Settings

How to use it

• The side menu jumps between the sections on this page, in three groups: Your Account (Your Profile, Password), Your Daycare (Daycare Details, Branding, and Export Data for the account owner) and Operations (Operating Times, Collection & Drop-off, Service Settings, Register, Team Rota). On a phone or tablet the same list is a row of buttons across the top. The section you are on is highlighted in green.
• Export Data, under Your Daycare, downloads your whole customer list as one CSV file: every owner and pet, one row per pet, with each owner's details repeated and a row of their own for owners with no pets. Press Export CSV and the file (owners-and-pets with today's date) downloads straight away, with a message saying how many owners and pets it holds. The columns match the Import owners template, so it opens in Excel or Google Sheets and can go back in through Import owners. Only the account owner sees this section: the login that created your daycare, marked Owner on the Team page. Other admins don't, because the file holds every customer's contact details.
• Operating Times runs top to bottom: Operating Days, then Opening Hours, then per-day exceptions, then Closure dates, then your collection and drop-off windows. One Save covers the section — Closure dates are the exception, as they save as you add and remove them.
• Under Operating Days, turn each weekday on or off. Keep at least one day open so owners have somewhere to book.
• Closed days show as Closed across the home, daily, pet and owner calendars, and owners can't book them — admins can still book exceptions, and sleepovers that span a closed day aren't blocked.
• Set Opening Hours to the times that apply to your open days. These appear next to each open day on the customer price menu. Leave them blank and the menu falls back to running from your earliest collection to your latest drop-off.
• Under Different hours on some days, switch on any weekday that differs — a late night, a short Saturday — and give it its own opening and closing time. Every other day keeps the hours above.
• A day set to exactly your usual hours is cleared when you save, so changing your usual hours carries that day along instead of leaving it pinned to the old times.
• Closed days can't hold their own hours. Turn the day on under Operating Days first.
• Under Closure dates, add the specific days you are shut that the weekly pattern can't express — bank holidays, a training day, a week off. Pick the date, give it a reason such as "Bank Holiday", and press Add. Everything coming up is listed underneath with Remove beside it.
• A closure greys the date out on every calendar, carrying your reason as its label. Owners can't book it and are told the date and the reason; you can still add a booking yourself, and sleepovers spanning the closure aren't blocked.
• You can also close a single day without coming here: click it on the dashboard calendar and use the Closed switch in the footer of the day panel, beside Fully Booked.
• Collection and drop-off windows are separate: they drive your routes, and are listed beneath your opening times on the customer price menu.
• Under Service Settings, set a maximum number of bookings per day for each service, or leave it blank for no limit. Once a day reaches a service's cap, further requests arrive as pending waitlist requests for you to approve, and cancellations free space back up automatically.
• Also under Service Settings, Quick book buttons chooses what the two Quick book buttons on each day of a pet's Bookings calendar book: pick a service for the Left button and the Right button. Each list starts on your original Daycare or Sleepover, marked (default). Services booked by appointment or time slot, such as grooms, aren't offered, as a quick booking covers the whole day. Each button then shows the icon of the service you picked.
• At the bottom of Service Settings, Show Remaining Spaces to Customers decides whether owners booking from your portal see the numbers — "3 of 12 spaces left for this date", and the remaining count on each time window. It starts off, so owners are only told when a date or time is full and that their booking becomes a waitlist request. You always see the counts yourself. One Save covers the caps, the Quick book buttons and this switch together.
• Register comes after Service Settings. Turn on Today register and press Save to add the Register tab under Dashboard and in the Staff Portal. It doesn't change bookings or invoices.
• Team Rota comes next: Week-by-week Rota decides whether you can amend a single week of the staff rota. Off to begin with — working days and hours then come only from each staff profile and apply to every week. Turn it on and a Weekly Rota tab appears under Team, and the Daily Rota's hours panel gains a "this week only" choice. This block has its own Save.
• Service Provider Portal comes after the rota, with three switches for the groomers and other providers you've given a login. Each is off to begin with and saves as you flick it. Let providers cancel and reschedule bookings lets them cancel, move or reprice the appointments they can see. Let providers accept and decline booking requests lets them answer requests on their own appointments. Let providers add appointments lets them book any of your dogs onto their own services, with themselves. The owner is always told, and every change is recorded in the booking log under the provider's name.
• Each block saves on its own — saving one never touches another. Change something and that block is outlined, gets a dot in the side menu and shows "Unsaved changes" with Discard and Save; Discard puts it back to what is saved. Yes/no settings are switches throughout.

