Best Kennel & Boarding Reservation Software for UK & Ireland Businesses in 2026
If you run a boarding kennel, doggy daycare, cattery or grooming salon anywhere in the UK or Ireland, the boarding reservation software you choose this year shapes how your business runs for the next five. We're going to put six of the platforms UK and Irish operators shortlist most often side by side — and we're going to lead with the features that actually run a kennel day to day, not just the accounting plumbing.
The platforms compared: Kennel Booker, Revelation Pets, Gingr, Pet Sitter Plus, Easy Busy Pets, and BooknBuddy. This post is published by the BooknBuddy team — we've tried to be fair and to call out where competitors are actually stronger.
None of the five competitors below ship all of these. That's the case we're making in this post.
The morning view your software should give you
The single screen that separates good kennel software from average is the day-of-business view. Who is arriving, who is already in the building, who is leaving, which checkouts are overdue. Updated live, no refresh button.
Hotel-style kennel booking — weight-based suites, auto-assignment, split families
This is the part most kennel software still gets wrong. Real kennels run more like a small hotel than a generic appointment book: you have Mediums for the Cocker Spaniels, Larges for the Labradors, XXLs for the Great Danes, and you can't put one in the other. Some kennels share suites across boarding and daycare; some don't. Some families bring three dogs and need a 2+1 split across two suites because no single suite fits them all.
BooknBuddy treats this as a first-class problem. You define your suites with weight tiers, set the shared-kennel-pool option if boarding and daycare draw from the same physical kennels, and the system auto-suggests assignment when a booking comes in. Drag-and-drop to override. Split a family across suites — say, two of three dogs in one XXL and the third in a Large — and the deposit, pricing and family record cascade correctly. Per-pet add-ons stay attached to the correct pet inside that family.
This last piece — split-kennel family booking — is something we don't see anywhere else in the comparison set. Kennel Booker supports splitting a single booking across multiple runs, which is close but not the same as a multi-pet family being split across suites with shared customer billing.
Per-pet grouping that doesn't break the calendar
The most-cited issue in Kennel Booker reviews specifically: a family booking five dogs shows up as five separate calendar rows. None of the other platforms in this comparison publicly advertise a combined family bar either. BooknBuddy shipped per-pet suite grouping with family-aware deposits this month — one combined bar by default, drill in for per-pet details and suite assignments, deposit calculated against the family rather than duplicated per pet.
If your kennel also runs grooming — this is where most platforms fall over
Plenty of UK and Irish kennels run a grooming room on the side. Plenty more would if their software handled it properly. The honest reality of the comparison set: most of these platforms treat grooming as a side flow with one-size-fits-all pricing. BooknBuddy ships a full coat-based grooming pricing engine — and we think it's the single biggest unique differentiator in the post.
Coat-based pricing engine — breed to coat group, automatic
The way every grooming pricing list actually works in the real world is by coat. A short-coated Pit Bull is a different job from a curly-coated Bichon, which is a different job from a long-coated Cocker Spaniel. But most software makes you enter prices per breed, which means a 200-row spreadsheet of prices you have to update every time you change your rates.
BooknBuddy ships six coat groups (Short/Smooth, Double, Curly/Doodle, Wire/Rough, Long/Silky, Giant Breeds), maps every common breed to one of them automatically, and lets you set a Breed Override on any individual breed that needs to deviate. You set six bath prices and six full-groom prices. Done. When a customer picks "Yorkshire Terrier" at booking, the system looks up the coat group, applies the right price, the right duration — done.
Weight tiers and automatic price modifiers
Layered on top of the coat-group price: weight tiers add a configurable add-on per size band, and a set of Automatic Price Modifiers handle the real-world variables — matting (+£20, +30 min), severe matting (+£40, +45 min), overdue 4+ months (+£15), first visit (+£10), difficult behaviour (+£25), sanitary trim (+£15). All admin-configurable. All applied automatically at booking based on what the customer ticks (or what your front desk overrides at arrival).
The combined effect: a coat-aware, weight-aware, condition-aware estimate that's accurate to the minute and to the pound, generated automatically at booking. Your groomer's day plans itself.
