Who it’s for
Boarding kennels and catteries
A boarding kennel or cattery has to know, before the first car is on the drive, who is arriving, who is already in, which notes belong with which animal, and who to phone if a collection time changes. Arhosfa is the workspace for that day — not a second diary to copy into.
A typical day
01
Before arrivals
See who is due in, which unit they are going to, and which notes from the last stay still matter. The team is not rebuilding the list from last night’s messages.
02
During the stay
Care notes, feeding and the odd change of plan sit on the animal and the stay. Anyone covering a block can read them without hunting for a notebook.
03
Collections and the evening
Who is going home, who is staying on, and who still needs a call. Cover for tomorrow is visible beside the boarding list, not in a separate holiday spreadsheet.
The work in this place
Overnight boarding has a shape that paper does not hold well. Animals arrive in a rush, they stay for a night or a fortnight, and they go home to people who expect you to remember the last stay as well as this one. The team needs the animal, the people who bring them, the place they are in, and the notes for feeding, medication and temperament — together, not scattered across a wall chart, a phone and a folder in someone’s desk.
Most boarding places already have a way of working. A diary for the dates. A card for the animal. A group chat for the late collection. A private inbox for the enquiry that never quite became a booking. Each of those tools is reasonable on its own. Together they make the morning slower than the animals deserve. The person on the phone is not always the person who took the booking. The feeding note from last month is not always on the card that came in today.
Licensing and inspection in the UK ask boarding businesses to show that they know the animals in their care. That does not mean software for its own sake. It means a record you can actually find: who the animal is, who is responsible for them, what this stay needs, and what happened while they were with you. Arhosfa keeps that record with the stay, so you are not reconstructing it from messages when someone asks.
Catteries and kennels often sit on the same site, or under the same owner, with different rhythms. Cats do not move through the day the way dogs do. Units, blocks and houses still need names the team recognises. Arhosfa treats each place as itself: a kennel block is not a cattery row, and a second site is not a second login. The people and the animals stay one workspace.
Collections are where boarding days go wrong in public. A time that lived in a text message, a person who is not the usual collector, an animal who is not ready because the note never reached the kennel. When the stay, the people and the conversation sit together, the person on the gate is not guessing. They can see who is due out, who has already gone, and what still needs saying to the family.
Arhosfa is not a marketplace, a consumer booking widget, or training software. It is the operational record for the place you run: boarding kennels and catteries that already look after animals, and want the day to be visible to the whole team.
What goes wrong without a shared record
- A collection time lives in one person’s phone, so the gate does not know until the car is already there.
- Medication or feeding notes from the last stay never make it onto this stay’s card.
- The person who booked is not the person who collects, and the team has no shared record of who is allowed to take the animal.
- A second site, or a cattery beside the kennels, means a second diary and a second set of names for the same families.
- When someone is off, the boarding day has to be reconstructed from paper, chat and whatever was left on a whiteboard.
What Arhosfa holds for this work
- The animal with the people who bring them, on one record
- Overnight stays with arrivals, the days in between, and collections
- Care notes and papers that belong with the animal, not a private folder
- The places and units you actually run — kennels, catteries, more than one site
- Conversations with the family, kept with the stay they concern
- Time off for the team, beside the boarding day rather than in a side spreadsheet
Why this is the right shape
1
The boarding list is a shared picture of the day, not a private reconstruction.
2
Kennels and catteries can sit in one workspace without pretending they are the same place.
3
Families you already know do not start from a blank page on the next booking.
4
Cover and conversations stay attached to the work, so a busy morning is not also a scavenger hunt.
Related reading
The work
- The stay
Arrivals, the day itself, and collections — visible before the first one is at the door.
- The animals
Each animal sits with the people who bring them, and the notes the team needs for the stay.
- The places you run
More than one business, and the locations inside them, from one workspace.
Also for
- Daycare
The same animals, the same people, coming back through the week.
- Home stays
Smaller places, often someone’s home, where the relationship matters as much as the booking.
- Resources · Pricing · Register interest
Questions for this kind of place
- Is Arhosfa built for overnight boarding, or only daycare?
- Overnight boarding is a first-class stay. Arrivals, the nights in between and collections sit with the animal and the people who bring them. Daycare and home stays use the same workspace when you run those as well.
- Can a kennel and a cattery share one Arhosfa workspace?
- Yes. Each place keeps its own identity — a kennel block is not a cattery row — while the people, animals and conversations stay in one workspace. You do not need a second login for a second building on the same site.
- Does Arhosfa replace a consumer booking website?
- No. Arhosfa is the operational record for the team: who is in, who is due, and what this stay needs. Families still reach you by phone, mail or the channels you already use. The shared inbox keeps those threads with the stay.
- What should we have ready before we talk about boarding software?
- How you name units and blocks, who is allowed to collect, and where feeding or medication notes live today. Those are the things Arhosfa holds together. Pricing for Home, Place and Sites is on the pricing page if you already know how many places you run.