Software for Animal Shelters: How to Choose a System That Fits

Choosing software is a big decision for an animal shelter. You'll likely use it for years, and your whole team will have to learn it. Switching later takes real effort, so give the choice a few weeks.

This guide covers how to narrow down your options, including what to decide before you look at any products, how to compare costs, and how to roll out your choice with the least disruption.

Before you look at products

It's tempting to start with demos, but it's easier to judge a demo once you know what you need. Bring together one person from each area of your organization, such as intake, medical, fosters, adoptions, and fundraising. Ask each person to answer three questions:

1. What do you do every day that takes too long?
2. What information do you often have trouble finding?
3. What has gone wrong in the past year because of a records problem?

The answers will tell you more about your needs than any feature comparison. They'll also help your team feel involved, which makes it easier to get them on board later.

Write down the basics, too. Include your annual intake, number of staff and volunteers, how many animals are in foster homes, and whether you run a clinic on site. Also list the tools you'd like to replace, and any you'd prefer to keep.

Separate your must-haves from your nice-to-haves

A long wish list can make every product look either perfect or inadequate. Try sorting your list into three groups:

• Must-have: you can't operate without it. Examples may include medical tracking, adoption contracts, or Petfinder publishing.
• Should-have: it would save real time, but you could work around it for a while.
• Nice-to-have: it sounds useful, but nobody is asking for it yet.

Keep your must-have list short, ideally ten items or fewer. If a platform misses one of them, you can rule it out and save everyone's time.

Consider the type of organization you are

Software tends to be built with a certain kind of organization in mind. It's helpful to ask each vendor who most of their customers are.

• Private shelters with a building often need daily care lists, holds, and strong volunteer scheduling.
• Foster-based rescues need foster capacity and placement tracking, plus remote adoptions. See our guide to rescue management software.
• Clinics may need dedicated veterinary practice software in addition to a shelter system.

A mismatch here is hard to fix later, so be honest with yourself about what you need.

How to compare the true cost

The monthly price is only part of the cost. When you compare options, ask about each of these:

• Subscription: Is it a flat rate, or is it based on animals, users, or adoptions?
• Tiers: Which of your must-haves are included in the price you were quoted?
• Transaction fees: Does the vendor take a percentage of adoption fees or donations, on top of the processor's fee?
• Setup and migration: Is there a fee to bring your data over?
• Add-ons: Is there a separate charge for a website, a microchip registry, or text messages?
• Time: How many hours will your team need to spend on setup and training?

Then work out what you'd pay in a year, based on your own numbers. A plan that seems affordable can become expensive when it's charged per adoption and you have a great year.

Questions about security and data ownership

Your system will hold adopters' addresses, donor details, surrender stories, and medical histories. People trust you with this information, so ask vendors direct questions:

• Who owns the data? Does the vendor sell it or use it for advertising?
• Can permissions be limited by role, so only the right people see applications?
• What can you export, in what format, and how often?
• Are there any charges or long contracts that make it hard to leave?

Try exporting your test data during the trial. It takes a few minutes, and it will tell you how portable your records are.

Test with real work

Once you've narrowed your list to two or three options, stop watching demos and start testing. Use one real animal's history. Enter the intake, add medical records, assign a foster, process an application, and complete an adoption. Then return the adoption and see what the record looks like. Have a teammate try it on a phone.

Our shelter software checklist lists the specific tests to run and what to watch for.

Planning a low-risk rollout

When you've made your choice, set a go-live date outside of your busiest season. Avoid the start of kitten season, for example. A typical sequence looks like this:

1. Set up the basics. Add your statuses, forms, contracts, and team roles.
2. Clean your data. Remove duplicates, make status names consistent, and fix dates.
3. Run a test import. Check a sample of records against your source files.
4. Train by role. Show each group how to do its own daily work.
5. Go live. Choose one date when the new system becomes the official record, and archive the old one as read-only.

Assign one person to collect questions during the first few weeks. Most problems you run into will be small, like a confusing form field or a missing status, and can be fixed quickly.

Trying PawPlacer

PawPlacer covers pet records, medical care, adoptions, fosters, volunteers, surrenders, transports, donations, reports, and listing sync, and it's free for animal welfare organizations. There's no paid tier, and PawPlacer doesn't take a cut of adoption fees or donations.

To see for yourself, try the public demo or read Evaluating PawPlacer. You can create an account without talking to a salesperson, and the team will handle your migration for free if you'd like help moving your records.