What's new at Animalo

Turn any automatic email on or off

• 🔕 A new Automatic emails tab in Settings → Emails lets you decide exactly which emails Animalo sends on its own — no more "a booking got paid" landing in your inbox every single time.
• Two master switches: everything going to you and your team, everything going to your customers. Turn off one, the other, or both.
• Or go email by email: new booking, booking paid, refund, booking confirmation, appointment confirmation, pre-verify, payment invite and payment receipt.
• Switching off an email to yourself only stops the email — the notification still appears in your notification bell, so you never miss the event.
• Emails you send by hand (customer messages, a payment invite you trigger yourself) are never affected.

Remove a discount or a promo code in one click

• 🏷️ A new Remove discount button on the booking payment panel clears the discount and charges the full calculated price again.
• It handles both cases: a manual discount added when the booking was created, and a promo code applied by the customer.
• Until now there was simply no way to undo either one — the booking edit form never touched discounts.
• Also fixed: editing or clearing a fixed price could return a 500 error instead of saving.

Billing clarity & account security

• 💳 A failed payment now shows as "Payment failed" instead of "Active", so you know straight away that something needs your attention.
• After a failed payment you keep a grace period before the account is limited, rather than losing access without warning.
• 🔒 Outbound customer messages are now rate-limited, and sign-ups from known abusive email domains are blocked.

Pet profiles & clearer promo pricing

• 🐾 A full pet profile page, reachable from Data → Pets, built like the customer profile.
• The payment overview now shows the standard price alongside the promo percentage, so you can see what the discount actually did.
• Fixed: promo codes were taxed twice on accounts that add tax on top of prices (Quebec GST/QST).

Address autocomplete, redesigned forms & Norwegian

• 📍 Start typing an address and Google Places completes it for you — on customer, veterinarian and booking forms.
• The customer and veterinarian forms have been redesigned, with the address fields in a more natural order.
• 🇳🇴 Animalo is now available in Norwegian (Bokmål), including the default contract, terms of service and every customer email.

A guided start for new accounts

• 🧭 New accounts get a short guided tour that highlights the navigation, plus a setup checklist tailored to their business type.
• A boarding business now starts with boarding only, instead of every service being switched on at once.

SMS — reach your customers by text message

• 📱 Send a message to a customer by SMS straight from the booking, instead of hoping they read their email.
• ⏰ Appointment reminders can now go out by SMS as well as by email.
• SMS runs on prepaid credits: you see your balance and how many credits a message will cost before sending it.
• Phone numbers are normalised automatically to the international format, so a number saved locally still works.
• Find it in Settings → SMS. Available on every account.

Google Calendar sync — your bookings in your own calendar

• 🗓️ One-way sync — connect your Google account from Settings → Information → Google Calendar and every booking (boarding, daycare, services) appears as an event in your Google Calendar, at the exact time shown in Animalo (never UTC).
• Each team member connects their own calendar, so everyone sees the schedule wherever they already work — phone, laptop, shared calendar.
• Always in sync — creating, editing, cancelling or deleting a booking updates the matching event automatically. Your upcoming bookings are back-filled the moment you connect.
• Sign in with Google? Your calendar connects automatically, with no extra step.

Per-animal day planning & custom day-billing for boarding

• 🐾 Animal planning — a new page under Availability shows which animals are present in boarding across a movable 14-day window (one presence bar per stay), or focus a single day to list every pet present with its room/box, owner and departure time.
• 💶 Custom day-billing — the arrival day is always billed and the departure day is billed only when the pet is picked up in the afternoon (from 12:00). Enabled per boarding spot.
• ✋ Both are available on request — message us via the chat (bottom-right) and we will switch them on for your account.

Quebec sales tax (GST/QST) — configurable rates, pre-tax pricing & itemised invoices

• 🧾 Configurable GST/QST rates with a self-serve Quebec toggle in Settings.
• Add-on-top tax mode: show prices pre-tax and add GST/QST on top (default Quebec rates) on the booking widget, the payment invite email and the in-person terminal.
• Taxes are itemised line-by-line on invoices, and the included GST/QST is made explicit in the payment email.

Improvements & fixes

• Daycare check-in / check-out can now be done per day straight from the bookings list.
• The register-payment field now accepts cent amounts (e.g. 12.50).
• Plan prices on the billing page now show in your country's currency (e.g. $ for the US).
• Mobile polish: refreshed add-customer / add-pet modals on the new design, plus several iOS Safari fixes (first tap on the widget, fixed-price sheet repaint, and a dropped pet-parent session).

Minimum stay — require a minimum number of nights (optionally seasonal)

• 📏 Set a minimum stay from Settings → Information → Opening hours → Minimum stay: a minimum number of nights for boarding, or days for daycare, that customers must book.
• 🗓️ Optionally limit it to a date range (e.g. 1 July → 31 August) so the rule only applies in your busy season — outside that window there is no restriction.
• Choose which booking types it applies to (boarding, daycare, or both). Services are never restricted.
• Enforced on the public booking widget right at the date step: customers see a clear minimum-nights message before the price, and the price stays hidden until the dates are valid — so nobody gets stuck at the last step, including on mobile.

