PocketSuite’s Categories feature lets a business group its services, products, and packages so only the relevant items appear together on the online booking site, giving real control over which add-ons show up alongside which core services. PocketSuite powers 7,000+ service businesses, including 1,000+ pet service businesses, whose clients have collectively processed nearly $1 billion in income and scheduled over 9.2 million appointments. Curating that menu by category is what keeps a grooming add-on from cluttering a boarding-only client’s booking flow, and keeps the add-ons a client actually sees relevant to what they’re already booking.
Setting Up Categories Is a One-Time Project
Building out a category structure takes real thought upfront, but it’s mostly a one-time task — once the groups are set and items assigned, adding a new seasonal add-on later is as simple as dropping it into an existing category rather than rebuilding anything.
Categories Group Items Into the Menus Clients See
With Categories, a business creates named groups — one for boarding, one for grooming add-ons, one for daycare enrichment — and assigns specific services, packages, classes, reservations, and promotions to each one. A client browsing the online booking site sees items organized by the categories a business has set up, not one long undifferentiated list.
Deciding how many categories to build is worth thinking through before setup rather than after — a facility running boarding, daycare, and grooming out of one account might create a handful of broad categories, one per service line, or a longer list of narrower ones split by specific add-on type. Either approach works within the same structure; the right number of categories mostly comes down to how a business’s own clients tend to browse and book.
The Same Structure Works Across Every Vertical PocketSuite Serves
A pet boarding facility organizing add-ons by category follows the exact same mechanics a grooming salon or a dog training business would use to organize its own menu — Categories isn’t a boarding-specific tool bolted on separately, it’s the same underlying feature every PocketSuite account has access to.
Show Online Controls What’s Even Available to Book
Each category has its own Show Online toggle, so a business can make an entire category of add-ons visible only when it’s relevant — seasonal grooming add-ons during warmer months, for example — and hide it the rest of the year without deleting any of the underlying items. Turning a category’s visibility off simply means clients won’t see or book anything inside it until it’s switched back on.
A Trainer’s Experience With the Right Items Attaching Automatically
Cybill Stilwell, owner of Sit Means Sit East GA, a dog training business, chose PocketSuite over several other platforms specifically for how cleanly it organizes what belongs with what: “No matter what you do in this industry, there’s a lot of complexity in the back end. PocketSuite does a really good job of making it simple,” she said, describing a checkout process that auto-attaches the right forms, contracts, and discounts to each type of appointment. Organizing add-ons by category so the right ones surface for the right service works on the same principle — structure set up once, applied automatically after that.
A Category Structure That Grows as a Business Does
A facility just starting out might need only two or three broad categories to cover its full menu, while a larger, multi-service operation might eventually build out a dozen or more narrower ones as its add-on lineup expands. A facility can start simple and split categories further later, whenever its own menu has grown complex enough to justify it, rather than needing to get the structure exactly right on the first try.
Direct Links Send Clients Straight to a Specific Menu
A category can also be linked to directly, so a business can send a client straight to its grooming add-ons or its daycare enrichment options with a single link, rather than asking them to browse a full menu to find what’s relevant to their visit. That’s a simple way to surface the right add-ons for a specific service without a client having to search for them.
Reordering Categories Puts Your Top Add-Ons First
Within Settings, a business can reorder both the categories themselves and the items inside each one, which means the add-on a facility most wants clients to see — the one with the strongest margin or the highest attach rate — can sit at the top of its category rather than getting buried below less popular options.
That ordering can also change seasonally without a business rebuilding its whole menu. A pool-and-splash add-on can sit at the top of a category through the summer months, then move down once a facility reorders its list for a cold-weather season where a heated-indoor-play add-on makes more sense to lead with — the underlying Categories structure stays the same, only the order changes.
Categories Work for Team Members and Locations Too
Beyond services and products, Categories can also group items by location or by individual team member, which matters for a business where different locations or staff offer different add-on menus. A multi-location facility can keep each location’s available add-ons distinct without maintaining separate booking sites.
A single trainer within a larger facility, for example, might offer a specialty add-on — a scent-work session, say — that isn’t relevant to every trainer on staff. Assigning that add-on to a category tied to that specific team member means it only shows up when a client is booking with the trainer who actually offers it, rather than appearing as a confusing option on every booking regardless of who’s providing the service.
Every Item Not in a Category Stays Off the Booking Site
Once a business starts using Categories, any item that isn’t assigned to a category won’t appear on the online booking or ordering site at all — a detail worth planning around before turning the feature on, so every service, product, and add-on a business wants clients to book has a category home.
That single rule is also what makes Categories a reliable way to retire an add-on without deleting it outright. Removing an item from every category, rather than removing the item itself, takes it off the online booking site immediately while keeping its full booking history intact on the account for future reporting.
A New Team Member Learns the Menu Faster Too
A newly hired front-desk staff member learning a facility’s full service and add-on lineup has an easier time with a categorized menu than a single flat list — grouped, labeled sections are simply faster to learn and navigate than an alphabetical or unsorted list of everything a business offers.
A Confusing Menu Costs More Than a Missed Sale
An add-on a client can’t find, or doesn’t realize applies to the service they’re booking, doesn’t just cost that one missed sale — it can also leave a client with a less complete picture of everything a facility actually offers, which shapes whether they think to ask about other services down the road. A clearly organized menu solves both problems with the same structure.
Categories Also Simplify Life for the Team Setting Them Up
The benefit of Categories isn’t limited to the client-facing view — staff building out a facility’s own booking site benefit from the same organization when adding a new service or updating pricing later. Finding “the grooming add-ons category” and updating an item inside it is a faster, less error-prone task than scrolling through every service and product a business has ever offered, all listed in one place.
A Cleaner Menu Reads as a More Professional One
A pet boarding client comparing options is more likely to trust a business whose online menu feels organized and relevant to what they’re actually booking, rather than a long, undifferentiated list of every service a facility has ever offered. Categories is what makes that curated experience possible without a business needing a custom-built website.
Yes. Categories lets a business group its services, products, and packages, and assign specific items to each category, so only relevant add-ons appear alongside a given service on the online booking site.
Yes. Each category has its own Show Online toggle, so a business can hide an entire category temporarily — like seasonal add-ons — without removing the items themselves.
Yes. Categories can group items by location or by individual team member as well as by service type, which is useful for a multi-location business with different add-on menus per location.
None of this requires a business to redesign its actual website or hire a developer — Categories lives inside the same PocketSuite settings a facility already uses to manage its services and pricing, so the organized menu clients see is built from tools a business already has access to.
A well-organized category structure is what turns a long service list into a menu clients actually want to browse. Start your 30-day FREE trial of PocketSuite and set up your own add-on categories.
