Many clients provide both digital and hard copy versions of the Welcome Guide. And I know we can cut/paste/DIY our own version as Sitters.
But c’mon @TrustedHousesitters it’s 2025 after all.
Have I missed some @SitterTip ?!
Indeed, why the heck can’t we print/save to PDF the welcome guide? It’s absurd.
There are so many issues with the app (esp. the Android mobile version) it’s not funny. THS is basically only a tech platform, yet it is missing so many obvious features.
-Why can’t we order the ‘saved search’ results by date starting/newest etc?
-Why can’t we bring up a saved search and tweak it - eg. the duration?
-Why can’t we ‘see password’ when entering it instead of only asterisks? (useful to confirm we’ve typed in correctly)
(note, these are features lacking on the android app version)
You’re free to complain all you want to but it’s not going to change anything.
The THS platform is full of bugs, some are so bad that members can’t even log onto their accounts, you think they’re going to address a matter as trivial as printing the Welcome Guide?
As with most of the other problems on the site, find a workaround. In the case of the Welcome Guide, make your own. Upload it to Google Drive or another file sharing platform and include the link in an email to your confirmed sitter. They can download it and view any updates in real time.
I was SO surprised that I couldn’t simply print the guide I’d spent considerable time creating on THS. I spent a LONG time recreating it on my own and printing for reference in my home so that nothing would depend on internet etc.
A major flaw, IMO.
The answer is Google Docs, which is what I did after wrestling with their useless tool.
@KJ_Howe, great shout out for strong basic functionality.
To our knowledge, this has been requested from THS many times. Last year THS introduced a way for PP to save WG as PDF, but PP related feedback was very poor so unsure if related function was withdrawn.
As housesitters, we want to have offline copy of WG on our phones as some housesits are in locations without cellular/mobile reception, so no access to THS website/app.
For each sit, we manually Print-as-PDF each section and collate files into a single PDF document. Pain in the ass. Worse when THS last year introduced even-more nested folders into PP WG process so more sections to collate. But we are not aware of any better workflow.
From what we observe, THS does not have a strong history of continuous improvement on basic functionality unless it generates revenue. There are plenty of suggestions on THS Forum from members with sensible functional changes that would enhance member experience and do not appear complicated.
As remarked many, many prior posts about this. I actually called/texted support a few years back and was told that sitters can’t print the guide as a security measure for HOs.
@KJ_Howe, in our experience…
~60% of pet parents create WG using THS template
~20% pet parents create WG using non-THS template (MS Word, Google Doc) & share before housesit
~15% pet parents create WG using non-THS and print for arrival at housesit
~few% pet parents have limited instructions that barely counts as a WG
I appreciate the thorough response. Easy to screenshot on my phone, within the app (when it’s working on Android) for future reference, I suppose.
Otherwise, I’ll just screenshot key pages from my desktop into a Word doc (!).
Thank you for taking the time to repeat this here.
I’m about to receive a sitter tomorrow as a HO. And on Saturday I’m about to start my very first THS sit! I am now realizing as a HO I can simply print the welcome guide into a PDF to share with the Sitter. But as a sitter, I cannot create a PDF from a HO listing for a confirmed sit. How dumb is this??! I messaged the homeowner we are going to be sitting for and asked her if she doesn’t mind to send me the PDF electronically. She didn’t even know she could make a PDF as a homeowner and was thankful that I let her know and she was happy to send it to me along with another document she had made on her own. C’mon THS, how hard can this be?!?! Hats off to the seasoned Sitters here because if I had to use the Phone app to go in and out of every single subsection every time I needed to find something I would poke my eyes out. Wow you all are warriors!
P.S.I’d like to add that my welcome guide comes out to 27 pages because I live in Mexico and my house has some quirky stuff and I added some photos in there to help. The THS format for printing to a PDF is so horrid. OMG… Crazy. But I guess it’s better than not even having this option to have the nice button to print for the HO to give to the Sitter.
As a sitter of 11 years with THS, I’ve never found this a problem. I read the welcome guide and make a few notes - the address, phone # of the homeowners, wifi password and pet routines. I jot this down and access the welcome guide and have it accessible to read more thoroughly when I arrive at the sit. Most of my sits in the beginning didn’t provide a welcome guide so I created my own “checklist” with questions that were very important to me prior to arriving at the sit. New homeowners really appreciated this but I haven’t had to provide this in quite some time.