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Setup Guide

A comprehensive guide to setting up KennelBooker so that it fits in with the way you run your business!

Stephen avatar
Written by Stephen
Updated over a year ago

Thanks for signing up to try out KennelBooker. In this guide we will run though the most commonly asked questions on how to set up your account and get up and running quickly!

Once you sign up for an account on KennelBooker, the first screen that you will see is our Set-Up wizard, this wizard will guide you though setting up your account, and will only take a few minutes to complete. Once completed, most of the standard features will be configured and you can begin entering in your bookings.

In the following sections we will run though the features that you now have at your finger tips to help grow and manage your business. You can use the table of contents on the right hand side to jump quickly to different topics/features.

This guide will give you a good overview of the various features and how they work, and will provide links to additional resources and information on setting up the features.


1 System Setup

1.1 Business Logo

You can add your company logo to your KennelBooker account, once added your logo will now be shown on your the online booking portal that will be used by your customers and it will be added to your pdf invoices, click here to upload your logo.

The system will automatically scale you logo when it is displayed on the online booking portal, but when its added to the PDF invoices we cannot scale it to fit. If your logo is appearing to big on the PDF you can resize your logo to no larger then 1000px wide.

1.2 Saving KennelBooker to your Phones Homescreen

Since you probably visit KennelBooker quite often on your phone then you might like to have quicker access to that site, without the need to login every-time. You might appreciate an icon on your iPhone’s or Android home screen that you can tap to launch that site, just like you’d launch an app.

Full Instructions

iPhone Instructions

To add KennelBooker to your home screen, open up KennelBooker in Safari, login into the application so that you are on the dashboard or daily-overview screen, and tap the share arrow. Look for the Add to home screen button and tap it, you can edit the name of the bookmark.

Tap Add to add it. Now, tap the home button (or your iPhone X equivalent) to return to the home screen. You’ll see a new icon, which can be tapped to take you straight back to the site, the system will keep you logged in (as long as you don't click on the logout button/or sometimes the system will log you out if we release some big changes).

Android Instructions

To add KennelBooker to your home screen, open up KennelBooker in Chrome, login into the application so that you are on the dashboard or daily-overview screen. click on the 3 dot menu in the upper right hand corner of the screen and then click on the Add to Homescreen menu option You can then enter a name for the shortcut and then Chrome will add it to your home screen.

When you click on the icon from your phone you will be taken straight back to the site, the system will keep you logged in (as long as you don't click on the logout button/or sometimes the system will log you out if we release some big changes).

1.3 Calendar Settings

The main visual boarding calendar that is viewable from the Calendars link in the left hand menu can be customized from its default view, you can choose to display the customers name, the customers name and pets names, or just the pets names in the visual view.

1.4 Multi-Location Support

KennelBooker support facilities with multiple locations, each facility/location needs to have their own instance of KennelBooker.

If your facilities are close to each other or you generally get an overlap of customers we can set up the system to share your customer database between locations. This allows you to have one online booking platform that covers all locations.

1.5 Setting up TAX, VAT, GST, HST

Within KennelBooker you have a few options for setting up your Tax settings, you can either;

  • Leave the tax settings turn off all together

  • Set your tax to Exclusive

    • When you set your booking price taxes will be added on top of the cost

  • Set you tax in Inclusive

    • The price you set will be inclusive of any taxes

When specific your Tax rate, you can set two different rates one that will be applied to your bookings, services and packages, and a different rate that will be applied to products.

In some countries / or geographical regions tax made not be applicable to certain services such as training services, if this is the case you can use the toggle switches to set a zero tax rate on these bookings.

You can set your Tax settings by clicking here

Additionally you may wish to rename Tax on the system to your local name, you can do this from the Customize Text settings page in the system.

Note: When a booking is added to the system it will save the tax settings at that point in time, if your tax rate changes please contact us to discuss how to go about updating all future bookings. Or if you move from being a sole trader or not meeting the Tax threshold in your country - contact us to discuss how to update future booking to incorporate your new Tax status.

Tax / VAT / GST / HST Settings

KennelBooker lets you add two different tax rates into the system, so you can have one tax rate for bookings and another for products. If you have some bookings types or services that tax is not applicable to you can exclude those booking types or services from tax.

You can also set up the system so that tax is included (Inclusive) within the price shown or is added to the costs displayed to the customer (Exclusive).

1.6 Renaming Services/Booking Types

If you would prefer to call your main booking types something different then the system defaults of Boarding, Daycare, Grooming, Training, Walks, Homestay, Evaluations. The system lets you override the default name with your own service names, eg you could rename Daycare as 'Doggy Playschool' or Grooming as 'Pet Spa'.

