Way to go! You got a notification someone filed an application to adopt one of your rescue dogs! Now comes the process of approving/denying the application (paws crossed it is approval!). Here’s the process for tracking the stages of the application and staying connected with your applicant along the way!

1. Log into the back end of your website and then select Dog Adopters:

   

2. On the Submitted page (which it just so happens comes up first!), find the application you are wanting to review, then click on it.

   

   • • That will bring you up the application.

   

   • But where’s the rest of it, you ask? See that little half-circle with an arrow conveniently located below the Address and Preference boxes? Click on it, and voila, the rest of the application magically appears!

     

   • You can click on the arrows on the right of each row to access the information in that section of the contract.

     

3. Once you’ve reviewed it, you need to decide what to do with it. If you scroll down a bit, under the Timeline you will see various choices, all you need to do is decide which way to go.

   

   NOTE: Approval DOES NOT mean you are approving the application, just that you’ve determined in the Initial Review the applicant is not a loser and it might be worth exploring further. Of course, if the applicant is a horse’s patootie, then you can pick Deny. There also is a Reason section so you can note why you’re denying it.
4. If you click on Send Email, the email which your admin has set up to be sent to the applicant will appear (don’t worry, it doesn’t send it right away).

   

   • You can either send it “as is” or make any edits you want.
   • There is also a Select Options, where you can select a different email to send if your Admin has set up options.

     

   • Just click on the Send Now button when you are ready to send it winging on its way…

   

   Remember to click on the Update Process button above the email text to wake up the techno- wizards of the website let them know it’s time to get to work.

   

5. The timeline now shows you have moved on to the Home Visit stage (a bit more about that below) with the same box as the Initial Stage when you are ready to approve at this stage.

   

6. The application has now moved to the Initial Approval Stage in the Dog Adopter Roster:

   

   NOTE: As long as we’re here, when you’re trying to find an application and don’t know what stage it is in – or even if you want to see all the applications for a certain dog – you can now search that way from the top if any of the Adopter screens!

   

7. And while all the updating is being done on the website, the little sprites of the software have sent that acknowledgement email to the adopter (like this but with your branding and whatever your admin set up):

   

That’s it for the Initial Approval stage. When the application progresses, come on back and check out our instruction sheet for Approval Process – Stage 2: Home Visit (which, as we’ll discuss, doesn’t necessarily have to refer to a Home Visit!)