Pets Tracking for daycare
- And 10+ additional improvements across notifications, scheduling, mobile, and platform stability
That is 35+ features in two months. The platform is faster, smarter, and more complete than it has ever been.
What is Next
We are continuing to invest in Grazi AI as the foundation for autonomous business operations, expanding the Pricing Assistant with deeper analytics, and building out the tools that help you run a busier business with less admin overhead. The Enhanced Pet Owner Portal is in active development for Q4.