How to use it

• Daycare Logo: click the tile to upload. JPG, PNG or GIF up to 2MB. It appears on every invoice and across the customer portal, and applies immediately.
• Home-screen app icon: when a customer adds your portal to their home screen, your logo becomes the icon. Tick "Use a solid tile behind the logo" and pick a colour if your logo is transparent or isn't square — it then fills the icon evenly instead of floating on whatever the phone puts behind it. The preview beside the colour picker shows exactly what they will get. Customers install the portal from Get the app in the menu behind their initials (on a computer it shows how to do it on their phone), or from the banner on their Home page.
• Customer portal colour: tick "Use your own colour in the customer portal" to replace the default dark menu and amber button with your own colour. Use the swatch to open your device's colour picker, or type a hex code such as #0F766E straight into the box.
• "Suggest colours from my website" reads the address in your Daycare Details and offers the colours it actually finds there, so you don't have to hunt for a hex code. A sparkle on a swatch means your website declares that colour as its own brand colour. Add your website first if the button is greyed out. There are eight presets underneath if you would rather start from one of those.
• Underneath the picker is a contrast reading — Excellent, Good, or Hard to read — with the exact ratio. Genera works out whether white or dark menu text is more legible on your colour and uses that automatically, so you never end up with text customers can't read. If a colour comes back "Hard to read", press "Adjust to the closest readable shade" and we nudge it just enough to pass, keeping the colour recognisably yours.
• The "What your customers see" panel below previews the portal menu in your colour as you change it, before anything is saved.
• Press Save at the bottom of the Branding card to apply your colour changes. While you have unsaved changes the card says so, and Discard puts both colour settings back to what they were. Save stays greyed out until something actually changes.
• Once saved, your colour is used for the portal menu on a computer; the header along the top and the bar along the bottom on phones and tablets; the Sign in button; the header of the booking panel; and the headings and Done button on the customer price list. The Home page banners (install the app, turn on notifications) use a light, frosted wash of it. It also tints the browser bar when a customer opens your portal. The home-screen icon tile is separate — that is the app icon setting above.
• Untick the box and press Save to go back to the default dark menu and amber button. Nothing about your logo or background changes.
• Customer portal background: the full-screen image behind your portal sign-in page. JPG, PNG, GIF or WebP up to 15MB — we convert it to WebP and resize it for desktop and mobile. Aim for at least 1920×1080 landscape so it stays sharp on large screens, and there is an option to go back to the default.
• Daycare Details, in the card above Branding, holds the Daycare URL you send customers, your daycare name, website, phone, Company Number and Tax Number, and the two email addresses on your account. Website, Company Number and Tax Number are optional and print on your invoices when filled in. Press Save at the bottom of that card to store changes.
• Business email address (badged Public) is your contact address: it appears on invoices, and customers' replies come here. It saves with the Save button in Daycare Details.
• Login email address (badged Sign-in) is the address you sign in to Genera with. It is deliberately separate and does not save with the rest of the card — changing it asks for your password, then emails a confirmation link to the new address. Nothing changes until you click that link, so a typo can't lock you out.
• New daycares can also set their logo and colour from the Your look step of the welcome wizard, which suggests colours picked out of your logo as well as your website. It saves to the same settings as this page.

How to use it

• Invoice Prefix: the text in front of each invoice number, so your numbering reads the way your bookkeeper expects.
• Payment terms: how many days an invoice has before it is due. This sets the due date printed on the PDF and drives invoice reminders.
• Date format: how dates print on your invoices — UK 31/12/2026, US 12/31/2026, ISO 2026-12-31, European 31.12.2026, or the long forms. Pick whichever your customers read most easily.
• Bank details — Account name, Bank, Sort code and Account number — print as a payment block on the PDF. This block only appears when no payment gateway is auto-collecting the invoice, so daycares on Stripe or GoCardless never see it on a Direct Debit invoice.
• Additional invoice notes is a free-text footer under the bank block on every PDF: payment reference instructions, a thank-you line, anything you want on all of them.
• Charge VAT on invoices adds VAT to every invoice line at the VAT Rate below (UK standard rate is 20%). Your prices are VAT-inclusive, so the invoice extracts the VAT rather than adding it on top. The rate box stays greyed out until VAT is switched on.
• Press Save when done. Everything raised afterwards uses the new settings.

