Yes. PocketSuite’s Sub-accounts feature lets clients create and update their own pet profiles directly, including feeding instructions, behavior notes, and other custom details, without calling or emailing a business every time something changes.
PocketSuite powers 7,000+ service businesses, including 1,000+ pet service businesses, whose clients have collectively processed nearly $1 billion in income and scheduled over 9.2 million appointments. A client who can update their own pet’s profile in a few taps is far more likely to actually keep that information current than one who has to call the front desk to make a small change.
That self-service model works on every plan tier, giving a business one place to manage every client’s pets, families, or other sub-accounts without staff manually entering every update by hand.
Letting Clients Do the Work
Sub-accounts is built around a simple idea: clients can create and update their own sub-accounts, whether that is a pet, a child, a property, or a vehicle depending on the business. For a pet business, that means a client’s dog or cat has its own profile the client can keep current themselves, rather than a business trying to track every update secondhand.
That shift matters most for the kind of information that changes often and matters every visit, a new feeding schedule after a vet appointment, a note about a recent injury affecting how a dog should be walked, or an update after a pet develops a new sensitivity to a specific product.
What Lives on a Pet’s Profile
Custom fields on a pet’s profile can track feeding instructions, behavior notes, medication schedules, or anything else a business finds useful, combined with Icons that flag when something on that profile needs staff attention. A client updating a feeding instruction themselves means that update is visible to staff the next time that pet is checked in, without a phone call or a sticky note changing hands.
That visibility is what actually prevents the kind of miscommunication that happens when an update gets mentioned verbally to one staff member and never makes it into whatever record another staff member checks later.
Watch: Meet the Pet Resort Edition of PocketSuite
Access Through the Pet Family Mobile App
Clients can manage their pet’s profile through PocketSuite’s optional pet family mobile app, available on iOS and Android, giving them a dedicated place to check and update information without navigating a business’s general website or calling in. That app-based access is part of what makes self-service actually convenient rather than one more account a client has to remember how to log into.
A client managing a busy schedule, boarding, grooming, and daycare all with the same business, benefits from having one app where every update to their pet’s profile applies consistently across every service booked with that business.
Reducing the Load on Front-Desk Staff
Every update a client makes themselves is one less phone call or email a front-desk staff member has to handle and then manually enter into the system. For a facility fielding a steady stream of routine update requests, feeding changes, new emergency contacts, updated behavior notes, self-service directly reduces that ongoing administrative load.
“I can put it on a set time and it’ll send out the invoice to the customer, you know, while I’m asleep.” said Tayata Thomas, owner, The Lovable Dogs Club, describing how much smoother her operation runs when routine tasks happen automatically in the background. Client-managed pet profiles work on the same principle, information gets kept current without a staff member having to be the one entering every change.
Keeping Information Accurate Over a Long Client Relationship
A pet’s needs change over the course of a multi-year relationship with a business, a puppy’s feeding schedule looks nothing like an older dog’s, and behavior can shift after a health event or a change in home life. A self-service profile a client actually keeps updated stays accurate through all of that, rather than reflecting whatever was true the first time an intake form was filled out years earlier.
Encouraging clients to review their pet’s profile periodically, at the start of boarding season or during a routine check-in, helps make sure a profile someone set up long ago still reflects reality today.
Report Cards Keep the Update Two-Way
Self-service is not the only direction information flows. PocketSuite’s Pet Resort Edition also supports easy-to-send report cards, letting a business update pet parents on how a stay actually went, alongside the client-managed profile updates covered above. That two-way flow, clients updating what a business needs to know, a business reporting back on how a visit went, keeps both sides current without either relying on a phone call.
A client who receives a report card after every stay is also more likely to keep checking and updating their own pet’s profile, since it becomes part of a routine relationship rather than a one-time intake step completed and forgotten.
Getting Started With Sub-Accounts
Setting up self-service profiles is part of PocketSuite’s standard onboarding, configured alongside a business’s client and pet profile structure during account setup. A business with specific questions about which fields to make client-editable versus staff-only can reach a Product Expert through in-app live chat, available 10 hours a day, seven days a week.
Getting that balance right during setup, what a client can update themselves versus what only staff should change, is worth a direct conversation rather than guessing, since it shapes how much of the ongoing profile-maintenance workload actually shifts off staff.
Reducing Miscommunication on Both Sides
A behavior note or feeding change relayed verbally, over the phone or in a hurried conversation at drop-off, is exactly the kind of detail that gets lost between the person who heard it and the person who actually needs to act on it. A profile a client updates directly removes that middle step entirely, the note goes straight into the record staff already check.
That reduction in miscommunication matters most for the details that seem minor day to day but carry real consequences when missed, a new food sensitivity, a change in medication timing, or a note about a recent vet visit that should inform how a pet is handled during its next stay.
Encouraging Clients to Actually Use It
A self-service portal only creates value if clients know it exists and find it easy enough to use regularly. A short reminder at the end of a stay, or a note on a receipt pointing clients to the pet family app, helps turn a feature a business has available into one clients actually rely on to keep their pet’s information current.
The businesses that get the most out of self-service profiles tend to be the ones that mention it proactively, rather than assuming clients will discover it entirely on their own the first time they need to make an update.
Deciding What Stays Staff-Only
Not every field on a pet’s profile necessarily needs to be client-editable. A business can decide that behavior notes a staff member observed firsthand during a visit stay staff-managed, while feeding instructions and general preferences remain open for a client to update themselves, keeping the professional observations and the client-reported details clearly separated on the same profile.
That kind of division keeps the profile trustworthy for both purposes at once, a client always has an easy way to keep their own information current, while a business retains its own internal notes without a client accidentally overwriting something a staff member specifically recorded.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Sub-accounts lets clients create and update their own pet profiles directly, including feeding instructions and behavior notes.
Yes. Clients can manage their pet’s profile through PocketSuite’s optional pet family mobile app, available on iOS and Android.
Yes. A client’s profile update is visible to staff the next time that pet is checked in, combined with Icons that flag anything needing attention.
Yes. Every update a client makes themselves is one less phone call or manual entry a staff member has to handle.
Yes. The self-service model works on every PocketSuite plan tier.
Yes. A business can decide which fields a client can edit themselves and which stay staff-managed, keeping professional observations separate from client-reported details.
A short reminder at the end of a stay, or a note on a receipt pointing clients to the pet family app, helps clients discover and adopt the feature.
A pet’s profile stays accurate when the person who knows it best, the client, can update it directly. PocketSuite’s Sub-accounts and pet family app put that update in the client’s hands, without adding a phone call to a business’s day.
For a business that has ever missed an important update because it never made it past a phone call, giving clients a direct way to keep their pet’s profile current is worth setting up.
