Muttmates Boarding

What the Boarding module adds

Muttmates Core is the spine of your back office: clients and dogs, the diary, prices, payment links, receipts, reminders, emails and settings. This manual covers only what the Boarding module adds on top, so if you have not read the Muttmates Core owner's manual, start with that.

Boarding is for a kennels — dogs staying with you, not training. It adds:

• The stay itself: check-in and check-out on one booking, with nights, length and price worked out for you.
• Kennels & blocks: your buildings and the kennels inside them, each typed and sized, so capacity comes from what you actually have.
• The kennel board: a day at a time — who's arriving, in, and leaving — against how many kennels you have, with Check in and Check out buttons.
• Care on the dog: feeding, medication and routine, held once and carried onto every stay's notes for whoever's on duty.
• Daily updates: a row a day, sent home with a line, photos and how the dog seemed.
• The stay report: your summary and every day rolled up, sent when they're collected.

Boarding is available on every plan. If it is installed but not on your plan, you get one quiet line about it under Settings → Plan and nothing else — no banner, and no data touched.

Your Boarding page

Your services → Boarding in the rail opens the page. Four tiles: In tonight — occupied kennels of your total, red once over; Arriving today; Leaving today; and Owing, on stays in and coming. Beside the heading sit + New stay and Kennel board.

The tab row:

The main column leads with Today at the kennels — everyone arriving, leaving or already in, each with Check in, Check out or Take payment — then Coming stays, the next month. The side column carries Over capacity, any of the next 30 nights booked in past your kennel count, and Needs checking out, any stay past its check-out time nobody has ticked off.

A stay is one booking, not a group session

Unlike Walking or Day training, a stay is not a session with several dogs on it — it's an ordinary Core booking, one dog, with a check-out date. What makes a booking a stay is its service: any service ticked This is a boarding stay. Nights, length and price all follow from the check-in (the booking's own When) and the Check-out you set — no separate "how long" field to fill in.

Two or more dogs sharing a kennel — from the same home — stay on one booking, not one each: add them under Other dogs sharing, and a Per extra dog, per night rate covers what each one adds. One payment link, one receipt, one kennel, for the lot.

Opening or starting a stay rearranges the ordinary booking screen into one box, The stay: client, dog, other dogs sharing, check-in, check-out, a live Nights count, kennel, the per-dog fee, price, what they're bringing, the stay's own emergency contact, and notes — everything in one place, with only boarding services offered under Kennel type (per night). The screen even renames itself New stay / Edit stay so it never reads as a lesson.

Setting up what you offer

A boarding service is set up under Services & prices, ticked This is a boarding stay — three are seeded for you the first time the module runs: Boarding — standard kennel at $45, Boarding — large kennel at $55, and Boarding — puppy or senior (extra care) at $60, all priced per night. Change the names and prices to yours, and add more for whatever kennel types or care levels you offer. Where should be On premises — a stay is at your kennels, not the client's home.

Boarding settings (under Set up) holds the two times everything else runs from: Usual check-in (2:00 pm by default) and Check out by (10:00 am), used whenever a stay is saved without its own check-out yet. Kennels (if none set up) is a fallback total, only read until you set kennels up properly — after that, capacity is the sum of what your actual kennels take.

Kennels & blocks

Boarding → Kennels & blocks is where your kennels live: a block is a building — add one first, its notes saying what it is (heated, where it is, what it's for) — and a kennel sits inside a block. The first time the module runs it seeds one block, Main block, with K1 through however many kennels your settings number said, all Single.

Each kennel has a type — Single, Double, Family (dogs from the same home sharing), Run, or Custom — which sets how many dogs it takes at once (Custom asks you the number), a Fits size hint (a hint only — nothing stops a different size going in), and an Order for where it sits on the board. A block's own notes are its description; deleting a block deletes the kennels inside it.

Nights, not days: a kennel is counted occupied on a given night by any stay that checks in on or before it and checks out after it, so a dog leaving Thursday morning and one arriving Thursday afternoon can share the same kennel without clashing.

Allocating a kennel

The Kennel field on a stay lists every kennel by block, with its type and size. Once a check-out date is set, the Stay box tells you plainly: which nights (if any) that kennel is already full on, and — under Free for these dates — every other kennel with room for the whole stay, best fit first. Save a kennel that clashes and you still can; you just get a warning, because the choice is always yours.

The kennel board

Boarding → Kennel board (Kennels today in the rail) is a day at a time, with ‹, a date picker, › and Today, and a running count — X of Y places tonight, amber at full, red over.

Above the day's list is the grid: every block with its kennels, each showing who's in, how many nights they have left, and coloured empty, ok, full or over its number; anyone not yet allocated a kennel sits in its own Not allocated group with a reminder to pick one.