How to use it

• Contact details: two switches, Require a phone number and Require a home address. With either on, a customer signing in to your portal is asked for it and can't carry on until it is saved. Both start on. Owners you added with the address Not required switch on the Add New Owner form are never asked for an address, whichever way this is set.
• Direct Debit: choose whether owners must set up their payment before booking or requesting a membership from their portal — Off (no prompts), Suggest (a dismissible reminder on their portal) or Compulsory (blocked until it is set up, with a button right in the booking screen). If you accept cards (Settings › Payments & Integrations › Membership Billing), a saved card counts the same as a Direct Debit here. Anything you book as admin is never affected.
• Ending a recurring booking: the notice, in weeks, a customer gives when they end a recurring booking from your portal. With 4, a customer ending today keeps every booking up to four weeks from today, and only the bookings after that are cancelled; the end date picker won't go earlier, and Cancel all future bookings becomes End after 4 weeks' notice. Leave it empty for no notice. Your team can still end a recurring booking on any date, and customers can still cancel a single day.
• Membership changes: how owners on a fixed-days membership can change their days from your portal. When can new days start? is either 48 hours' notice (a change of schedule can start on any day at least 48 hours away) or From next week onwards (new days start on a Monday, next week or later, so the current week always stays as it is). Let owners swap a single day adds Just one day to their editor, so one booked day can move to a free date; with it on, choose Where can a swapped day move to? — Same week (its own Monday–Sunday week) or Same billing month — and, if you want a cap, Swaps per billing month per membership (leave it empty for no limit). Both days of a swap need at least 48 hours' notice whichever notice setting you use. Every change and swap arrives as a request on the pet's Membership card for you to Approve or Decline, and the price stays the same.
• Owner add-pet form: each of the fifteen optional fields has two switches — show it, and require it. The heading counts what you have chosen, e.g. "8 of 15 fields shown, 3 required". Pet name, breed and gender are always shown and always required, so the form can never produce a pet you can't identify; they sit in a banner at the top rather than in the list.
• The optional fifteen are birthday, profile photo, spayed/neutered, microchip number, pet address, property type, key type, number of key sets, alarm code, travels in a crate, comes with, emergency contact, veterinarian, off-lead walking and additional notes. Travels in a crate and Comes with can only be shown or hidden, not required.
• Off-lead walking asks the owner "Do you agree to {pet} being walked off the lead?" with Yes and No buttons, on the Health & Care step. It starts switched off, so owners are only asked once you turn it on. Make it required and owners must pick Yes or No before they can carry on; leave it optional and they can skip it. The answer is saved on the pet profile under Care & behaviour as Yes — agreed, No — keep on lead, or Not answered, and you or the owner can change it there at any time.
• A field switched off never appears on the customer's form. You can still fill it in yourself from the pet profile — hiding it shortens their form, it doesn't delete the information.
• Comes with checklist: the things a dog can arrive with, such as lunch, a coat or its own lead. Your team ticks them on each pet's profile, owners tick them when they add a pet, and drivers see them on the stop. It starts with Lunch, Coat, Slip lead and Clip lead or harness. Type over an item to rename it, use the arrows to reorder, the bin to remove, or type a new one and press Add (up to 20). Renaming keeps every dog's tick; removing an item hides it everywhere. Reset to the default list puts the four starting items back. Remove every item and the checklist is hidden.
• Vaccination reminders: set how many weeks ahead of expiry owners and staff are emailed. Whole number between 1 and 52. The same setting drives the warning icon on your Pets list and the banner on each pet profile, so raising it makes expiring vaccinations visible to you earlier too.
• Vaccination certificates: turn on Owners must attach a certificate and owners can't submit a vaccination or treatment from their pet's profile until they attach a photo or PDF. It starts off. Your team can still add one without a certificate, and existing records stay as they are.
• Cancelled bookings: choose whether a booking you cancel stays on the owner's calendar marked "Cancelled", or disappears from their view entirely. Your own admin records keep every cancelled booking either way.
• Terms & Conditions: owners sign these before finishing the add-pet flow and before making a booking, and can re-sign from each pet's profile. Use typed text or upload a PDF — setting one locks the other until you clear it, so there is never a question of which version they agreed to.
• Publishing a new version of your terms requires owners to sign again before they can book. Every signature is kept as an audit trail on the pet profile, so you can see who agreed to which version and when.
• Every block saves on its own. Change something and it is outlined, gets a dot in the side menu and shows "Unsaved changes" with Discard and Save.