You can also rename some of the sub-categories of bookings such as Full Day, Half Day, and Hourly Daycare

The system will update the booking and sub booking type names from the 'Customize Text' settings screen.


2 Regional Settings/Localization

When setting up your KennelBooker account, the system will setup these settings for you depending on the options you choose and your depending on which country you are located in.

If you every need to update these settings you can do so from the following page click here.

2.1 Date Format

From the first three selectors you can choose your country, currency symbol, and time zone (note we don't support the automatic moving on times due to DST - please click here for more information on Daylight Savings Time).

KennelBooker supports a number of different date formats including;

  • mm/dd/yyyy

  • dd/mm/yyyy

  • yyyy-mm-dd

2.2 Decimal Formats

KennelBooker supports a two different decimal formats commonly referred to as the comma format and the dot format;

  • Comma Format 1,000.00

  • Dot Format 1.000,00

To switch between the two formats simply go into the settings and then and choose the appropriate format from the Decimal Format dropdown list.

2.3 24 Hour Clock Support

In some countries epically Scandinavian countries it is common place to use the 24 hour clock (or military time) rather they 9am and 9pm, if you prefer to use the 24 hour clock just toggle the last setting on this panel.

2.4 Calendar Start Dates

By default the calendars shown in the system show the week starting from Monday - Sunday, however if you would prefer you can choose to display these from Sunday - Saturday.

2.5 Daylight Savings Time

Unfortunately the system cannot adjust for DST automatically, as not every country observes daylight savings time and even in the counties that do some states or regions ignore it, not to mention every country jumps at different dates.

You can manually adjust you system time on the following page https://www.kennelbooker.com/app/settings_overview.aspx

The system will show you current time in footer of the web page

Its best to do this at the start of the day or at the end of the day if your pricing is based on the number of hours a pets stays on-site, as changing the time mid-way though the day can effect this calculation.

2.6 Updating Text / Service Names

The online booking portal supports the following languages and the customers preferred language will display depending on the browser settings. Support languages include;

  • English

  • Spanish

  • French

  • Italian

  • Dutch

  • German

  • Swedish

  • Norwegian

  • Lithuanian

  • Luxembourgish (soon)

There are additional phrases or service names that can be customized from the Customize Text page in the settings area, click here to customize these phrases.

etc...


3. Customization

3.1 Add Accepted Pet Types

After running though the initial setup wizard you may need to add additional pet types into the system, the standard pet types that KennelBooker has includes; Dogs, Cats, Rabbits, Guinea Pigs, Horses, Birds, Hamsters, Rats, Gerbils, Chinchillas, Turtles, Ferrets, and Other.

Your can turn on additional pet types here.

For any additional pet types that you care for you can turn on the 'Other' option, and then from the Breeds settings screen you can add additional pet types as Breeds under this option, e.g. Other > Lizards etc.

3.2 Adding Additional Booking Modules

After you setup KennelBooker, if you want to configure additional booking modules you can do this from the main settings page.

3.3 Renaming Booking Modules

Once you setup your booking modules if you want to you can customize the names of the main services from the Customize Text settings screen.

From this screen you can change Daycare to Playschool for instance, when you do this anywhere on KennelBooker where the phrase Daycare is shown it will be replaced with Playschool.


4. Business Settings

4.1 Signing Up For an Account

4.2 Viewing Receipts

4.3 Updating Your Payment Details

4.4 Updating your Business Details

4.5 Updating your Password

4.6 Uploading your Logo


5. System Features

5.1 Tagging

It is also possible to add in your own custom tags to your account, You can then assign these tags to pets and customers accounts, you can also assign tags to specific bookings if required.

Customers will generally use tags to highlight important features about a pet or customer, such as if the pet is aggressive, a biter, or cannot be off leash etc.

Any tags that are associated with a customer or pets profile have the ability to then show up on a booking, on the add booking wizard, and on the check-in popup screen.

5.2 Additional Services

If you have additional services that you allow customers to add to your bookings, you can add these into your systems. Customers use these this feature for adding baths, extra walks, and various grooming services to their bookings. You can set these up from the additional services settings page within the system and you can associate each of these services with particular booking types. So for instance, if you don't want daycare bookings to be able available back then you can only mark these for boarding or grooming bookings for instance

5.3 Point of Sale

We also have a point of sale feature built into KennelBooker using the point of sale feature. You can add in your products into KennelBooker that you might sell on your premises such as dog toys, leads, clothing, food, etc. You can then add these items to your booking when your customer is checking out. And additionally, if you need to, you can create a standalone sale within the system and.

