Drop-off scheduling

This page explains what actually happens when a customer books a drop-off — so you can set it up with confidence and answer the "when will my dog be ready?" question the same way every time.

The short version: the customer chooses when to drop off, you decide when the service runs, and Seglo holds the pet in between. The customer always sees an honest ready time, not a guess.

Open in app: Booking Settings

Understand the drop-off model

A drop-off booking splits into two moments that regular appointments keep together:

1. Drop-off time — when the customer physically hands over the pet. They pick this from your booking page.
2. Service time — when the groom, wash, or treatment actually runs. Seglo schedules this for you, fitting it around everything else on the day.

Between those two moments, the pet is simply held. The customer isn't paying for a fixed start; they're reserving a spot in your day and trusting you to get to it. That's the whole point of drop-off: it frees you to sequence the work efficiently instead of pinning every service to a clock time.

Read the "Ready in" estimate the way customers do

On the booking page, every drop-off time shows a Ready in line underneath it — an estimated duration (e.g. "around 1h 30m"), not a fixed clock time. That's the estimate the customer walks away with, and it's calculated from the real schedule — the service duration plus however long the pet waits for its turn.

Because customers act on this number, it's the single most important thing the drop-off model gets right. It updates as the day fills, so a customer dropping into a busy morning sees a longer wait than one dropping into an empty afternoon.

Explain why "ready by" can be later than drop-off plus service length

This is the one thing that surprises owners and customers, so it's worth saying plainly: the ready time is often later than the drop-off time plus the service duration, and that's expected.

If a customer drops off at 9:00 for a 60-minute groom, they might assume "ready by 10:00." But if two other dogs are ahead of them, their groom can't start until 10:30 — so the honest ready time is 11:30. The extra hour isn't padding or a mistake; it's the pet waiting its turn, exactly as it would on a walk-in day.

The wider your Earliest drop-off setting, the more common this gap becomes — because customers can drop off long before their service is due to start. Seglo never inflates the wait to fill a window; it always starts the service as soon as a spot is genuinely free. See Drop-off timing controls for how the timing settings interact.

Tips

• The ready time is a real estimate, not a promise of a start time. A pet dropped early waits; that's the deal customers opt into when they pick an early drop-off.
• A wide drop-off window means more waiting, not slower service. The service still runs at full speed the moment it's that pet's turn.
• The hold is invisible to you. On your schedule the service simply appears at the time the engine chose — you groom in order, and the customer's ready estimate takes care of itself.

Related

• Earliest drop-off — set how early customers may drop off.
• Drop-off timing controls — how drop-off, time-slot interval, and buffer combine.
• Drop-off setups by business type — recommended settings for grooming, daycare, vet-style, and multi-staff.
• Appointment settings — the full booking-settings reference.