Your first booking, step by step
September 13, 2026
Welcome. The Pet Sitter is free for owners — no booking fees, no service charges, ever. This page walks you from empty account to a completed first booking, with links to go deeper at each step.
Add your pets
Do this first: sitters read pet profiles before they accept. Add each pet from your dashboard with photos, temperament notes, feeding routine and anything medical. An honest profile — including the tricky bits like separation anxiety or reactivity — gets you a sitter who is genuinely comfortable with your animal, which is what you actually want.
Find the right sitter
Search — sitters near you, with filters for no-other-pets households, fenced yards and sitters comfortable with medication — is coming soon. Today, a sitter sends you their profile link directly. Either way the profile shows their services, rates and reviews, and badges show verified police checks, insurance and imported review history from other platforms. You'll see first names only until a booking is confirmed; full details come then. Two reads that make choosing easier: how to choose a pet sitter and the questions worth asking before you book.
Message first, meet-and-greet second
Contact a sitter from their profile and talk before you book — dates, routines, anything unusual. For overnight stays or new relationships, a free meet-and-greet is the single best predictor of a smooth booking; most sitters offer one. The meet-and-greet guide covers what to look for.
Book
Send a booking request with your dates and pets. Nothing is committed until the sitter accepts — and acceptance is when their full name is revealed (plus their address, if your pet is going to them: boarding, daycare or grooming). Every sitter sets a cancellation policy — flexible, moderate or strict — shown before you book. The booking guide has the details.
During the booking
Agree with your sitter how often you want updates. They can send report cards with photos, care notes and recorded GPS walk routes during an in-progress booking; this is not a live location feed. Use Messages, email, WhatsApp or whichever channel you both prefer. If something is wrong, the Report Issue button on the booking reaches our team.
Pay your sitter directly
You pay your sitter directly using a method they accept. Their profile lists the options; after confirmation, the booking shows their payment instructions. Depending on the sitter and market, these can include cash, bank transfer, a link from their own payment provider or a local payment method. We do not collect the money or verify settlement. Invoice generation is a Pro sitter feature, when invoicing is available. If you need a receipt or invoice, agree it with your sitter; a Free sitter can provide one using their own tools. An invoice shows the amount billed and recorded payment status, not independent proof that payment arrived.
Afterwards
After a completed booking, you can leave a review about the care you received. To organise the next stay, use Book Again from your dashboard and choose dates; your sitter still needs to accept the request. Your sitter can also propose dates for you to confirm. It is a new booking each time, not an automatically recurring schedule.
Stuck on anything?
Message us from the support widget — a person reads everything. For Melbourne-specific questions, the Melbourne pet-sitting guide is a good place to start.