How to use it

• Open Settings › Collection & Drop-off.
• If you never collect or drop off, switch "We collect and drop off" off. Genera confirms first and spells out what changes; everything below is then hidden and nothing else on this page applies to you.
• Otherwise leave it on. To stop a single service asking the question — a grooming appointment the customer always brings the dog to — use the Collection & Drop-off switch on that service under Finance › Plans & Pricing › Services.
• Under Where runs start, choose where pick-up runs begin and drop-off runs end by default: Driver's home, Vehicle location, Driver's live location or Daycare. It saves as soon as you pick it. If any route will use Vehicle location, enter the Vehicle location address and press Save vehicle location — it is pinned on the map in the background. Each route on Day Routes can still choose differently.
• To charge: set your price. Choose Per day, which charges once whether the pet is collected, dropped off or both, or Per leg, which charges each way separately. £0 keeps rides free while still using the running days and seat limit.
• Optionally add a weekend price, a bank holiday price, and cheaper steps for pets who travel more days a week. Name on invoices controls how the line reads on a bill.
• Under Availability, pick the days the runs go out. Seats per run is optional: leave it blank for no limit, since each driver's Delivery Capacity already warns you when a route is full.
• Turn on Charge for collection & drop-off and press Save.
• If bookings with collection or drop-off are already in your diary, Genera asks whether to charge those too. It shows how many bookings and pets, the total, and a list of the pets affected. Choose an Apply from date, then either charge them or leave them as they are.
• Changed your mind later, or changed your price? Press Check the diary next to Save to reopen that question at any time.
• To sell it monthly, go to Finance › Plans & Pricing › Memberships, add a plan and choose your collection & drop-off service, shown as (Transport membership).

How to use it

• Pick the right block first — Customer-facing documents or Internal documents. Which one you upload into is what decides whether owners can see the file.
• Click the dropzone or drag files onto it. PDFs, images and documents, up to 20 MB each, several at a time.
• Uploaded files are listed underneath, where you can open or remove them.
• Customer-facing documents show up in the owner portal for every one of your customers, so use it for things they all need: first-aid certificates, public liability cover, packing lists for boarders.
• Internal documents never leave your team — cleaning regimes, emergency plans, vet contracts and other staff-only paperwork.

How to use it

• Go to Settings › Payments & Integrations. Payment Integrations is the first section, and the side menu jumps to it. Any old link or bookmark to Settings › Integrations redirects here on its own.
• Stripe: card, Apple Pay and Google Pay, invoice payment links, card payments for bookings and your Shop, all through your own Stripe account. With Stripe on its own, it also handles Direct Debit and memberships.
• GoCardless: Direct Debit through your own GoCardless organisation. Each owner sets up a mandate once, and their memberships and invoices are collected from it.
• Both: connect the two and they share the work. Stripe keeps every card and link payment. GoCardless takes over Direct Debit: new Direct Debits are set up with GoCardless, and owners with a GoCardless mandate are collected from it. Owners who already pay by Stripe Direct Debit or card stay on Stripe.
• The box at the top of the section says what your set-up means under Right now, for example "You have both connected".
• Xero and QuickBooks are not payment providers. They are accounting mirrors, so they sit alongside Stripe and GoCardless rather than instead of them; see their pages below.
• Each connected card shows the account name and email it is linked to, with Refresh status and Disconnect on its ⋮ menu. Disconnecting one pauses only the memberships billed through it.
• Disconnecting Stripe deals with any unpaid Stripe invoices first. Each one is cancelled in Stripe, so its payment link stops working, and becomes a bank transfer invoice with a fresh PDF showing your bank details. Owners then pay it by bank transfer, and you mark it as paid when the money arrives. The message after disconnecting says how many were switched. If Stripe shows an invoice as already paid, or won't cancel it, it is left as it was and the message names it, so you can void it yourself in your Stripe dashboard.
• If you delete a Stripe invoice after Stripe is already disconnected, Genera can't reach Stripe to cancel it. Void it in your Stripe dashboard so its payment link stops working. A payment made through that link would still go into your Stripe account, but Genera wouldn't know about it, so the invoice wouldn't be marked as paid.
• Connecting a provider isn't backdated. Invoices you raised before connecting stay as they were, usually bank transfer. Only invoices raised after you connect get a Pay button. To move an older invoice onto card payment, delete it and raise it again.
• Owners pay each invoice on its own. Their Billing page shows the total outstanding and lists every unpaid invoice with its own Pay link, but there isn't a single payment for all of them yet.