The system will also track the quantity on hand and lets you and will the doctor the quantity as each item is sold within the shop.

5.4 Accounting Integrations

We currently integrate with the two big accounting software packages on the web. These being QuickBooks online and Xero once set up, you can assign your various accounting codes to your booking types and services and payment types would in KennelBooker and then when the bookings are sent across to your accounting software, they are automatically categorized within Xero or QuickBooks.

Generally does this is a one-way communication channel with zero QuickBooks? It is best to only send these bookings and payments across once the booking has been fully paid within KennelBooker.

5.5 Incident Reporting

5.6 Tipping/Recording Tips

5.7 Evaluations

5.8 Discounts



6. Boarding Setup

6.1 Pricing Setup

Within KennelBooker there are a number of ways that you can charge your customers for boarding bookings.

6.2 Rate Based Billing

As part of the setup wizard you will enter in the rates that you charge, if you need to make modifications to rates or add additional rates you can do this from the 'Boarding Settings' page, click on the button above to open the boarding settings page.

When you enter your bookings into KennelBooker you assign a rate to each pet on the booking. When you add in a booking there is an option to save the selected rates against the pets profiles so that they are pre-selected automatically for future bookings.

6.3 Customized or Algorithmic Billing

If your billing is more complicated we can add a custom pricing algorithm into KennelBooker that will set the price of the booking based on a number of factors. We currently do this for around 20% of our customer base.

Using a custom pricing algorithm makes sure that the correct price is charged for every booking, eliminating the ability for staff to make mistakes in assigning rates or calculating the booking price manually.

6.4 Daily vs Nightly Billing

You can charge your customers on a daily or nightly basis. If you set the system up the charge daily a Monday through Friday booking will count is 5 days. However, if you charge nightly a Monday to Friday booking will count as 4 nights. You can set your preferred billing type from the boarding settings page. If any bookings have already been entered in the system, you will have to manually switch these from Nightly to Daily or visa versa, by clicking into the booking and then by clicking into the booking Admin page from the left hand menu.

6.5 Late Checkout Fees

It is also possible within the system to charge late checkout fees for bookings. For example, If you charge on a nightly basis you can add an additional charge to the booking if the pet does not check out before a certain time.

The following image show's that a full nightly fee will be applied to a booking if checkout is after 10:00 AM.

The system can charge either;

  • A full nightly or daily fee,

  • A half nightly or daily fee,

  • or an Additional Service can be applied to a booking, this can be either one fee for the booking or a fee per pet on the booking.

6.6 Peak Pricing and Holiday Pricing

You also have the ability of setting up peak pricing in the system to charge customers higher fees on particular days.

This allows you to charge different rates depending on the time of the year. Once peak pricing is enabled from the boarding settings page, you can set up to three price points per rate (standard rate, a mid-season rate, and a high season rate).

When adding a booking the system will check each day of the booking to see if it falls into the standard, mid, or high season rate and will apply the appropriate charge as necessary.

You can add in your peak data ranges from the boarding settings page. Just make sure that you add these in for each year, as they do not roll over as the dates for various holidays tend to change from year to year. Additionally, make sure that date ranges don't overlap as this can lead to a customer being charge double for a day.

6.7 Split Bookings

When your facility is particularly busy especially around holiday periods, if a customer tries to make a booking and you do not have a room(s) that is available continuously for the request duration, you may be able to house the pet(s) in multiple rooms for the bookings duration.


7. Board and Train

If you provide a Board & Train service, such as when customers leaves their pet with you for a number of weeks to be trained. You can accept these bookings by turning on the Board & Train setting on the main boarding settings page.

Once enabled, you can set a board & train rate for the entire booking. So instead of setting a daily or nightly charged for your boarding booking, you will set one rate for the booking. Pets will be assigned to a room under the boarding runs/rooms for the duration of their stay.


8. Daycare Setup

8.1 Pricing Setup

Our daycare module lets charge in one of three ways;

  • You can charge a flat rate per dog eg $£€ 30 per dog

  • You can charge via a tiered pricing structure such as a one dog charge, two dog charge, a three dog charge, etc.

  • or If your pricing falls outside of these structures, please contact us to talk about setting up a custom pricing algorithm. We can set these up for the charge that have more complex pricing structures such as a sliding scale for the booking price depending on the number of days that the customer has already booked in for the week. It normally takes a few days to set this up, and if any modifications need to be made to the algorithm at any point you will need to give us advanced notice.

