I founded KennelBooker in 2015. A decade on, our software runs boarding kennels, catteries, doggy daycares, grooming salons, dog trainers, walkers and homestay providers in more than 40 countries, and our team looks after them every day — building the product, answering support, and moving new customers’ data across from whatever they were using before.
Background
I have spent 26 years in technology. Before KennelBooker I managed development teams, led product, and advised startups — work that taught me, mostly the hard way, that software is only as good as the day-to-day reality it is built around.
I hold a degree in computer science and a master’s in distributed computing. That background matters here more than it might sound: a kennel system is a scheduling and capacity problem with money attached, running across phones, tablets and the office PC, and it has to stay correct when a family turns up early on a bank holiday weekend.
How we work
Pet-care businesses do not run to office hours, and neither does the software. What that means in practice:
- The product — bookings and capacity, the customer portal, payments, vaccination tracking, reminders, reporting and the mobile apps, developed continuously rather than in annual releases.
- Integrations — QuickBooks and Xero for accounts, and card payments through the providers our customers already use.
- Data migrations — we move customers, pets, bookings and vaccination records across from spreadsheets and from other kennel systems, including old databases nobody has the password for any more. We do it for you, and we do not charge for it.
- Support — from the team who build the software, plus a help centre that aims to answer the question before you have to ask it.
Ten years in one industry teaches you where the real problems are. Most of what we have built came from a customer describing something awkward about their week.
What I write about here
I write most of what appears on this blog. It comes out of a decade of running software for pet-care businesses and talking to the people who use it, so it leans practical rather than theoretical:
- Licensing and inspection requirements, which change more often than most owners expect.
- Pricing, cancellation policies and no-shows.
- Hiring and training, and getting through peak season.
- Choosing software, including whether a free option will do.
If something here is wrong, out of date, or does not match what you are seeing in your own business, we would rather know. Email us and it reaches the team.
About KennelBooker
KennelBooker has been building booking and management software for pet-care businesses since 2015. It is operated by Shanree Solutions Ltd, trading as KennelBooker.com, from Dublin, Ireland. Plans start at $49.99 a month with every service type included, and there is a 14-day free trial that does not ask for a card.