How to use it

• Notification Types lists sixteen alerts, each with two switches: In-app (the bell menu in your header) and Email. Turn either off on its own — an alert can appear in the bell without emailing anyone, or email without cluttering the bell.
• The sixteen are: Approval needed, Membership request, Membership day change, Upgrade request, New customer, New booking, Booking cancelled, Inactive pet, New pet, Direct debit setup, Payment failed, Time-off request, New chat message, Collection or drop-off address change, Gallery photos added and Route re-ordered by a driver.
• New chat message is the one exception to the pattern: push notifications for a customer message are always sent, and this switch controls the email fallback that goes out if the message is still unread in the app after 30 minutes.
• Collection or drop-off address change fires when a customer sets, changes or removes a one-day collection or drop-off address on a booking. Its email is on by default, because a driver who doesn't hear about it goes to the wrong house.
• Gallery photos added fires when your team uploads photos to a pet's gallery, and says which pet, how many and who added them. Its email is off by default — photos go up several times a day — but the bell entry is on, and clicking it opens that pet's gallery.
• External Emails is split into Owner emails and Staff emails, each a list of the individual transactional emails with a switch beside it. Switch one off and Genera stops sending that email for your daycare — nothing else changes.
• Owner emails cover: address completed, booking received, booking confirmed by daycare, booking cancelled by daycare, booking approved / declined, assessment delivered, development assessment intro, cancellation charge issued, health alert, invoice issued, invoice reminder, vaccination expiring, membership cancellation and new chat message.
• Staff emails cover: late booking, daily schedule overview, daily drop-offs, driver route backup, new unneutered pet registered, inactive pet warning, pending booking approval, new trial booking and vaccination expiring (staff).
• Owner Push Notifications are the messages sent to your customers' phones, in two groups. Collections & drop-offs sends Pet collected and Pet home when a driver ticks off a stop. Photos sends New gallery photos when your team adds pictures, and opens that pet's gallery when the customer taps it.
• Each of the two Collections & drop-offs messages can be reworded. In the Wording block, edit the title and message for Pet collected or Pet home, using {pet} for the pet's name and {driver} for the driver's first name. A preview shows how it will read, and Reset to default brings back the original wording. Save applies it to your whole daycare.
• These settings apply to your whole daycare. Browser and device push notifications for you and your team are separate and switched on per person, per device — see the next page.
• Payment failed fires when an automatic payment doesn't go through — a declined or expired card, a failed Direct Debit, or a card payment waiting for the customer's bank to approve it. It names the customer, the amount, the card and the reason, says whether Stripe will try again, and opens the customer's profile. Its email is on by default, because it's money you haven't received.
• Route re-ordered by a driver fires when a driver changes the order of the stops on their run from the Genera Driver app. It says which driver, which run, which day and when, and opens Daily routes. A burst of changes to the same run within about ten minutes is one notification that updates, not a new one for every drag. Its email is on by default, because the route you planned is no longer the one being driven.
• Driver route backup emails each driver working today a copy of their runs from 6am: the stops in order, owners' phone numbers, addresses and the whole run as Google Maps links, keys and door codes, and the notes. When you save a change to today's runs, the drivers affected get an updated copy. It's a backup for when the app isn't working, and it's on by default.