8.2 Packages, Credits, and Subscriptions

We two types of packages that you can use to allow your customers to prepay in advance for their bookings, these are;

  • Standard Daycare Credit Package, this allows you to create a package of X credits that the customer can purchase up front. When a customer makes a booking via the online booking system if they have credits on their account, a credit or credits will be applied to the booking and the cost updated accordingly. For bookings already in the system, when a booking checks in the system will check to see of the customer has any available credits, if available credits will be applied to the booking.

  • Recurring Subscriptions, using our integration with Stripe you can set up a package of credits that will be applied to the customers account each billing period, Stripe will take care of automatically charging the customers card each billing cycle (weekly, monthly, yearly). When a customer checks in the system will check to see if they have used all of their credits for that billing period, if credits are available they will be applied to the booking.

8.3 Using boarding instead of play areas

Some daycare facilities assign pets to a room for decoration of their daycare booking instead of assigning them to a play area which is the default within the system. If your facility works like this within the daycare settings page, you can turn on the 'Use Boarding units instead of Playarea's' setting. Once enabled. When adding a daycare booking into the system, you will sit instead, assign the pet to a room for their the booking stay from the boarding setting screen.


9. Grooming Setup

When adding grooming bookings into the system, there is a limit of one pet per booking this is to allow bookings to be scheduled accurately, however when adding a booking if the customer has multiple pets, the booking wizard will let you select all of the customers pets, when the booking is saved one booking will be made for each pet.

9.1 Grooming Pricing

You can set pricing for your grooming pricing by either setting the price of the booking manually or by adding additional services to the bookings, such as a grooming service, a nail clip service etc

9.2 Scheduling

There a two ways to schedule bookings either;

  • By settings the date and time manually,

  • or by using our Grooming Slots feature

9.3 Manually Scheduling

When adding bookings you can check your grooming calendar to see when you can slot the customers pet into your schedule, when adding the booking you can set the date, time, and duration of the booking.

9.4 Grooming Slots

When the grooming slots feature with this feature. You can set up grooming slots for the day, such as a slot at 9:00 a.m. 11:00 a.m. 12:00 a.m. 2:00 p.m. etc. This allows customers to see your grooming availability, and book your available slots using the online booking portal.

9.5 Commission Based Bookings

If you do not have salary based groomers on staff but instead pay them a commission or percentage of the grooming cost, when adding grooming staff into the system you can designate Groomers as working on commission and you can set the commission rate on each groomers account, and you can also specify if they are paid a commission on the main booking cost only or also on any additional services added to the booking.


10. Training Bookings


11. Online System - How it works, integration, and setup

11.1 Website Integration

Integrating the online booking portal into your website should only take you a few minutes, once you have set up your account simply click into the settings area of KennelBooker and then into the 'Online Booking Portal' settings page.

From the settings page you just need to copy in the URL that should look similar to the following.

https://www.kennelbooker.com/clientlogin.aspx?id=faabb7c3-c7cc-487b-a394-cbf9f5554f7d

From your own websites content management system (CMS) or designer, you will just need to add a button or link onto your website or in your websites menu, and point the URL to the link that you have just copied.

Once added to your website, when your customers click on the link they will be directed to your online booking portal, this portal can be customised from the online portal settings page. From the online portal customers can sign into an existing account, create a new account, or just check your availability.

11.2 Creating an Account

When creating an account your can ask the customer to fill in their own personal details (name, address, phone number etc), emergency contact details, vet details, and of course their pets details (name, dob, breed, sex, neutered status, weight etc).

Existing Customers

For customers that you already have in your database, as long as their is an email address added to their profile, when the customer first comes to the online portal we will try to match the customer to an existing account; if we can find one the customer will be asked to set a password for their account. If customer has previously use the online portal they will be just asked to enter their email and password to gain entry to the system.

Duplicate Customers

If a customer signs up to the online system and we cannot match them to an existing account, a duplicate account may be created for the customer if this happens we have a merge feature within the system to combine duplicate accounts.

11.3 Digital Waivers

As part of the online portal you can have your customers digitally sign your facilities terms and conditions agreement. You can set up a digital waiver so it covers all bookings or you can set one up specific to each different booking type. When a customer uses the online booking portal, if you use one waiver to cover all booking types they will sign this when they log into the system, or if you have waivers set up for each booking type they will only sign the waiver when making a booking of that type. It is also possible to include a link within the booking confirmation email for the customer to sign this waiver if they do not use the online booking portal.

We also have an old school way of getting customers to sign your terms and conditions. With this feature, you can add your terms and conditions to the system and the system will let you print off a PDF of your booking information. Once printed off, your customers can manually sign this document and you can either keep it in your filing cabinet or you can take a scan or a picture of the image and upload it to the customers account.

