A pet shop is two shops in one. The front half is retail: food, litter, shampoo, toys, collars — many product codes, many weights, some with expiry dates. The back half is service: bathing, grooming, ear cleaning, where the customer books a time and somebody has to do the work. Most shops handle the two halves with two different things: a till for goods, a notebook or Zalo messages for the schedule. Then a customer drops the dog off for a bath and buys a sack of kibble, and the totals have to be added by hand in two places.
The retail half: barcodes, several units of measure and expiry dates
Pet shop stock has a particular trait: one product in several pack sizes. The same kibble comes in as a 15kg sack but is sold in 1kg bags split from it. Ordersys retail software lets you declare several units of measure and the conversion ratio between them, so buying by the sack and selling by the bag still deducts stock correctly, with no mental arithmetic each time.
The rest is standard retail groundwork: scan a barcode and the price appears, stock is deducted at the moment of sale, goods with expiry dates are tracked by batch so you know which batch to move first, and a minimum stock level is set for fast movers — running out of litter midweek loses a customer, not just one sale.
The service half: appointments with a named staff member
Grooming is not like selling an item: it takes up space, a person and a block of time. The booking part of Ordersys accepts appointments by time slot and lets you pick the service staff member on the ticket itself, so the front desk can see which slots still have someone free. Regulars book ahead, walk-ins are slotted into whatever is open, and both sit on the same screen.
For longer services or new customers, the shop can take a deposit when the booking is made and offset it against the bill at pickup. The point is not to make life hard for customers, but that a Saturday morning slot held and then abandoned costs a full session of a groomer's time.
Where each thing gets recorded
| Situation at the pet shop | How it is recorded | What it buys you |
|---|---|---|
| Selling sacks of kibble, cans of pâté, litter | Barcode scanned at the counter | Stock deducted at once, low stock visible |
| Splitting a large sack to sell by weight | Declare units of measure and the conversion ratio | Stock matches even when buying and selling units differ |
| Customer books grooming for tomorrow afternoon | Create the appointment, choose the staff member | Two customers never land on one groomer |
| Customer bathes the dog and buys goods | Service and goods on the same bill | One payment, reports stay consistent |
| Customer comes back next time | Look up the profile by phone number | You know what was done last time, which food they buy |
The customer record is what joins the two halves
What keeps pet shop customers is not a low price but familiarity: which food this animal eats, how it was clipped last time, which shampoo irritates its skin. Once every bill — goods and services alike — is attached to one customer profile keyed on a phone number, a new member of staff can open it and read the purchase history and notes instead of having to remember like the old hand did. Loyalty points and membership tiers only work on top of that: customers who buy a lot or use services regularly get the benefit, and the shop knows exactly who deserves it.
A few things to do before installing the software
- List the stock in the pack sizes you actually sell — a 15kg sack, a 1kg bag and a 400g can are three separate lines.
- Write down how long each service takes, so the schedule does not pile three big dogs into the same hour.
- Agree on one place to take bookings. Zalo is fine, but it has to be entered into the software right away, not left in the chat.
- Ask for the customer's phone number on the first visit, even if they only buy one can of pâté.
A pet shop does not need complicated software, only one place that holds the stock, the schedule and the customers. With those three together, the owner can answer the question that actually matters: did this month's profit come from goods or from services. Have a look at Ordersys retail management software, free for 7 days. Two related articles: what a pet cafe manages differently from an ordinary cafe, and printing barcodes and price labels in bulk for a retail shop.
Sell by barcode, track stock across units, manage debts and see profit every day.
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