Your help needed to improve the Welcome Guide

Hi Arjuna,

We think the parts of the welcome guide that detail pet feeding/routine/care, home care, and communication details are the most vital. Tips on public transportation, restaurant recommendations, etc are all nice to haves but any seasoned traveler can work those out for themselves if needed.

We would love it if you had homeowners complete a form that included the most common “factoids” that sitters need to know. This could be part of the welcome guide but in most cases it would be good to know this info before agreeing to the sit so there are no surprises (like the two big dogs must sleep in bed WITH you"). It could simply be a list of items with Yes/No/NA as possible responses or very short answers.

These are the items we always want to know:

Sleeping Arrangements
-Do the pets sleep in the bed with the sitter?
-Does the guest bedroom have blackout curtains?
-Does the guest bedroom have a skylight?
-What size is the guest bed or guest beds?
Pet Requirements (in addition to the daily routine/feeding routine)
-How long can the pet be left alone if we want to go explore the area?
-Does the pet have to be let outside to go to the bathroom and how frequently?
-Can the pet go exploring with us (i.e. ok at pets allowed restaurants, ok to take on local hikes, etc)
-What is your desired dog walk length and frequency?
-What is your desired cat play time length and frequency?
Travel Arrangements and Timeline
-Do we need to meet before the homeowner leaves and when?
-Do we need to meet after the homeowner returns and when?
-What is the homeowners departure date AND time and return date AND time?
Home Care
-Instructions on operating the heater or AC.

Thanks,
Tim and Sarah

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@timmystan3 , welcome!!
These are great questions! I agree it would be a big help to include them in the Welcome Guide. I’m going to add some of them to my list of pre-sit interview questions. Thanks for this useful post.

Hi @timmystan3 I agree great questions and most of which we ask at pre confirmation stage, along with hanging/storage space availability (depending on the length of stay).

Some Welcome Guides are very brief and when we ask for more details re feeding routines etc the owner replies it will be explained on arrival. Personally we would prefer it in the guide so we can refer to it as there is a lot to take in and remember on arrival.

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I am curious to know if any of you find incorrect information in the Welcome Guide, do you point it out to the Homeowner? Do you also offer then recommendations on what to include that might be helpful to the next sitter?

For us absolutely, and yes to all but always kindly of course. We’ve even been known to write guides for owners in the “old” days before the welcome guide existed (with their blessing of course) :grin:

For us and many others this is such an important document not only on and through the sit but as a prompt to important questions before the sit that takes pressure off the handover time.

I don’t know a homeowner so far that hasn’t welcomed this when offered to help future sits.

Great question!

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Hello, all, and thanks, @ArjunaTHS, for starting this thread!

We have always had a THS manual and a much-more detailed printed manual that we leave for our sitters. We stay in a lot of Airbnbs and VRBOs, and use our experiences as guests to color how we prepare our house for our wonderful sitters. We share the THS manual once we confirm a sit, text our sitters needed access info (so far we have never met our sitters in person prior to the sit), and let them know the extended manual will be in the kitchen (along with a picture of said manual so they know where to find it and we are sure we have taken it out of storage).

Our manual has a Table of Contents to help guide people to what information they are looking for.

In reading through multiple threads on this forum, I am definitely updating our printed manual. Some things I have pulled from this thread include providers like emergency/911 (in the USA), emergency pet care, electric, cable, internet and the “oh, no, the ___ is broken” list of plumbing or a tree has fallen on the roof/a racoon is in the attic and we need to call…

It has come to my attention that we need to add our smart technology to our manual as an “essential” section. Our thermostat has been smart for several years. We now have a Ring-type doorbell. Our refrigerator is “smart” but I am not smart enough to program it, lol!

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On the THS website “how to print the Welcome Guide” it says

As a Welcome Guides contains sensitive information relating to the owner it is not possible for a sitter to print a copy.

I don’t understand this reasoning as I can print the welcome guide pages via my browser or copy & paste the information in to a word doc and print that. Can someone please shed some light on this reasoning for me please as it would be handy to be able to easily print the guide rather than the other clunky ways I currently have to do that.

I’ve been updating my welcome guide and want to include a hyperlink to a google map I created for the area. I don’t see a way to have it become a hyperlink, so sitters would need to cut/paste. Just checking to see if anyone else has done a hyperlink in their welcome guide.

If the issue is that it’s an unwieldy long link, perhaps you can use a URL shortener, like goo.gl or bit.ly that way it’s short and easy to remember :wink:

I had 2 sittings lined up for the same HO and the Welcome Pack was attached to both sittings on my dashboard.
I have just completed the first of these two, only to find that the Welcome Pack has disappeared from the second listing.
Surely the tech team can find a way to attach to both dates until they have both been completed?

@MissChef - thanks I’ll investigate that!

Just created a new thread elsewhere, as I hadnt found this one with two things I would like. I’m adding my two ‘wants’ here now so all the suggestions are together.

I’d like to be able to add more than one vet. In the UK my pets are considered “exotic” (spoiler alert: they are not) and as they are different species that means I have one vet per species.

Also it would be useful to indicate for each pet whether male/female, neutered/or not, vaccinated/or not, microchipped/or not.

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I have recently created my first WG. I was trying to do all from my phone. I would have liked to be able to upload a photo of the Wifi information. I couldn’t find where to do that, and since the public listing photos were attached to the “photos” section, I did not want to attach non-public photos. I ended up texting the Wifi info to the sitter.

It seems that completing the WG might take a few hours? Perhaps divide the information into two sections? It might be more palatable. When a sit is confirmed, I think there are a few things that should be communicated immediately:
Address of home
Phone number of homeowners
Email address of homeowners
Approximate times for the HS to arrive and leave on the dates agreed.

The rest can be communicated later.

We had a recent housesit in which I knew the approximate location of the house (I had been given cross-streets), but I realized only the day before the sit that I did not have the actual address!! Thankfully I was able to text the owner on his cellphone, and he responded promptly.

Before people leave for a trip, they are often in a flurry of activity getting packed, getting their house ready, and perhaps dealing with work issues, etc, so it is better to take care of communicating with the HS way in advance, if possible.

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I’d also like to know WHERE to edit my sitter profile! I just went in to try to make it clear there that I’m not accepting invitations to sit, but all I can get to is my own HO listing.


See “edit profile” on the left.

Arjuna,
I have just received my very first Welcome Guide (my fourth sit thru THS)!!! Something that I noticed which perhaps is just an oversight? There is no specific section for Garbage/Recycling/Compost. If this is true, this should definitely be part of the Guide! My Owner thought to put it in the Kitchen section, but this information should have its own section.

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There is a “Garbage and Recycling” Section under “Home Details”

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Thank you for the information. Perhaps it does not show up in the completed Guide if the Owner does not fill in that section? Good to know that it is there to prompt the Owner.

@Lassie Is there a section for homeowners to add details that would help sitters wisely manage the utilities (electricity/water/gas, for example)? Each time I have to ask this question, and the answer varies greatly. I have had everything from it’s an all-inclusive and don’t concern yourself, to a location where low-cost electricity was two hours a day, was substantially lower, and that two-hour timeframe rotated through various districts. The homeowners are always grateful that I ask, and don’t seem to have considered it. :slightly_smiling_face:

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