Good dog daycare software has to manage more than reservations.
A daycare is managing capacity, people, animals, health requirements, recurring customers, staff, money and real-time operations.
If your software thinks the business is basically OpenTable with dogs, you are going to hit a wall.
What should daycare software handle?
A useful daycare platform should help manage:
- reservations
- recurring bookings
- animal profiles
- vaccination status
- capacity
- customer records
- staff
- payments
- packages or memberships
- notes
- check-in and check-out
- communication
- incident information
- reporting
Then there is the part spreadsheets are terrible at:
context.
This dog is new.
This dog has been here eighty times.
These two animals should not be together.
This dog’s vaccination expires next month.
This person is approved for pickup.
This animal requires a particular accommodation.
That is the actual operation.
Vaccination tracking should not happen at the door
Nothing says great customer experience like discovering at 7:46 a.m. that a vaccination expired yesterday while somebody is trying to get to work.
The system should know before then.
Requirements should be attached to the animal.
Expiration should be visible.
Customers should have a way to provide updated documentation.
Staff should know the status.
This is boring administrative infrastructure.
It is also exactly the kind of boring administrative infrastructure that makes the day run properly.