K9Sky vs. Pet Manager: Comparing Features for Dog Daycare & Boarding

In the booming pet care market, choosing the right software can feel like navigating a maze. You need a system that’s robust enough to handle the complexities of your business but intuitive enough that your team can use it with a smile. Today, we’re comparing two popular choices: K9Sky and Pet Manager. Both offer powerful solutions for dog daycares, boarding kennels, and other pet services, but they have distinct features and approaches.

Let’s get into the details and see which one might have you barking up the right tree.

Design Philosophy and User Interface

First impressions matter, especially for software you’ll be using every single day.

K9Sky is known for its clean, modern interface and strong focus on the dog daycare and boarding industry. It provides a visually appealing dashboard and a user experience designed to be straightforward for the core tasks of managing pets and bookings.

Pet Manager also boasts a clean, interactive dashboard, but with a high degreee of customisability. You can choose which information tiles are most important to you—from today’s check-ins and check-outs to medical alerts, unpaid invoices, or even a list of pets who need a taxi pickup. This allows you to tailor your main screen to your specific operational needs, whether you’re a boutique daycare or a large-scale boarding facility.

The Heart of the Matter: Scheduling and Booking Management

This is where the magic happens. How easily can you manage your capacity and book in clients?

K9Sky offers a capable scheduling system with features tailored for daycares, such as managing playgroups and tracking attendance. It’s built to handle the fast-paced environment of a daycare centre effectively.

Pet Manager provides a suite of visual, drag-and-drop schedulers, with separate calendars for each service like boarding, daycare, and grooming. For daycare operators, this means you can manage different session times (e.g., Full Day, Half Day AM) and sell prepaid packages that clients can draw from. The system uses “tokens” for this, so when a client buys a 10-day pass, they get 10 tokens to use for future bookings, and the system tracks it all automatically. For boarding, the pricing engine is incredibly powerful, allowing you to set custom rates for seasons, pet sizes, length of stay, or even specific customer types (like a VIP discount).

A key differentiator is Pet Manager’s ability to handle split bookings seamlessly—for when a pet needs to move to a different pen or enclosure midway through their stay.

Client Interaction and the Online Portal

Today’s pet parents expect 24/7 access to book and manage their services.

Both platforms offer robust customer portals. K9Sky’s portal is well-regarded and allows clients to book services, update their information, and sign agreements.

Pet Manager allows you to embed its portal directly into your website, creating a truly seamless brand experience for your clients. They can do all the standard things like request bookings and upload vaccinations, but with added layers of customisation. You can configure which fields are required, change the wording on buttons and instructions, and even allow customers to install the portal as a “Web App” on their phone’s home screen for easy access. Online payments are handled smoothly through Stripe, and you can even configure it so that daycare packages can’t be used until the invoice for them is paid in full.

The “But I Swear I Told You!” Moment

Every pet business owner has been there. A client checks in their fluffy Samoyed for a week and says, “Oh, he’s on a new digestive supplement, I put a note in his online profile!” You check, and there’s nothing there. It’s a classic case of them meaning to do it but getting distracted. This is where communication shines. With Pet Manager, you can send an automated “Welcome Email” 7 days before a stay, which can include a friendly reminder: “Excited to see Fluffy soon! Please take a moment to double-check that their diet and medical notes are up to date in the portal.” It’s a simple, proactive step that prevents so many headaches.

Business Management & Integrations

Beyond the daily bookings, how does the software help you run the business side of things?

K9Sky includes reporting features and staff management tools to give you an overview of your performance.

Pet Manager expands on this with a full suite of integrations to create a connected business ecosystem. The Xero integration is a massive time-saver for bookkeeping, the Mailchimp integration helps you build your marketing lists automatically, and the Tyro integration streamlines in-person payments in Australia. Furthermore, Pet Manager includes a complete, optional Retail Module, allowing you to run a small shop with POS, inventory management, and purchase orders right within the same system. There’s also a vast array of reports, from financial deep-dives and occupancy graphs to lists of customers who haven’t booked in a while.

Making the Call

Both K9Sky and Pet Manager are excellent choices for modern pet care facilities.

K9Sky offers a sleek, focused experience, particularly strong for businesses whose primary service is dog daycare. If you value a clean interface and a system designed with daycares at its core, it’s a fantastic option.

Pet Manager is the choice for the business owner who wants ultimate control, customisation, and an all-in-one solution. If you offer multiple services, want to automate your finances and marketing, and desire a deeply customisable platform that can scale with your ambitions, from a small grooming room to a multi-site enterprise, then Pet Manager’s breadth of features provides a compelling long-term solution.

The best decision is an informed one. Get your paws on a demo or a trial and see which workflow feels like a natural fit for you and your team.

Ready to see how a truly integrated system can unleash your business’s potential? Start your free 30-day trial of Pet Manager and take control of your operations.