Multi-pet grooming — different service per pet, one booking
A customer brings two dogs. One gets a bath, one gets a full groom and a demat. Most platforms force two separate bookings, two separate checkouts, and two separate reminders. BooknBuddy lets the customer (or your front desk) book multiple pets in one visit, pick a different service per pet, set per-pet preferences, and check out as one combined invoice. Each pet still gets its own booking record under the hood linked by a shared group ID, so reporting and the calendar still make sense.
Care notes that carry forward from the last booking
Every standing preference for a pet — "shave between pads", "teddy bear cut", "trim ears short" — and every condition from the last visit — "very matted", "needs breaks during trim", "+30 minutes" — surfaces automatically on the next booking. Your groomer doesn't dig through last month's notes to remember Ozzy's body length. They see the previous-visit summary, accept it or override it, and the duration and price update as they tick.
Employee portal — team schedule, hours and time-off requests
This is the bit nobody in the comparison set really ships properly. BooknBuddy includes an employee portal with team scheduling, weekly-hour totals, sick / vacation / personal / holiday tracking, schedule overrides, and a time-off request flow — built into the same product as bookings and grooming, not a bolt-on. Add a groomer, set their weekly shifts, and the booking system stops offering customers slots that don't have a groomer available.
The 6-platform feature comparison — what actually matters for UK & Ireland
Yes means publicly advertised and meaningfully shipped. Partial means it exists but with notable limits. No / Not advertised means we couldn't find it on the vendor's public site (we deliberately don't guess at hidden roadmap features).
| Capability | BooknBuddy | Kennel Booker | Revelation Pets | Gingr | Pet Sitter Plus | Easy Busy Pets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weight-based suite/run tiers with auto-assignment | Yes | Runs system, weight not first-class | Not advertised | Not advertised | N/A | Not advertised |
| Visual drag-drop suite editor | Yes | Yes — Runs UI | Not advertised | Scheduling | N/A | Rooms |
| Split family across suites (2+1 etc.) | Yes | Splits single booking, not family | Not advertised | Not advertised | N/A | Not advertised |
| Coat-based grooming pricing engine | Yes — 6 coat groups + breed override | Not advertised | Not advertised | Not advertised | N/A | Not advertised |
| Automatic grooming price modifiers (matted, overdue, etc.) | Yes — 6 modifiers, configurable | Not advertised | Not advertised | Not advertised | N/A | Not advertised |
| Multi-pet grooming — different service per pet, one booking | Yes | Not advertised | Not advertised | Multi-service per account | N/A | Not advertised |
| Auto-applied care notes from previous bookings | Yes | Not advertised | Not advertised | Not advertised | Not advertised | Not advertised |
| Employee portal + team scheduling + time-off | Yes | Staff users, not full scheduler | Not advertised | Staff scheduling | Staff seats | Staff users |
| Multi-pet family grouping on calendar | Combined bar | One row per pet | Not advertised | Not advertised | Not advertised | Not advertised |
| VAT split per invoice line + tax-inclusive deposits | Yes | VAT-aware, ex-VAT display | Not advertised | Not advertised | Not advertised | Not advertised |
| QuickBooks Online sync | Yes (production) | Yes | Yes (one-way) | Not advertised | Yes | "3rd party" generic |
| Xero sync | Yes | Yes | Yes (one-way) | Not advertised | Not advertised | "3rd party" generic |
| Card processing | Your own Stripe account, connected | Stripe only | Stripe + own processor | Proprietary processor | Stripe + PayPal | Stripe |
| Bundled retail at booking checkout | Yes — barcode + discount | POS is separate | Not advertised | Yes | Not advertised | Yes |
| Two-way customer chat | Yes | "Being added" | Yes | Yes | "Messaging" | Yes (no group) |
| Public token waiver for unsigned customers | Yes | Email link to portal | Intake signature | PreCheck for existing | Not advertised | Custom forms |
| Monthly price | From $39.99 CAD | From $49.99 | From £40 | From $105 USD | From £30 | From $250 USD |
One checkout for boarding, retail, deposits and VAT
Bundled retail at booking checkout is a gap for Kennel Booker, Revelation Pets and Pet Sitter Plus. Gingr and Easy Busy Pets handle it. BooknBuddy handles it too, taking the card through your own Stripe account, with deposits and saved cards on the same booking.
