Pet Manager and ProPet Software: A Side-by-Side Look at Booking and Scheduling

At the heart of any successful pet care business is a booking and scheduling system that just works. It needs to be the calm, organised centre of a potentially chaotic environment. A clumsy, confusing scheduler can lead to double bookings, missed appointments, and frustrated staff—the triple threat of operational nightmares.

ProPet Software and Pet Manager are two comprehensive platforms that aim to bring order to this chaos. Both offer a suite of tools to manage your facility, but they have distinct approaches when it comes to the crucial tasks of booking and scheduling. Let’s put them side-by-side and examine how they handle the lifeblood of your business.

The Foundation: Creating and Managing Bookings

Both platforms provide the essentials you’d expect: online booking portals for clients, the ability to create bookings internally, and calendars to view your upcoming schedule.

ProPet Software offers a user-friendly interface for managing reservations. It allows you to book various service types, including boarding, daycare, and grooming, and manage them from a central calendar. It handles recurring bookings and provides a clear view of your facility’s occupancy.

Pet Manager also provides a robust foundation but with a focus on granular control and specificity. It features purpose-built booking forms for each different service type, recognizing that adding a boarding stay is fundamentally different from scheduling a 30-minute grooming appointment.

Diving Deeper: Where the Differences Emerge

The real story unfolds when we look beyond the basics and into the specific features that handle the complexities of a busy facility.

1. Visual Schedulers: One View vs. Many

• ProPet Software: Typically centralises scheduling around a main calendar view, where you can see your various bookings and appointments.
• Pet Manager: Employs a system of separate, dedicated schedulers for each area of your business. Your boarding kennel has its own visual, drag-and-drop scheduler. Your grooming team has a separate roster view. Your daycare has its own calendar. This separation is key for larger, multi-service businesses, as it provides immense clarity and prevents information overload. Staff only need to focus on the schedule relevant to them.

2. Handling Complex Stays: The “Split Booking”

Here’s a common scenario: a dog, Buster, is booked for 10 days. For the first 5 days, he’s in a standard kennel. For the last 5, he’s moving to a luxury suite. How does your software handle this?

• Pet Manager: Has a specific feature called “Split Bookings” designed precisely for this scenario. You can easily schedule the move from one pen to another within the same booking. The system even generates a daily report of “Pets Moving Pens Today” so the team doesn’t miss a beat. This is a seemingly small feature that solves a major logistical headache.

3. The Power of Drag-and-Drop

Plans change. A dog needs to be moved to a quieter kennel, or you need to shuffle your grooming appointments.

• Pet Manager: The boarding scheduler is highly interactive, allowing you to simply drag and drop a booking from one pen to another. This instantly updates the schedule for everyone, providing a quick, intuitive way to manage your physical space.

The Scheduling Stand-Up Meeting: A Comedy Sketch

Picture this: the morning meeting. Brenda, the head kennel hand, is holding a clipboard. “Okay,” she says, “Fido is in Kennel 3, but he needs to move to Suite 5 on Wednesday. I’ve put a sticky note on the big calendar. And Sparky in Kennel 7 gets a bath today, I’ve highlighted his name here. And don’t forget the new dog, Captain Fluffernutter, is sharing with…” It’s a recipe for confusion.

Good software eliminates the need for clipboards, sticky notes, and oral traditions. The schedule is the single source of truth, accessible and clear to all.

4. Customisation and Control

Every business runs a little differently. Your software should adapt to you.

• ProPet Software: Offers a range of settings to configure your services and booking process.
• Pet Manager: Puts a huge emphasis on customisation. You decide whether to allow overlaps on checkout or even set a specific buffer time (in minutes) between bookings in the same pen. You can block out certain dates for check-ins (like Christmas Day) or prevent certain extras (like pet taxi) from being booked on specific days. This level of control allows you to enforce your unique operational rules directly within the software.

When comparing the booking and scheduling capabilities of ProPet Software and Pet Manager, it’s a story of a solid, functional system versus a highly flexible and granular one. ProPet provides the tools to get the job done effectively. Pet Manager provides the tools to get it done exactly your way, with specific features designed to handle the quirky, complex, real-world scenarios that pop up every day in a pet care facility.

If your operation requires intricate scheduling, has multiple service areas that need clear separation, or you simply crave the power to automate and enforce your specific booking rules, Pet Manager’s approach is likely to be a perfect fit.

Tired of wrestling with your schedule? It’s time to experience the clarity of a purpose-built system. Start your free, 30-day trial of Pet Manager and take command of your calendar.