MoeGo can automatically send SMS and email notifications to your clients at key moments — when a booking is made, before an upcoming stay, and more.
If your business offers boarding or daycare services, your auto message setup has a few important differences from a grooming-only setup.
How It Works
Boarding and daycare appointments carry different context than grooming appointments. A boarding stay spans multiple nights, has a check-in and check-out date, and often requires packing reminders. Daycare appointments are daily but may have different wording than a grooming visit.
Because of this, MoeGo lets you create separate message templates for each care type — so your boarding clients get a boarding-appropriate message, your daycare clients get a daycare-appropriate message, and your grooming clients get a grooming-appropriate message.
Each message type (e.g., Appointment Booked, Appointment Ready for Pickup) can have up to 4 templates — one per care type. Each service type can only belong to one template at a time.
Template priority order
When an appointment includes multiple service types, MoeGo uses this priority order to decide which template to send:
Boarding → Daycare → Grooming
If you have a template set up for Boarding and the appointment includes both Boarding and Grooming, the Boarding template is sent. The system always uses the highest-priority service type present in the appointment.
📝 Note: If you want Daycare to receive a different message from Grooming, create a separate Daycare template. If Daycare shares a template with Grooming, make sure both service types are listed under the same template's Applicable service types.
Variables for Boarding & Daycare Messages
All variables in the picker are available across all care types and message types — there is no system restriction. However, some variables are only meaningful for boarding or daycare appointments. Using them in a template that also applies to grooming can result in confusing or empty-looking messages for clients.
Variables most relevant
Variable | What it inserts | Best for | Caution |
Nights | Number of nights in the boarding stay | Boarding only | Shows 0 for grooming and daycare. Never use in a shared template. |
End date | The check-out date of the stay | Boarding, Daycare | For grooming, this repeats the start date — adds no value. |
End time | The appointment end time | All care types | For grooming, this is the appointment end time. |
End day of week | The day of the week the stay ends | Boarding | Rarely needed for daycare. Not meaningful for grooming. |
Start date | The check-in date | All care types | Safe to use anywhere. For grooming, this is the appointment date. |
Start time | The appointment start time | All care types | Safe to use anywhere. |
Start day of week | The day of the week the stay begins | All care types | Safe to use anywhere. |
Service end date | End date at the individual service level | Boarding (multi-service stays) | Use when a boarding stay contains multiple service line items and you need to reference a specific service's end date, not the overall stay. |
Service start date | Start date at the individual service level | Boarding (multi-service stays) | Same as above — service-level, not stay-level. |
Service end time | End time at the individual service level | Boarding (multi-service stays) | Same as above. |
Best practices
Use separate templates for Boarding and Grooming. This is the most reliable way to use boarding-specific variables safely. When Boarding has its own template, variables like {appointmentNights} and End date will only appear in messages sent to boarding clients.
For Daycare, decide whether it shares a template with Grooming or Boarding. Daycare does not have a nights variable, but it does have an end date and end time (since daycare has a drop-off and pick-up). If your daycare messaging needs to include pick-up time, create a separate Daycare template and use End time there. If daycare and grooming messaging is the same, sharing a template is fine — just avoid End date and End time in that shared template.
Don't use {appointmentNights} in any template that includes Grooming or Daycare as applicable service types. Even if most appointments using that template are boarding, a single grooming appointment will send a "0 nights" message to a client.
Example: Boarding booking confirmation
✅ Good — Boarding-only template:
"Hi {Client first name}, {Pet name}'s boarding stay is confirmed. Check-in: {Start date} at {Start time}. Check-out: {End date} at {End time} ({appointmentNights}). Please bring their belongings. — {Store name}"
❌ Problematic — shared Boarding + Grooming template:
"Hi {Client first name}, your appointment is confirmed for {Start date} at {Start time}, {appointmentNights}. — {Store name}"
When sent for a grooming appointment, this reads: "...your appointment is confirmed for March 20 at 10:00 am, 0." — confusing and unprofessional.
Example: Daycare booking confirmation
✅ Good — Daycare-only template:
"Hi {Client first name}, {Pet name}'s daycare day is confirmed. Drop-off: {Start date} at {Start time}. Pick-up by: {End time}. See you then! — {Store name}"