Service configuration — per-service late fees, deposits and shared capacity
Most operators want late-pickup rules that differ by service. A fixed cutoff for boarding ("after 10am it's a £25 surcharge"), a grace window for daycare ("two hours after the scheduled pickup, then a £20 fee"), maybe nothing for grooming. BooknBuddy lets you configure that per service. Deposits are similarly per-service. Kennel Booker is the closest to matching this; the other platforms are typically booking-level only.
VAT, QuickBooks Online and Xero — for when your accountant calls
Once the kennel and grooming features are working for you, the next thing your accountant asks is whether the invoices reconcile cleanly. BooknBuddy concentrates effort here because in our experience this is where most UK and Irish operators get burnt at year-end.
VAT is split per invoice line. Deposits are tax-inclusive. The QuickBooks Online integration went live in production in late April 2026 — bookings, payments, invoices, line items and customer records flow through with VAT codes preserved. Xero is supported alongside, so if your accountant runs on Xero (more common in the UK; growing in Ireland) you're not locked out. Tips are intentionally excluded from both pushes so your tronc isn't double-counted.
AAL 2018 — the English licensing regime your software has to support
If you run a boarding kennel, cattery, daycare or home-boarding business in England, you operate under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, usually shortened to AAL 2018. Your local council licenses you, your inspection produces a 1-to-5-star rating, and the rating determines how long your licence lasts (up to 3 years at the top end) and how much it costs. Higher star ratings = lower annual cost and less inspection friction.
What inspectors look for, on the records side, is the everyday operational paper trail: vaccination records with expiry tracking, emergency contact and vet contact on every pet, dietary and medication notes, welfare and incident logs against every stay, arrival and departure times, and evidence of staff scheduling. BooknBuddy stamps all of that automatically across pet profiles, bookings and the employee portal — you don't have to remember to fill in a separate compliance form, the data is already there.
The one thing that sits outside booking software industry-wide is staff training certificates — handled in HR tools, paper folders, or a kennel-specific LMS like Flick Learning. None of the platforms in this comparison track training records as a core feature, and inspectors don't expect them to. On the operational records that kennel software is reasonably expected to cover, BooknBuddy matches the higher-star requirements out of the box. Kennel Booker explicitly markets AAL 2018 compliance on its site; the other platforms cover similar operational records but don't market the regime by name.
Vendor-by-vendor: where each one fits
Kennel Booker
The closest competitor for UK and Ireland operators on geography alone. Strong "Runs" (kennel-level) capacity engine, both QBO and Xero in production, mature memberships and daycare credits, and explicit UK Animal Activities Licensing Regulations 2018 positioning. Mobile apps for both admin and customer.
Where it lags: their own help docs flag the calendar as performance-capped to a month at a time, in-app chat is described as "being added," reviewers consistently mention multi-pet families showing as one calendar row per pet, no coat-based grooming pricing, no full employee scheduler. Payments are Stripe-only.
Pick it if: you run boarding only (no grooming), you want a long-tenured UK/Ireland-marketed product, and you don't need modern chat or family-grouped calendars.
Revelation Pets
Often miscategorised as UK-based — their corporate address is in Atlanta, Georgia. They do quote GBP and serve UK customers. Both QuickBooks and Xero plugins exist. Two-way customer messaging confirmed. Admin apps for phone and iPad.
Where it lags: their own help docs confirm accounting and payment sync are one-way and partly manual — Stripe-side refunds don't push back. No native customer app. No UK VAT specifics advertised. No coat-based grooming engine. No bundled retail at checkout.
Pick it if: you want a simple admin app and are comfortable with manual month-end reconciliation steps.
Gingr
The most feature-rich of the comparison set, and the priciest. Strong on bundled retail at checkout, customer Pet Parent app, multi-location/franchise management. Used by some larger UK and Irish operators.
Where it lags for UK and Ireland specifically: USD-only pricing with no UK/EU tier, no published UK VAT treatment, no published Xero or QBO integration on the public site, the integrated payment processor is proprietary, and Capterra reviewer complaints around forced processor use and steep monthly price rises after private-equity acquisition are consistent.
Pick it if: you're a multi-location, high-budget US-style operator and the lack of native VAT/Xero/QBO doesn't faze you.
Pet Sitter Plus
The only natively UK-headquartered platform in this set. Strongest fit for pet-sitting and dog-walking businesses rather than run-based boarding kennels. Stripe and PayPal both supported, QuickBooks auto-sync confirmed, iOS and Android apps.