11.4 Q&A

If you have additional questions that you need to ask customers that aren't covered by KennelBooker, you can add these into the system. Customers will then be able to fill in their answers to these questions when creating a online account or making a booking.

There are three types of questions that can be added into the system;

  • Booking Questions

    • These need to be answered for each booking added into the system

  • Customer Questions

    • These need to be answered only one, the system will prefill the previous answers so they can update any information that they have entered.

  • Pet Questions

    • These need to be answered once pet pet, the system will prefill the previous answers so they can update any information that they have entered.

11.5 Setting Opening Hours

Within the system, you can define up to three opening and closing periods for each for your services. So, for instance, for your boarding servers you can set three opening and closing periods for such as; if you open from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. for check-ins, and from 1:00 to 2:00 for check-ins at lunch time, and then from 5:00 to 6:00 for check outs in the evening.

It is also possible to set up the system so that the customer is required to select a check-in and check-out time when creating a booking online. It is also possible if you run a smaller facility that you can once a customer picks a check in or check out time, remove the time from the list so that no other customer can check in/out at the same time.

On the online booking system, the system will show your opening and closing times in 15 minutes increments. You can adjust this as required from the opening and closing settings page.

11.6 Setting Closed Dates (fully or partial)

Within your system you have two options for adding in your closing dates for your facility. When defining a closed period, you can be fully closed or not fully closed. So when you create a closed period and mark the entry as fully closed, that means that no pets can be on site during that period. If however you have a close period and you're not fully closed, it means just for that during the period you are just unable to accept check-ins or checkouts. So for instance you can have a booking checking in the day before you were due to close and checking out the day after you are due to close.

YouTube Demo


12 Setting up Online Payments

Setting up online payments is fairly straightforward. We use a company called Stripe for online payments as KennelBooker currently operates in about 32+ countries worldwide and we need to use a global payments provider.

12.1 Setup

From the online payments settings page in KennelBooker just click on the Connect To Stripe' button. You will then be transferred to Stripe systems which will then let ask you to fill in your personal and company details. Stripe will then do the standard 'Know Your Customer' (KYC) checks and will ask for a form of ID. Once completed, you'll be transferred back to KennelBooker and your stripe account will be linked to your KennelBooker account. You will then be able to set up the system to accept either deposits or the full booking amount from your customers when they make their bookings.

12.2 Payment Amounts

With the payment settings for most booking types you can set the system up to either request from the customer for a booking;

  • The full bookings cost up front,

  • A percentage of the total booking cost as a deposit,

  • or a set amount (e.g. $£€100, if the booking cost was less then this the system would charge the lesser amount).

12.3 General Workflow (Boarding, Grooming, Homestay Bookings)

Generally, the workflow of taking payments from a customer online goes as follows;

  • The customer logs into the online customer portal and makes a provisional booking.

  • You will then get an email letting you know of this booking.

  • You can click into KennelBooker to view the booking details and confirm the booking.

  • Once confirmed, you will assign the pets to their various rooms & set the rate(s) for their booking.

  • The customer will then received a booking confirmation email with a link to pay for their booking (full amount, percentage of the booking cost, or a fixed fee).

12.4 General Workflow (Daycare, Training)

For daycare and training bookings the following workflow applied;

  • The customer logs into the online customer portal and makes a booking.

  • The system can then either automatically accept the booking, in which case it is confirmed and the customer will then be asked to pay for their booking

  • or the booking will come into the system as provisional and you will need to confirm the booking, the customer will then received a booking confirmation email with a link to pay for their booking (full amount, percentage of the booking cost, or a fixed fee).

12.5 Requesting the Balance

You can have the customer pay for the remaining balance of their booking by either;

  • Charging a saved card that they have on file,

  • Sending the customer an email on checkout with a link to pay the balance,

  • or when the system sends the customer sends a reminder email the system can request the balance owed.

12.6 From the Customers Perspective

Once the customer clicks on the in the confirmation/receipt email, they will be transferred to KennelBooker where they can enter in their credit card detail securely (SSL/Encrypted) when their credit card details are entered in system. Stripe will then take attempt payment from the customer's card, If the customer has two factor authentication on the card, Stripe will take care of requesting this authentication.

Stripe will then deposit the money directly into your Stripe account and then after your first deposit to your bank account which usually takes 7 days, the turnaround time from payment is reduced to 2 days. So a customer that makes a payment on a Monday, the money will be in your bank account on a Wednesday.

12.7 Refunds directly with KennelBooker

Additionally, within KennelBooker when a customer does make a payment through the system, you have the option of doing a full or partial refund on that payment. To do this, you go into the payments page in KennelBooker and find the associated payment and then you can choose an amount to repay KennelBooker will take care of sending that information to Stripe to process the refund and will it adjust the payment amount on the booking accordingly.