How to use it

• Enable as an admin: click the bell icon in the top bar to open Notifications, then click Enable on the "Browser & device notifications" card at the top.
• When your browser asks "Allow notifications?", choose Allow. Then use the "Send a test notification" link on the card to check one arrives on your device.
• Enable as a pet owner: from the owner account, go to Profile → Notifications and follow the same steps on the same card.
• In Chrome (Windows, Mac or Chromebook): the Allow prompt appears at the top-left of the window, attached to the address bar — not in the middle of the page. If you don't see it, click the tune or padlock icon just left of the web address, set Notifications to Allow, and reload the page.
• On a Mac: also open the Apple menu → System Settings → Notifications → Google Chrome and make sure "Allow notifications" is on, with Banners or Alerts, Notification Centre and Lock Screen ticked. Turn off Do Not Disturb or any Focus so alerts can come through.
• On Windows: open Settings → System → Notifications, make sure notifications are on and Google Chrome is allowed, then turn off Do not disturb / Focus assist so alerts aren't silently hidden.
• On iPhone or iPad: first add Genera to your Home Screen (Share → Add to Home Screen), open it from there, then enable notifications — Apple only allows web notifications from an installed app.
• Turn it off any time with the Turn off button on the card, or manage it later in your browser's site settings.

How to use it

• Connect your provider first, in Payment Integrations: Stripe, GoCardless or both. Several Finance features (memberships, Direct Debits, card payments for bookings, some service actions) stay locked until you do, and the sections below say so where they depend on it.
• Membership Billing › "Allow taking a membership's first payment straight away": off by default, a membership's first payment lands on the owner's chosen collection day, like every payment after it. Switch it on and, when you approve or assign a membership for an owner paying by card, you can charge the first month there and then. Needs Stripe and a card saved on the owner's account. This section is greyed out until a payment provider is connected.
• Membership Billing › How owners can pay: Direct Debit is always offered. Switch on "Also accept card, Apple Pay and Google Pay" and owners setting up a membership can choose a card instead. A card works straight away, with no 2–3 working day wait for the bank. It needs Stripe, and is greyed out while GoCardless is connected, because owners then set up their Direct Debit with GoCardless, which doesn't take cards.
• Card payments cost you more than Direct Debit, and the switch shows the difference before you turn it on. At Stripe's standard UK rates, Direct Debit is 1% per payment capped at £4, and a UK card (including Apple Pay and Google Pay) is 1.5% + 20p with no cap. On a £150 a month membership that is £1.50 against £2.45, 95p more a month for each owner who pays by card. On £400 a month it is £4.00 (capped) against £6.20. If you have custom pricing with Stripe, your Stripe dashboard shows your own rates.
• Card Payments for Bookings charges everything that isn't a membership to each owner's card for bookings, and can do it by itself every evening. It needs Stripe; GoCardless can be connected too, and memberships then stay on GoCardless Direct Debit. See the Card payments for bookings page in this section.
• Invoicing holds your prefix, payment terms, date format, bank details, footer note and VAT. See the Invoicing page above.
• Invoice Collection › How owners pay decides how each invoice you raise is collected: Charge automatically (against the owner's Direct Debit mandate or saved card), Send a payment link, or Bank transfer only. A method you can't use yet is greyed out and says why: bank transfer needs bank details in the Invoicing section, and the other two need Stripe or GoCardless connected. With both connected, Charge automatically takes owners with a GoCardless Direct Debit through GoCardless and everyone else through Stripe, and a payment link is always Stripe's (card, Apple Pay and Google Pay). With card payments for bookings on, invoices go on the owner's card instead, and this section says so.
• At the bottom of Invoice Collection, "Only bill the nights inside the selected dates" controls what happens when a boarding runs past the edge of the date range you invoice for. Off (the default) bills the whole stay on the month it starts. On, only the nights inside your range are billed and the rest waits for the next invoice. A stay that began before your range but runs into it is picked up instead of being missed, and a stay already invoiced is never re-billed.
• Automatic Invoicing (raising invoices on a schedule) is being rebuilt and is not available at the moment. Raise invoices from Finance › Invoices, or use card payments for bookings to have bookings charged each evening.
• Change something and that section is outlined, gets a dot in the side menu and shows "Unsaved changes" with Discard and Save. Discard puts it back to what is saved; each section saves on its own.