Below that, three groups — Arriving, In, Leaving — each stay a card: the dog(s) and owner, a tap-to-call phone number, the emergency contact and vet at a glance (in red if either is missing), a trimmed line from the stay's notes, and flags — in/out with the time, the kennel or no kennel, nights left, due $X, update sent, a lapsed-vaccination flag per dog, and a board & train link when the stay belongs to one of Training's programmes. Check in, Check out, Take payment, Update (straight to the report) and Open are the buttons; nothing here needs the stay's own screen unless you want it.

Care on the dog, and what's compiled onto the stay

Feeding, Medication and Routine & quirks live once on the dog's own profile — under Care while boarding — not typed out again on every stay. (Run Home care too, and these same fields live there instead; nothing is duplicated.)

On save, Boarding compiles a stay's notes from what it knows: the emergency contact, the vet and any treatment limit, what they're bringing, each dog's feeding, medication and routine, and a vaccination line — flagged LAPSED where it's overdue. Edit the notes yourself and your version is kept; only an untouched, still-compiled note gets refreshed as things change.

Emergency contact & vet live on the client — one number for someone local who can decide for the dog, the vet's practice, and how much treatment is authorised without asking first (blank means ask). A stay can carry its own emergency contact too, for the odd trip where the usual one won't do.

Daily updates

Add a row under Daily updates on the stay — the Day, what was done today (Fed, Walked, Play time, Toilet fine, Meds given, Brushed, Slept well, Played with friends), How they seemed, Photos, and A line for the owner — then save. The Daily update box on the side picks up that day (today's, if there is one) and sends it: Email the update, and — where texting is on and the client has a mobile — Text the line too, which sends just that one line as a text.

Each day shows in the box once sent, with the time. Nothing stops you writing several days at once and sending each in turn; the box always offers whichever day you pick.

The stay report

When they're collected, send the stay report: your own How the stay went, plus Extra photos if you have any beyond the daily rows. The email that goes out carries your summary, then every day in order — what was done, how they seemed, the line, the photos — automatically rolled up from the daily updates you already sent, so there's rarely anything left to write beyond the summary itself.

The Stay report panel shows whether one's gone already, and offers Email the stay report (or Email again), with Preview ↗ to see it first. Every stay report is listed on the dog's own profile, and Core's Reports page — and the Reports tab on the Boarding page — sorts every one into To write, Drafted and Sent, exactly as it does for every other kind of report on the site.

Check-in and check-out

Check in and Check out appear on the stay itself, on the kennel board, and on Today — the same action wherever you tap it. Check in stamps the time; Check out stamps the time and completes the booking; Undo clears both if you tapped the wrong one. A stay checked in but never checked out, past its check-out time, shows up under Needs checking out on the Boarding page and on Today, so nothing is left open by accident.

Board & train, when you also run Training

If you run Training too and it's on a plan with board & train, a programme's enrolment can make a real stay here: pick a kennel type on the enrolment and it appears on the kennel board like any other, tagged board & train, at $0 — the programme's own fee already covers it. Everything above — the board, check-in and check-out, daily updates — works on it the same way; only the price is different, and that's deliberate. See the Muttmates Training owner's manual for the programme side.

Taking a stay online

On the +Online plans, with online booking switched on and a boarding service ticked Book online, stays appear on your booking page as Ask for a stay — a request, not an instant booking. The client picks a check-in day with room free that night (against your whole kennel capacity, not one kennel), says when they'll collect, which other dogs from their account are coming, and what they're bringing.

The kennel stays yours to allocate. A stay asked for online is held pending — it doesn't sit on any clock waiting to lapse — and lands on Today's Needs you for you to confirm (or decline, and say so) once you've picked a kennel. Vaccinations, an emergency contact and your agreement are all asked for before it can be requested at all. On their own login, an owner sees a Going away? card, and their upcoming stay shows its nights, dogs and — once you've confirmed it — the kennel; while it's still pending, they're told simply that you're checking the dates.

Settings and set-up reference

When something goes wrong

A stay's price looks wrong. Check the service's nightly rate, the nights (check-in to check-out), and Per extra dog, per night if others are sharing. A price you've typed yourself is left exactly as you typed it — the module never overwrites it again.

The Kennel field says a kennel's already full. Check Free for these dates in the Stay box for one that isn't, or move another stay. You can still save a clash on purpose — you'll just be warned, not stopped.

A stay isn't showing on the kennel board. It only appears if its service is ticked This is a boarding stay, and it shows on the night's board when the check-in is on or before that date and check-out is after it.

The Email the update / stay report button is greyed out. Nothing is written yet, or the client has no email address on file — the box says which.

An online stay request never confirms itself. That's by design — a stay is a request, not an instant booking. Find it on Today's Needs you, pick a kennel, and confirm it yourself.