12.8 In-Person Payment Terminal (POS)

We also now support Stripes new in-person payment terminals, you can purchase one of these from Stripes website directly (click here). You will need to purchase their 'BBPOS WisePOS E' device as this is the only one that works with web applications like KennelBooker. The other device that they offer is only for Bluetooth connected devices and is not suitable for web-based systems.

Once integrated and set up, which is pretty straightforward when you were on KennelBooker , you can click into a booking and click on a button to send the outstanding balance to the payment terminal so the customer can pay with their card. They can depending on the country that you were in, insert their card or they can 'tap to pay' once payment is taken Stripe will deposit this money to your Stripe account and the system will mark the booking is paid and log the payment in the system.


13. Additional Services

If you offer any additional services that your customers can avail of during their pets bookings such as; extra walks, one-on-one time, a bath at the end of their stay etc You can add your services into KennelBooker on the 'Additional Services' page in the settings page.


There are a few settings you can enable for the additional services;

  1. You can let customers add services to their booking on the online system, and

  2. You can have KennelBooker auto schedule services automatically so if the customer chooses to add a walk for each day of their booking KennelBooker will add a date against each of the walk entries, you can set KB up to exclude the check-in and out days for auto scheduling. e.g. for a Monday to Friday booking you may not do walk on the Mon & Fri, so if you choose the 'Every Day' option when adding services to a booking - the check-in and out days will be excluded.


14. Arrears (Weekly/Monthly) Billing

For facilities that charge customers on a weekly or monthly basis. You have the ability within KennelBooker to check out bookings and leave them as unpaid. Then at the end of the week or month from our monthly billing feature, you can quickly see which customers owe you money and with the click of a button you can email them an invoice for the entire bill for the period month.

When bills/statements are sent to customers sent, the system will mark the bookings as billed, so they will then be removed from the billing screen, if customer(s) have not paid for the bookings you can reset the billed status on any bookings and re-bill the customers (this can be done from the bottom of the billing screen).

This feature will save you hours of manual calculations of which bookings belong to which customers and who has paid what.


15. Staff Accounts

In KennelBooker you can set up individual logins for each of your staff members or you can set up one staff Login account that all staff members on site will use. The most common setup ups are as follows;

15.1 Setup One

This setup tends to be used by facilities that share a PC/Computer at the check-in area.

  • Administrator Account (this is used by the business owner)

  • General Staff account

    • Optionally using the multi staff feature that lets you create staff members under this account and assign them staff codes these staff codes must then be entered into parts of the system when carrying out certain functions such as adding bookings or checking out customers.

15.2 Setup Two

This setup tends to be used by facilities where staff work remotely (dog walkers, offsite pet sitting etc) a PC/Computer at the check-in area.

  • Administrator Account (this is used by the business owner)

  • A Staff login for each staff member using their email address

    • You can restrict access to certain parts of the system if required, such as the financial reports section and the settings pages.

15.3 Security - IP, Access

If required you can lock down staff accounts so that they can only access the system when while on-site and connected to your local Wi-Fi network, we use do this via IP address matching. If you have a static IP address at your facility, you can add this into the system and only staff that are connected to the Wi-Fi network will be able to access the system (the Administrator will be able to access the system from anywhere).

You can also restrict access to certain parts of the system for different staff members. For instance, if you have a groomer who comes on site once or twice a week, you can restrict access so that they can only see the grooming bookings within the system and don't have access to any of the other booking types.

15.4 Time & Attendance

We also have a Time & Attendance feature built into KennelBooker that allows your staff to clock in and clock out for their shifts. The staff member can clock in and clock out multiple times during the day and then as required you can run a time and attendance report from the financial setting screen to view how many hours the employee has worked for that time period? The system will show the number of hours and minutes.

The Administrator account can also make adjustments to staff clocking's as required, in case a staff member forgot to clock in or out for a shift.


16. Reports

16.1 Daily Reports

The system includes 40+ day to day reports a full list of the available can be found below;

  • Bookings

    • View all bookings for a set period

  • Checkin Report

    • See all bookings checking in on a particular day

  • Checkout Report

    • See all bookings checking out on a particular day

  • Daycare Report

    • See all Daycare bookings for a particular day

  • Occupancy Report (Daily)

  • Occupancy Report (Weekly)

  • Occupancy Report (Real-Time)

  • Occupancy Report (Percentage)

  • Cancelled Bookings

    • Will show bookings that have been cancelled for a particular period

  • Boarding Bookings (No Deposit)

    • Will list new boarding bookings that have no deposit paid

  • Boarding - Split Bookings Check

    • This report will show boarding bookings that are split between multiple rooms, and will highlight any issues eg, if not enough rooms have been booked/allocated.

