How to Track Bookings and Deposits for a Small Pet Boarding Business

You already know the morning problem. Who arrives today? Who is in house? Which deposit is still unpaid? Which owner is owed a refund after a cancel?

If the answers live in a chat thread, a paper calendar, and a spreadsheet with three conflicting totals, you will miss something. Small boarding and daycare operators do not need enterprise software. They do need a ledger that ties each stay to its pets, suite, care tasks, and money.

This guide covers a simple system you can run by hand, then shows how PawStay — a Notion ledger for solo pet boarding and daycare — organizes the same work in one workspace.

What “good enough” tracking looks like

Before tools, agree on the record you need for every stay:

1. Who — owner and pet(s)
2. Where — suite or space, with capacity
3. When — check-in and check-out
4. What — boarding, daycare, or another service
5. Money — agreed rate, deposit, payments logged, balance due or refund owed
6. Care — feeding, meds, walks, notes for pets currently in house

If any of those is missing, the booking is unfinished. Treat unfinished bookings as a daily checklist item, not a surprise at drop-off.

Step 1: Keep owners and pets as separate records

Do not bury the owner’s phone number inside a pet row, or the vaccine date inside a booking note.

• Owners hold contact details and whether they currently owe a balance.
• Pets hold vaccine dates and status, linked to their owner.
• Stays link to the owner, the pet(s), and one suite.

When someone calls to extend a stay, you open the stay — not a scavenger hunt across tabs.

Step 2: Store an agreed rate on the stay itself

Suite prices change. Booked stays should not.

Enter the agreed first-pet rate on the stay when you confirm it. Later suite-price edits then leave that booked rate alone. For boarding, a common rule is: the first pet pays the full rate; each extra pet in the same booking adds 50%. Write your rule once and apply it the same way every time.

If you charge differently (full price per pet, for example), enter a higher booked rate that matches what you agreed with the owner. The point is consistency, not a single industry formula.

Step 3: Log deposits and payments against the stay

Deposits go wrong when they live in a separate notebook.

For each stay, record:

• Target deposit (many operators use a fixed percentage of the stay total)
• Payments as they arrive (deposit, balance, refund)
• A clear payment status — for example Deposit due, Deposit paid, Paid in full, or a cancelled state that says whether a fee or refund is still open

Your morning view should answer two money questions without maths in your head:

• Which stays still have a balance due?
• Which stays owe the owner a refund or credit?

You still collect payment in your usual way (transfer, cash, card reader). The ledger records what happened; it does not take the payment for you.

Step 4: Flag unfinished bookings before check-in

Most boarding mistakes are incomplete records: no suite linked, no pet linked, check-out before check-in, more pets than the suite holds, or a payment line that does not add up.

Keep a Setup issues list. Anything wrong with a stay appears there. The flag is a prompt, not a lock — you can still save a partial booking — so check the list before you confirm arrivals.

Step 5: Put the morning board on one page

Build (or use) a single “today’s desk” page with:

• Arrivals for the next several days
• Pets in house
• Care tasks for today
• Balances due and refunds owed
• Vaccine alerts based on the dates you entered
• Setup issues

Open that page first. Everything else is detail.

Step 6: Be honest about what a ledger cannot do

A Notion ledger (and most DIY systems) will not:

• Take card payments or send invoices
• Send reminders or messages to owners
• Block double bookings
• Schedule medication doses for you

Check suite overlaps by hand before you confirm a booking. If you need online booking and payment collection, dedicated pet software is a better fit. A ledger wins when you want one workspace for stays, money, care, and vaccine dates — without a monthly SaaS bill.

Spreadsheet vs Notion for boarding

A spreadsheet is fine for a short list of stays and a simple deposit column. It starts to fail when:

• One stay has two pets, add-ons, a partial refund, and a cancel fee
• You need the same pet’s vaccine date on the stay and on a morning alert
• Care tasks for “who is in today” should not be copy-pasted from the booking sheet

Notion’s strength here is linked records: owners, pets, suites, stays, payments, add-ons, and a care log that all point at each other. You open one stay and see the money and the pets together.

PawStay: a ledger built for this job

PawStay is a Notion template for solo pet boarding and daycare operators. Product Manager–reviewed claims you can rely on:

• Today’s desk dashboard — arrivals for the next 7 days, pets in house, today’s care tasks, balances due, refunds owed, vaccine alerts, and setup issues (no separate check-outs panel)
• Linked databases — owners, pets, suites, stays, payments, add-ons, and care log all connect
• Agreed rate per stay — entered by hand so later suite-price changes do not change that booked rate
• Price breakdown on each stay, with boarding extra-pet pricing (first pet full rate; each extra pet adds 50%)
• 30% deposit target calculated on the stay (fixed in the formula; the ledger does not collect it)
• Payment labels including Deposit due, Deposit paid, Paid in full, refund/credit owed, and cancelled settled / fee / refund states
• Setup issues that flag date, service, suite, pet, capacity, and entry problems without blocking the save
• Care log with Today, By type, and All tabs, plus a Done checkbox
• Vaccine check based only on dates you enter (reminder wording such as Expires before check-out — not medical or admission clearance)

PawStay does not take payments, send invoices or messages, block double bookings, or schedule doses. Use Notion’s standard New button to add rows. Occupancy timelines that claim to prevent overlaps are not cleared to feature until rendering is checked — check suites visually.

It is a ledger, not booking software. That scope is the point.

Start here

Tonight, list every stay that still has an unpaid balance or an unclear cancel. Tomorrow morning, put arrivals, in-house pets, and money owed on one page.

If you want that structure ready in Notion — stays, deposits, care, and vaccine dates linked together — open PawStay and clear the sample rows before your next booking.