Where it lags: not built around kennel-runs or daycare suites, no grooming engine, no Xero advertised, no UK VAT or tax-inclusive deposit advertising. Capterra reviewers flag setup tedium (no bulk edits), inability to block unavailable days, and the fact that editing an invoice requires voiding the whole invoice.
Pick it if: you're a dog-walking or drop-in pet-sitting business in the UK, not a run-based boarding kennel.
Easy Busy Pets
Covers boarding, daycare, grooming, training, walking and sitting all in one. Two-way chat confirmed (no group messaging). Retail/inventory with POS terminal. Stripe-supported.
Where it lags: highest entry price in the comparison ($250 USD/mo base before staff seats). Accounting integration described generically as "third-party" rather than naming QBO or Xero. No UK VAT specifics. No coat-based grooming pricing. Reviewer complaints around the absence of bulk edits.
Pick it if: you want all six service types under one roof and don't mind the higher base price or generic accounting story.
BooknBuddy
The newest of the set, built since 2024 for the modern web. Hotel-style weight-based suite booking with split-kennel families, a coat-based grooming pricing engine with automatic price modifiers and previous-booking-aware care notes, multi-pet grooming with different service per pet, employee portal with team scheduling. VAT-aware end to end with QuickBooks Online in production and Xero alongside. Card payments through your own Stripe account. Two-way customer chat live across all four surfaces. Public token-gated waiver flow for unregistered customers.
AAL 2018 record-keeping: BooknBuddy covers the operational records English inspectors look for at higher star ratings — vaccination tracking with expiry alerts, emergency contact and vet records on every pet profile, diet and medication fields, incident and welfare notes against every booking, stay date/time logs, and an employee portal for scheduling. Staff training certificates sit outside booking software for everyone in this category — they're handled in HR tools, an LMS or paper folders — so on the records side that kennel software is reasonably expected to cover, BooknBuddy matches the requirement.
Where it lags: youngest product in the set, smaller install base than Kennel Booker or Gingr, no Direct Debit / GoCardless option for recurring billing.
Pick it if: you run a kennel — with or without grooming on the side — and you want a single modern stack that handles suites, families, coat-based grooming, employees and accounting without separate tools.
An honest buyer's checklist for your free trial
Whichever platform you're evaluating, ask the vendor — or test directly — these questions before you commit:
- How does the system assign a pet to a specific kennel/suite based on weight, and can I drag-drop to override?
- If a family books three dogs and no single suite fits all three, can the booking be split 2+1 across two suites with one family invoice?
- If I run grooming alongside boarding, can I set my prices by coat group and let the system look up the breed automatically, or do I enter a price per breed?
- Will the system surface the previous appointment's care notes and matting status the next time the same pet is booked?
- Can a customer book two dogs in one grooming visit with a different service per pet?
- Is there an employee portal with team scheduling and time-off requests built in, or is that a separate tool?
- Does my invoice show VAT split per line, and does the deposit handle VAT inclusively?
- Does the accounting integration push VAT codes through to QuickBooks Online or Xero automatically?
- Can my front desk take a card payment, scan a retail item, and apply a service-bundled discount on one screen and one receipt?
- How many seconds after I make a booking before every other staff member's screen reflects it?
Try BooknBuddy on your own kennel — kennel hotel, grooming engine, employee portal and VAT included
30-day free trial. No card required. Set up your suites, your coat-based grooming prices, your team schedule and your VAT rate, and run a real booking through the Till in under an afternoon.
Start Free Trial →The bottom line for UK and Ireland operators in 2026
If you're already on one of these platforms and the gaps in this post don't bother you, you don't need to switch. Kennel Booker is the strongest geographic fit. Revelation Pets is the simplest. Pet Sitter Plus is the right answer for walker-sitters. Gingr is the right answer for multi-location US-style operations with deep pockets. Easy Busy Pets is the most complete service coverage if you don't mind the price.
Where BooknBuddy makes the case is the intersection nobody else hits: hotel-style weight-based suite booking with split-kennel families, a coat-based grooming pricing engine that actually models how a grooming room is priced in the real world, multi-pet grooming with per-pet service, auto-applied care notes from previous bookings, a built-in employee portal, VAT handled correctly end-to-end, both QBO and Xero in production, and three payment processor options at the front desk — all from the lowest starting price in the comparison. No competitor in this set ships all of that today.