  • Boarding - No Space Allocated

    • This report will show bookings that have no rooms allocated to the pet(s)

  • Scheduled Services

  • All Services

  • Taxi/Transport Report - PDF

  • Taxi/Transport Report - Excel

  • Facility Overview

  • Feeding Report - (Short)

  • Feeding (BD & DDC) - (Short)

  • Feeding (BD & DDC) - (AM, Noon, PM)

  • Medication Report

  • Incidents Report

  • Belongings

  • Daily Schedule

  • Pet Count (Onsite during Day)

  • Pet Count (Checking In)

  • Pet Count (Overnight)

  • Booking Count

  • Cleaning Report

  • Waiver Report

  • To Do Report

  • Documents Uploaded

  • Pets Report

  • Customers Report

  • Pet Coding

    • Get a list of the temperament coding's that have been assigned to pet that will be onsite for a selected period.

  • Pet Notes Report

    • See all notes for pets

  • Notes History - Report

    • See all notes by severity assigned to pets that will be checked in for a particular day

  • Booking Tag Report

    • Lets you see all bookings that have been assigned a particular tag

  • Tag Report

    • Lets you see all customers/pets that have been assigned a particular tag

  • Q&A Report

  • Vets Report

    • Lets you print a list of all Vets in your system

  • Birthday Report

    • Let you print off a list of pets birthdays for a month

  • End of Day Report

    • Shows a breakdown of the payments made on a selected day

16.2 Financial Reports


17. Calendars


18. To Do Lists

Within KennelBooker you also have the ability to set up To-Do lists. Your To-Do list can be used to assign tasks to staff on a daily basis such as cleaning kennels, sanitizing play areas, moping floors, etc.

It is also possible to set to To-Do items and link them to a booking or a customer's profile.

This allows you to set up To-Do items that need to be carried out for each booking on a particular day. For instance, if a boarding booking was checked in and the dog needs to be exercised in the morning and evening, you can set up two to do items for the day. Once completed, staff can check them off on the system as completed.

When adding To-Do items you can add an item that needs to be completed on a particular day or you can set up a recurring item that needs to be completed on particular days for X number of week, from the snippet below this will set up a 'Clean Kennels' to-do item to be carried out every Monday-Friday at 11am for 104 weeks (2 years).


19. Waitlist

For busy times of the year, we also have a waitlist feature built into KennelBooker. When customers try to make a booking on the online system, and you are full for the requested period they have the option of adding their booking request to your waitlist. When a booking is added to your waitlist you will receive an email letting you know the details of the customers request.

Once logged into your account, when you click into the Waitlist feature from the left hand menu, this system will loop though all of the bookings to see if any of the bookings can be accommodated (in case you have had cancellations or move bookings around to make space).

If you contact the customer regarding a waitlist request and then wish to go ahead with the booking, your can move the booking from waitlist to the main system.


20. Evaluations

You can use the evaluations feature to prevent customers from booking their pets in unless they have passed an on-site evaluation by your staff. Once turned on all pets in the system will need to be evaluated, you can quickly pass all existing pets so only new customers will have to go though the process. You can enabled evaluations for all bookings types or just for certain services. Click on the button below to view the full evaluations guide.


21. Customer Contact

22.1 Email & SMS Marketing

The marketing module lets you create segments of your customer database such as a segment of all Grooming customers who have not used your service in 60 days. This creates a real-time list of those pets that are overdue for a grooming appointment and lets you quickly and easily contact those customers to see if they wish to set up an appointment.

22.2 Postcards

The postcard feature lets you send an email along with attached pictures of the customer's pet on a daily basis. You can use this feature to send postcards from the individual booking, or you can upload multiple pictures of pets on site and tag the pets within. The system will work out who's pet is in which pictures and send then customer an email with all of the images of their pet for the day.

22.3 Customizing your Emails & SMS messages

KennelBooker uses templated files for your email and SMS communications with your customers. All of these templates can be customised from the email and SMS settings page within the settings area. Simply click into this page and find the email or SMS templates click into each of them and edit them as necessary.

22.4 MailChimp

We also have an integration with MailChimp built into KennelBooker, once enabled and set up when new customers are added into the system, we can automatically send the customers details to your mailing list within MailChimp. MailChimp provides a full marketing email eco-system that lets you use pretty HTML templates to send customers emails such as Christmas cards etc.



