Online booking is the public-facing way clients arrange appointments with your clinic on Lupa, without phoning or emailing. They open a clinic-specific link on their phone or laptop, sign in (or register), pick the right pet and visit type, choose a time, and submit a request — all in about a minute. The clinic sees the request appear in their Lupa diary the moment it's submitted, and confirms it in their own time.
This page is the orientation guide to that experience. It covers what online booking is, who it's for, the high-level shape of the journey, and the key concepts that the rest of this section's articles build on. Each step has its own deep-dive page linked at the end.
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In short: Clients open the clinic's booking link, complete a short guided wizard (pet → visit type → date and time → confirm), and submit a request. The clinic reviews and confirms; the client is notified by email or SMS once it's locked in.
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Send the link, don't take the booking by hand. When a client emails or messages asking for an appointment, someone has to type it into the diary later — that's slower and easier to lose. Sharing the booking link puts the request directly into your Lupa diary in real time, with the pet, visit type, and any pre-appointment information already attached.
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| What you get | Why it helps the practice |
|---|---|
| Bookings outside opening hours | Clients can request appointments at any time. Reception isn't tied up on the phone, and you wake up to a queue of structured requests instead of a voicemail backlog. |
| Real diary availability | Slots offered to the client are pulled live from your Lupa rota, so the times they pick are actually free. |
| Cleaner records from day one | Clients fill in their own contact details, pets, and questionnaire answers. That information lands in the right fields automatically — no re-keying. |
| One link, every channel | The same booking link works on your website, in confirmation emails, SMS reminders, social bios, and QR codes on signage. |
| You stay in control | Submissions arrive as requests, not confirmed bookings. The clinic decides whether to accept, reschedule, or decline before the slot is locked in. |
| User | What they do here |
|---|---|
| Existing clients | Sign in with the account they previously created, pick the pet and the visit type, choose a slot, submit. |
| New clients | Register through the same portal — the registration step pulls them into the clinic's client list and pre-fills their pet record so they're set up before the first visit. |
| Pre-registering owners | If the clinic has pre-registration enabled, owners can use the same link to register themselves and their pet without booking an appointment yet. |
| Referring vets | If the clinic accepts referrals, the registration screen offers a "Register as part of a clinic" path that routes referring staff into a separate referral flow. |
| Reception and front-of-house | Don't book through the link themselves — they review incoming requests in the work app and accept, reschedule, or decline. See Booking confirmations and pre-appointment information. |
The booking portal is a short guided wizard. The steps are always presented in the same order, with a progress bar at the top so the client can see how far through they are. Some steps are skipped automatically depending on how the clinic has configured the portal — for example, vet selection only appears if the clinic lets clients pick a person.
Every step deep-dive lives on its own page in this section. This page only sketches the shape.
Each clinic has its own booking link — typically book.lupapets.com/booking/<your-clinic-id> — that you embed on your website, share in emails and SMS, or print as a QR code. The link is clinic-specific, so a client always lands directly in the right portal with your branding.
The first screen asks the client to sign in. New clients tap Register and complete a short email-verified registration, including a 6-digit code sent to their inbox. Returning clients sign in with email and password (or recover via Forgot Password). Once authenticated, the wizard remembers them on that device.
For the full registration, login, and forgotten-password walkthrough — including how the portal links new accounts to existing client records — see Registration, login and intake questionnaires.