Bookings & extras — small polish

• Service-type extras now appear when you create a booking from the admin panel, not just on the public widget.
• The 'Allow online booking' toggle on an extra now saves instantly when you flip it.
• Fixed a photo-upload error that could interrupt the media manager.

Emails — date-only variable + fully translated default templates

• 🗓️ New @DATEONLY variable — inserts the booking date without the time, in every email template (alongside @DATE).
• Default email templates now ship translated in your customer's language (EN, FR, NL, DE, ES, PT, SV, HU, HE), with French as the default — no more English fallback for non-English pensions.

Grooming & educator — plan features switch on automatically

• ✂️ Grooming salons on the Salon plan now get every Salon feature (multi-groomer, automations, rebooking reminders, client portal, analytics) switched on automatically the moment they subscribe — no manual activation.
• 🎓 Educators on the Pro plan get their client portal enabled automatically on subscribe.

Sign in & sign up with Google

• 🔑 One-tap Google sign-in — a "Continue with Google" button is now on the login and sign-up pages. No password to remember: returning pros are logged straight in.
• New pros who sign up with Google get a short "finalize your account" step (business name + phone) and their 30-day free trial starts immediately — the email is already verified by Google, so there is no confirmation link to chase.
• Your business type is detected automatically from where you sign up (boarding pension, grooming salon or dog trainer), so the right tools are switched on from the start.
• Already have an Animalo account with the same email? Google links to it automatically — your data, team and subscription stay exactly as they were.

Appointment reminders for boarding pensions & daycares

• ⏰ Appointment reminders (configurable J-X days before check-in, with custom email templates) are no longer exclusive to educators — any boarding pension or daycare can now have them enabled via the Manager admin panel.
• Deleted reminder rules are truly deleted — saving an empty list no longer re-creates the 3 default rules on next load.
• Every reminder send is logged in the booking's activity history so you always know what was sent and when.
• Reminder emails now show the hotel's reply address as a clickable link instead of the old "this is an automated email" notice.

SafePet — smart pet ID tag with GPS alert

• 🏷️ Order a QR/NFC pet ID medallion directly from the member portal (monthly or yearly subscription via Stripe). When the tag is scanned by a stranger, the pet's location is logged and the owner receives an SMS alert instantly.
• Welcome email and order confirmation sent automatically on first subscription.
• Order page with dynamic monthly vs. yearly pricing and savings highlighted.
• SMS uses an "Animalo" alphanumeric sender ID where supported by the carrier.

Custom capacity & price periods — edit in place + repeat every year

• ✏️ Custom capacity (Settings → Spots → a boarding spot) now has an Edit button on each line — adjust the dates, label or capacity in place instead of deleting and re-adding. The capacity field is in kennels/places (bookable units), not number of pets — a spot shared by several pets still counts as one.
• 🔁 "Repeat every year" toggle on custom capacity and on price adjustments — turn it on for a fixed window like 15 July → 15 August and it applies the same dates every year automatically, no need to recreate it each season. One-off periods (a specific holiday) stay as single dates.
• 📅 The price adjustments list now shows an "Every year" column so you can see at a glance which adjustments recur annually.

Customer profile — upload & manage PDF, image and Office documents

• 📎 Customer documents — upload contracts, special agreements, health records and other paperwork directly to a customer's profile. New "Documents" card sits between Customer Details and Recent Bookings. Accepts PDF, JPG/PNG, Word and Excel files up to 15 MB. Each document gets a type label (Contract / Special agreement / Health record / Other) and an optional display name. View inline in a new tab, download, filter by type, or delete with a confirmation prompt. Files are stored privately and only accessible to your team.

Refreshed UI (Beta) + CRM upgrades — no-show tracking, service extras, weekly analytics

• 🎨 New design (Beta) — opt-in from the Dashboard. A refreshed cream + serif look across the whole app: cleaner sidebar, redesigned dashboard, calendar, bookings, customers and pets. Toggle back to classic any time from the top banner. Auth pages (login / register) ship the new design for everyone — no opt-in needed.
• 📅 Calendar — every event now shows start AND end time. Multi-day boardings display "11:00 → 19:00" instead of repeating the same start time on every day of the stay. New: mini-timeline strip showing each hour's load on busy days, plus a Compact toggle that auto-activates above 15 bookings (1-line rows).
• 🚫 No-show status — a real CRM no-show flow, no more "leave it as unpaid". Mark any booking as no-show from the detail page; default charges the full price per cancellation policy (or mark without charging if you arrange otherwise). Status pill appears in the booking list, calendar and detail. Customer profile gets a No-shows counter with a "HABITUAL" flag at 3+ to spot repeat offenders.
• 🛁 Service extras — you can now create extras of type Service in Settings → Extras, and attach them to grooming / service bookings from both the admin and the public booking widget (previously limited to Hotel and Daycare).
• 📊 Analytics — Year / Month / Week / Day segmented control on the dashboard and the /data/analytics page. Prev / next chevrons walk by day, week or month so you can compare two specific Saturdays, or zoom into yesterday only.
• 💸 Bookings list — new Unpaid quick-filter chip surfaces every booking that hasn't been paid in one tap. Mobile bookings list switched from a horizontal-scrolling table to stacked cards with checked-in / checked-out indicators visible on every row.