23. Getting your data in KennelBooker

If you are moving from an older kennel management system you can sometimes export your data from those systems into Excel or CSV, if this is not possible for instance like with the old KennelConnection system we will need to copy the entire database from your local machine and extract the data that we need.

If you are using one of the newer software packages on the internet (Gingr or Revelation Pets), you can generally export your data into Excel or CSV format.

Or if your old school and currently using pen and paper for managing your bookings. If you can transcribe your data into an Excel spreadsheet, we can import it for you which will save you considerable amount of time in manually entering it in all your customer and pets details into the system.

We don't charge for the service and generally it takes about two to three days to do a data import, this can vary depending on the number of customers in the queue, generally before we can import the data we need to cleans the spreadsheets of before we can import it into a database.

Also, when you send your data across, please make sure it is accurate and correct as we can only do this once, additional data port database imports will occur incur a fee as they take a considerable amount of time to complete.


24. Additional Settings

There are a number of other settings within KennelBooker that you'll generally only have to set up once.

24.1 Vaccinations

When you create your KennelBooker account, we will automatically load in a number of different vaccination types. These vaccinations are the general vaccinations types that are used globally and you can delete any of the vaccinations that you do not require from the vaccinations settings screen. You can of course add in your own custom vaccinations and for your particular location.

The system also allows you to send your customers vaccination email reminders from the Vaccinations screen available from the left hand menu. From this screen you will see any customers that have bookings in the coming 90 days where their pets are missing or will have expired vaccinations by the time of check-in.

Within booking confirmation emails and reminders these can also be customized to include a paragraph with the pets vaccinations status.

24.2 Vets

Generally, most facilities will have one to two dozen vets on the system that their customers in their locality use. If a customer creates an account and their vet isn't listed in the system, they have the ability to add in their own vets details when creating an account on the customer portal.

You have to ability to add in vets yourself or you can edit and update the list of vets in the system with updated contact details etc. You can edit this list by clicking into the settings section and by then clicking on the Vets link in the left hand menu..

24.3 Breeds

The system also has a comprehensive list of breeds within the system. You may wish to go into this breeds administration page to edit some of the breeds that are in the system or add in custom ones specific to your country or region.

It is also possible when in KennelBooker to use the breed list to feed into the pricing in the system for your boarding or grooming bookings. So for instance, for your grooming bookings, you can set the cost of a bath for a dachshund and a husky at different rates, or for board the nightly cost can be based on the breeds size.

24.4 Pet Images

On a pets profile you can save up to five images against the pets record, customers can also upload images for their pet from the online customer booking portal.

24.5 GDPR

KennelBooker complys with both European and UK General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), to allow customer to opt out of Email and SMS communications. Customers can opt out of all communications or just marketing emails while still opting in to receive booking confirmation/receipt email. Additionally as part of GDPR customers can request that their personal information be removed from the system, our system allows you to do this easily while maintaining the customers historic booking and payment records.

24.6 Regulatory Compliance

An important part of running any business is making sure you comply with your local rules and regulations from your local government or council. Within KennelBooker you can define what data points are required for your customers and pets when checking in.

These data points include vaccination dates, emergency contact details, if the pet has been spayed/neutered, microchipped Status, has veterinary information, and emergency contact information stored against their accounts.

With this feature the system will alert you on check-in if any of these data points are missing, you can also quickly check your compliance for the day or week form the Regulatory Compliance screen - you can access it from the left hand menu.

From the compliance screen you can see which bookings for the day or week ahead are missing key information, from this screen you can quickly jump into customer or pets records to fill in an gaps.

24.7 Email Setup

KennelBooker lets you create multiple different email templates. Once you set up your account we create a number of Email and SMS templates for you these include;

  • Online Booking Acknowledgement

  • Booking Confirmation

  • Email Receipts

  • Postcard

  • Reminders (Email and SMS)

    • Depending on when you set the reminders to trigger you may need to modify the default template text of the E-Mails and SMS messages

The following guides will show you how to edit the Email and SMS template. change the From name on the email or configure your own private business email address, and finally to change the signoff section in the created templates.

24.8 Updating Temperament Lists

On each pets record you can select the pets temperament from a dropdown list, the system will prefill this list with the most commonly used classifications, if you wish to you can add this this list from the 'Customize Text' settings screen.

24.9 Updating Document Types

When uploading documents to the system you can classify each document. The system will prefill this list with the most commonly used document types, if you wish to you can add this this list from the 'Customize Text' settings screen.

24.10 Updating Payment Types

When adding manual payments into the system you can specify what type of payment it was e.g. Visa, Mastercard, Cash etc. The system will prefill this list with the most common payment types, if you wish to you can add this this list from the 'Customize Text' settings screen.

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