How to use it

• Open Settings › Payments & Integrations and go to Card Payments for Bookings. You need Stripe connected. GoCardless can be connected too: memberships then stay on GoCardless Direct Debit while bookings go on the card.
• Switch on "Charge bookings to the owner's card" and press Save. Automatic Invoicing is paused while this is on.
• For the evening charge, switch on "Charge automatically at the end of each day" and choose "Charge at", in UK time. Pick a time after your last collection so any grooms have been priced. Only bookings from the day you switch it on are charged, and the page shows that date.
• Each evening, every owner with accepted bookings that day gets one charge for all of them, and a receipt by email. A stay is charged in full on the day it starts. A line still at £0 waits until it's priced. Requests you haven't accepted are left alone.
• An owner without a card is emailed a link to pay by card, with a prompt to save one. A declined card, or a payment their bank wants them to approve, gets an email with a link to sort it out. After each evening charge you get one notification listing anything that needs you.
• Getting everyone's card: in Finance › Direct Debits, press "Request card details" to email every owner without a card a link to add one (it works for 30 days), or "Send card link" on a single owner. Owners can also add or change the card from their portal's Billing page. A card an owner has already saved for memberships is used automatically.
• To stop owners booking before they've added a card, set Settings › Customer Settings › Direct Debit to Compulsory.
• If memberships must stay on Direct Debit only, turn off "Also accept card, Apple Pay and Google Pay" in Membership Billing. That switch is only about memberships; the card for bookings is separate.

How to use it

• Before you start you need: a Xero login with the Standard or Adviser role (needed to authorise an app); an admin account in Genera (managers and staff cannot connect Xero); a revenue account in your Xero chart of accounts for daycare sales (most organisations use 200 – Sales); and, if you take Stripe or GoCardless, a bank-type clearing account in Xero called something like Stripe clearing or GoCardless clearing for gateway payouts. Ask your bookkeeper if that last one is new to you.
• Connect: Settings › Payments › Payment Integrations. The Xero card sits under Stripe and GoCardless. Press Connect to Xero, sign in, choose the organisation and press Allow access. You come back to Genera with the card showing Connected and the organisation name. Connect the organisation whose bank feed receives your customers' payments — each organisation can be linked to one daycare.
• Choose how invoices are coded, under How invoices are coded in Xero on the card. Nothing is pushed until the Sales account is set: pick the revenue account every invoice line is posted to.
• Tax rate: leave it on Automatic. Genera uses 20% VAT on income if VAT is enabled under Settings › Payments › Invoicing, otherwise No VAT. Your prices are VAT-inclusive and Xero extracts the VAT. Change it only if your bookkeeper asks for a specific rate.
• Payment account: where the payments Genera records are posted — your clearing account for Stripe / GoCardless, or your bank account if you use Mark as paid on bank transfers. Leave it as Don't record payments if you would rather record every payment in Xero yourself.
• Sync invoices issued from: defaults to the day you connected, so connecting never floods Xero with history. Invoices issued before this date are left alone. Press Save Xero settings.
• Older invoices: if you have unpaid invoices from before that date and want to reconcile them in Xero, press Push N older unpaid invoices. Only unpaid ones go; paid history is already settled and is not copied.
• Day to day, nothing changes about how you raise invoices. Bank transfer: reconcile each bank feed line in Xero as before and the invoice turns Paid in Genera by itself. Stripe / GoCardless: nothing to do — when the payout lands in your bank, reconcile it as a transfer from the clearing account.
• Watch the chip on each row of Finance › Invoices: In Xero (click to open it in Xero), Part paid in Xero (hover for how much), Voided in Xero, or Xero failed / Xero issue (hover to read why, click to retry). No chip means the invoice predates your sync-from date or is still a draft.
• The Xero card shows the organisation, how many invoices are mirrored, how many need attention and when the last sync ran. Sync now runs everything immediately; any problem from the last run shows in amber.
• Disconnect from the ⋮ menu on the card. Invoices already in Xero stay there; new ones stop syncing until you reconnect.