Partial deposit online payments

• Stripe checkout can now collect only a configurable percentage of the total upfront instead of the full invoice.
• Set the deposit % in Settings → Online payments; the balance is collected in-person at check-in via cash or the payment terminal.
• Booking detail page and customer payment emails clearly split "Deposit due online" from "Balance due on arrival".
• Pet parent portal "Pay securely" button charges the deposit amount; the rest stays as outstanding balance.
• Useful for pensions whose customers cannot front the full stay upfront (typical for multi-week stays in Canada and the US).

Pet inactivity automation

• Define an inactivity threshold (e.g. 120 days) after which pets that have not visited are auto-flagged as lapsed.
• Pre-flag warning emails go out automatically on the offsets you choose (e.g. 30 / 14 / 7 days before flagging) to nudge owners back.
• Block-on-booking-creation safety net: lapsed pets cannot be re-booked until a staff member confirms a reassessment from the pet detail page.
• Per-locale email overrides so the re-engagement copy reads natively in EN / FR / NL / DE / PT / HU.
• Configurable from Settings → Pet automations; runs on a daily scheduler — set it and forget it.

Prepaid Packages — 10-packs, monthly passes & gift cards

• Create reusable Packages from Settings → Packages: name, price, number of sessions (or unlimited), validity window, and which booking types they apply to.
• Sell them via Stripe Checkout from the pet parent portal — customers pay once, redeem session-by-session at check-in.
• Auto-decrement at check-in: the booking is automatically marked as redeemed from the customer's active package, with the right counter on the package detail page.
• Monthly passes auto-renew or expire on the validity date; the customer sees remaining sessions / days from their portal.
• Customer invoices clearly show which sessions were paid by package vs. by direct payment.

Pet Parents Portal — your customers' self-service area

Preview of the dashboard your customers see when they sign into their account.

• 🔬 Currently in private beta — contact us via the chat (bottom-right) or email to enable it for your pension.
• New per-pension URL at /pethotel/{slug}/account where end customers sign in with a passwordless magic link valid 7 days.
• Dashboard with Coming up / In our care / Past stays sections, status filter chips, and a List / Calendar view toggle (month grid).
• Booking detail page: total / paid / due breakdown, contract download, and a "Pay securely" button when the pension has Stripe configured.
• Awaiting-confirmation pill on every booking until the pension verifies the request. Payment is locked until then.
• Embedded booking widget at /account/book: identity is pre-filled from the account and the customer's pets appear automatically.
• Profile editor with full address (country picker, admin area, street, postal code, city), password setter, and a "My pets" tab to update name / breed / gender / date of birth.
• Onboarding callout with progress: set a password, add a phone, tell us about pets.
• Portal renders in the pension's own language regardless of the URL locale.
• Admin can resend a sign-in link from the customers list via the new "Send portal link" action, and see a Portal status column (Signed in / Invited / No account) plus a status filter.

Yearly analytics dashboard

• New /data/analytics page with a year selector and a Total view.
• KPI cards: bookings, confirmed, cancelled, unique customers, gross revenue (incl. VAT), cash collected, average booking value, total discounts, nights sold, daycare days, promo bookings, new vs returning customers.
• Breakdown panels by booking type, source and pet type.
• Top 5 customers by bookings and by revenue.
• Lighter analytics block on the home dashboard.

May 2026 pricing rollout

• Plan tiers renamed to Core / Pro / Scale.
• In-app banner notifying recipient teams of the pricing update (dismissible).
• Terms of Service updated: Paddle as merchant of record + 30-day price-change notice clause.

Promo codes overhaul

• Each pension can now define multiple promo codes (replaces the legacy single-code field).
• Each code is scopable by booking type (boarding / daycare / services) and minimum / maximum duration.
• New admin form to create / edit / delete codes.
• The widget validates the code against the selected booking type and duration before applying the discount.

Service & grooming improvements

• Service groups let several service types share a single availability pool (Toilettage).
• Weekend pricing and hourly + extra-minutes slot configuration on services.
• Grooming duration matrix (per coat × size combination) promoted from v2 to v1 for allowlisted salons.
• Pro-rata price adjustment when the groomer extends or shortens a slot.
• Widget shows the calculated service duration and the desktop recap no longer truncates long service names.

Customer registration & widget polish

• Phone country-code selector with the full ISO list (~190 countries) and phone now required on registration.
• Drop-off / pick-up times surfaced correctly in the generated contract.
• Availability rules can now be scoped to specific booking types (e.g. block daycare only).
• Booking detail page renders the actual check-in time (no more 12:00 UTC placeholder).
• Bookings list defaults to most recent first.
• Switched analytics tracker to Taap.it.