Case studyDog boarding, daycare and training
Train your Dog

Three businesses, one site, one system.

Train Your Dog runs boarding, daycare and dog training. We built the system that manages occupancy, each client’s balances, invoicing, and the portal where every owner follows their dog.

3
business areas on one system
70%
of operations automated
3
access roles, scoped by site
The challenge

A canine centre is not one business. It is three, competing for the same space.

Boarding sells nights in boxes, daycare sells days, training sells scheduled sessions. All three consume the same space and the same team, and many clients pay upfront in packages that expire.

01

Boarding, daycare and training competed for the same boxes, with no shared view of what was actually free.

02

Prepaid packages had expiry dates that only surfaced when a client tried to use them.

03

The same client existed three times: once per service, with a different history in each.

04

Invoicing was rebuilt by hand at the end of the month from bookings written down elsewhere.

Before
SpreadsheetsPaper agendaWhatsAppPhone callsSeparate invoicing softwarePackage counts by memoryVaccination cards on paper

Occupancy lived in a spreadsheet, prepaid packages in the memory of whoever answered the phone, and invoicing happened separately. Accepting a booking meant checking three things in three different places.

One operation. One system. Eight areas.

Reservations, daycare, training, clients, commercial, point of sale, finance and the client portal all run on the same database, with access by role and by site.

Reservations

Multi-night boarding and daily daycare on the same occupancy model.

Training

Training zones, trainer calendar and session activities per dog.

Clients and dogs

One client record, every dog, full history across all services.

Commercial

Pipeline, service interest, subscriptions and recurring plans.

Point of sale

Counter sales, packages and services with mixed payment methods.

Finance

Invoicing, banks, suppliers, expenses, P&L by business area and targets.

Client portal

Dog booklets, bookings, balances and invitations, self-service.

Operation

Multiple sites, box inventory, roles, monitoring and email management.

One booking. One balance. An owner seeing exactly what the team sees.

Box occupancynext 10 days
MTWTFSSMTW
P1
P2
M1
M2
G1
bookedon holdfree
Occupancy

Availability stopped being a question.

The system computes box availability by size and by site, and suggests combinations when no single box is free for the whole requested period.

Availability by box size and by site, computed rather than remembered.
Suggested combinations when no single box covers the whole stay.
Boarding, daycare and training reading the same occupancy.
Credit wallet

Prepaid packages that deduct themselves.

Each client holds separate balances for boarding and daycare. Consumption is deducted in purchase order, respecting each batch’s expiry date.

Separate balances for boarding nights and daycare days.
Deduction in purchase order, batch by batch.
Expiry tracked per batch and flagged before it lapses.
Client walletFIFO
Boarding12nights available
Daycare8days available
Batch of 10 nights · Marchexpires in 24 days
Batch of 5 nights · Mayexpires in 96 days
Batch of 10 daycare days · Aprilexpires in 9 days
Document issuedAUTOMATIC
Boarding · 4 nights€168,00
Daycare · 2 days€54,00
Grooming · 1 service€38,00
VAT 23%€24,50
Total with VAT€284,50
4 nights paid with creditsRemainder on card
Finance and point of sale

From the counter to the accounts, without a spreadsheet in between.

Every booking, service or package issues the right document with the right VAT rate. Expenses, banks and results per business area live in the same system.

Portuguese VAT rates applied per service line.
Credit notes and refunds handled per line, not per invoice.
Results per business area, against targets.
Client portal

Every owner has their dog’s booklet.

Clients register their dogs, check vaccines and history, see their balances and follow bookings without calling reception.

Dog booklet with breed, vaccines and history.
Bookings and balances visible without a phone call.
Invitation-based onboarding for new clients.
Dog booklet
LIVE
DogNala · Border Collie · 4 years
VaccinesRabies valid until March 2027. Kennel cough due in 3 weeks.
Next bookingBoarding, 12 to 16 April, medium box.
Balance12 boarding nights and 8 daycare days available.

The work that needed remembering now happens on its own.

Availability recalculated across sites and box sizes08:02
Booking confirmed and box assigned08:03
Credits deducted from the oldest valid batch08:03
Confirmation email sent to the owner08:04
Document issued with the correct VAT rate08:04
Expiring package flagged for follow-up18:30
Nothing is double-booked

Availability is computed from the same source the team and the portal both read.

Balances are never guessed

Credits deduct in order of purchase and expiry is tracked per batch, not per client.

The month is already closed

Documents are issued as the service happens, so nothing is rebuilt at month end.

Architecture

Built to stay inside the company.

One application, one database, access by role and by site, and integrations with what the operation already used.

System
Web application
Multi-site, with box inventory per location
Access control by role and by site
Real-time occupancy shared with the portal
Integrations
Certified Portuguese invoicing
Commercial pipeline
Card payments
Transactional email
Access roles
Administrator, across every site
Worker, scoped to the assigned site
Client, own dogs, bookings and balances
Nuno Lopes

“Everything, finally in one place and working. The agents handle the work. We focus on decisions.”

Nuno Lopes, Founder · Train your Dog

One system, operated by agents.

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