How to use it

• Before you start you need: a QuickBooks Online company and a login with admin access to it; an admin account in Genera (managers and staff cannot connect QuickBooks); and a Product/Service in QuickBooks for your daycare sales. Most companies already have one called Services; its income account is where your revenue will land.
• Connect: Settings › Payments › Payment Integrations. The QuickBooks card sits under Stripe, GoCardless and Xero. Press Connect to QuickBooks, sign in to Intuit, pick your company and press Connect. You come back to Genera with the card showing Connected, the company name and its currency. Each QuickBooks company can be linked to one daycare.
• Bring your customers across (optional): under Import customers as owners, press Review customers to import. Genera reads your active QuickBooks customers and shows how many are new, how many match owners already here, and how many it will skip because QuickBooks has no email for them. Press Import to add them. QuickBooks doesn't keep pets, so add those afterwards, and invite owners from the Owners page when you're ready.
• Choose how invoices appear, under How invoices appear in QuickBooks. Product/service: pick the item every invoice line uses; nothing is pushed until this is set.
• Tax code: if you are VAT registered, choose your standard rate (for example 20.0% S). Your prices are VAT-inclusive and QuickBooks shows the VAT inside them, so a £560 invoice stays £560 with £93.33 VAT. Not VAT registered? Choose No VAT, or leave it empty. In the US, lines are non-taxable unless you choose Taxable.
• Deposit payments to: where the payments Genera records go. Undeposited Funds suits Stripe / GoCardless payouts that arrive in batches; pick your bank account if you use Mark as paid on bank transfers. Leave it as Don't record payments if you would rather record every payment in QuickBooks yourself.
• Sync invoices issued from: defaults to the day you connected, so connecting never floods QuickBooks with history. Press Save QuickBooks settings.
• Older invoices: if you have unpaid invoices from before that date and want to receive their payments in QuickBooks, press Push N older unpaid invoices. Only unpaid ones go.
• Day to day, nothing changes about how you raise invoices. Bank transfer: receive the payment against the invoice in QuickBooks and it turns Paid in Genera by itself. Stripe / GoCardless: nothing to do.
• Watch the chip on each row of Finance › Invoices: In QuickBooks (click to open it in QuickBooks), Part paid in QuickBooks, Voided in QuickBooks, or QuickBooks failed / QuickBooks issue (hover to read why, click to retry). No chip means the invoice predates your sync-from date or is still a draft.
• Disconnect from the ⋮ menu on the card and confirm. Invoices already in QuickBooks stay there. Connecting a different company afterwards starts its customer links and invoices afresh.

How to use it

• Open Settings › Account. The card at the top states your plan, its price and your Direct Debit state; use it to open Your Genera Plan.
• The hero at the top of the page names your plan, the monthly price, and a status badge — Free trial, Active, Payment failed, Suspended, Complimentary or Cancelled — with the dates that matter beside it: when a trial ends, when you were last billed, and which day of the month is your billing day.
• During your free trial you have every feature in Thrive, whichever plan you picked — Routing and the driver portal, Messages, Reports and Daycare Finance included. The banner above every page reads Thrive trial with the days left and names the plan you carry on with afterwards, and the hero here says the same. Team seats are the one exception: they follow the plan you picked.
• Below it, every tier is shown side by side as columns with tick and cross rows, so you can see exactly what each one adds before you choose. Your current plan is marked. Picking a different one asks you to confirm, then switches you over.
• Changing plan reuses your existing Direct Debit instruction — you never re-enter your bank details to move between tiers.
• Payment method is the last card. If you have no instruction yet, press Add payment method; nothing is collected until your bank approves it, which usually takes 2–3 working days. Once active, the card says how much is collected and on which day of the month, and the button becomes Update bank details.
• Every collection is covered by the Direct Debit Guarantee.
• Payment history lists each collection with its date, amount and status.
• Once your trial has ended, pages your plan doesn't include stay visible with an amber padlock in the sidebar and on the tab. Opening one shows a preview of what it does and which plan unlocks it, so nothing is hidden from you — you just can't use it yet. Nothing is locked during a free trial.
• Cancelling is a conversation rather than a button: contact Genera support and we will sort it out with you.

How to use it

• Enter the new password twice — new password and confirm — and press Update password. You are not asked for your current one, because you are already signed in.
• If the password can't be used — too short, or the same as your current one — you are told why and nothing changes. Once it is updated the fields clear.
• This changes your sign-in password only. The address you sign in with is changed further down the same page, under Daycare Details — see Login email address.
• Locked out instead? Use the Forgot password page from the sign-in screen and we will email you a reset link.