Pet Grooming Software

Pet grooming is a competitive industry. But you can make your pet grooming business stand out by offering exceptional customer service. Offering the best service to pet owners requires you to keep detailed records of clients and their pets so that your staff has every client’s unique needs on their fingertips.

To make the job easier for your staff, you can invest in pet grooming software. The system comes with capabilities that help automate various routine operations of a pet grooming salon and save the time to focus on more customer service.

But buying the right pet grooming software can be a time-consuming task, given there are hundreds of products on the market. This buyers guide will get you started on understanding the features and benefits of a pet grooming tool.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is pet grooming software?
• Common features of pet grooming software
• What type of buyer are you?
• Benefits of pet grooming software
• Key considerations when selecting pet grooming software

What is pet grooming software?

Pet grooming software helps pet grooming companies manage their clients (and their pets) and staff. The tool allows pet groomers to manage operations such as grooming appointments, calculating salaries and commission for staff, daily sales, and tracking inventory of pet grooming products and other consumables.

Common features of pet grooming software

Businesses should carefully evaluate the features of pet grooming software to avoid buying the wrong product. Below are some of the common features offered by most pet grooming tools.

What type of buyer are you?

Below are descriptions of two buyer groups, which will help you make the right software choice.

• Small and midsize businesses: As the proprietor of a small or midsize pet grooming salon, you are likely to have fewer staff and clients to manage. For your business, a tool with the basic features (mentioned above) is sufficient. You might want to start with something more affordable, such as a cloud-based tool with low monthly subscription fee, and then think about investing in more expensive and sophisticated solutions.
• Large businesses: As a large pet business owner, you will have many clients and a large staff, alongside complex business requirements. You are likely to need more than just the common features and might want to explore tools with extra capabilities such as payment processing and a mobile app. You might also want the tool to offer integration with customer relationship management (CRM) software to ensure seamless data exchange for deeper client analysis.

Benefits of pet grooming software

Listed below are some of the most notable benefits of pet grooming software.

• Understand your customer needs: Pet grooming software allows you to create detailed records of your clients and their pets, which helps in understanding client preferences and pet issues closely. This information is stored in a centralized database that is easily accessible from multiple devices, allowing your staff to quickly read-up on a client before an appointment and serve them better. Further, you can use the data to segment customers into relevant categories to offer customized and specific services.
• Reduce administrative burden: Pet grooming software automates many of the manual tasks such as online booking of appointments, setting up automated appointment reminders, etc. Additionally, it frees you from time-consuming paperwork for managing the payroll and commissions for your staff.

Key considerations when selecting pet grooming software

Buying the right software for your business must be preceded by a careful analysis of your needs as a business. Below are two considerations to have in mind.

• Do you offer mobile grooming services? If you’re one of those pet professionals that offer services wherein your staff travels offering door-to-door service, then you need software that offers functions such as GPS tracking, payment processing, invoices handling, and job timers. You need to check whether your preferred vendor offers these functions built-in or via integration with other tools.
• Do you understand the total cost of the software? The cost of pet grooming software can differ on factors such as its deployment (cloud-based or on-premise) and additional charges. While the cost of deployment could be either monthly subscription or one-time licensing, there are various other charges a vendor might not mention in fine print; such charges could include priority phone support fee, data migration costs, software onboarding fee, etc. You need to clarify all of this with the vendor during the software demo.

Note: The application selected in this article is an example to show a feature in context and isn’t intended as an endorsement or a recommendation. It has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.