The complete guide to running your pet business on Pawdex.

Whether you run a vet clinic, pet hotel, daycare, or grooming salon in the Philippines — this page walks you through everything you need to know about your Pawdex dashboard. No jargon. Skim or read the whole thing.

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What every business should know first

Before we get into the vet-specific or boarder-specific bits, here's the universal stuff. Read this once and you'll know how Pawdex works in your dashboard, regardless of what kind of business you run.

How Pawdex makes money (and how you get paid)

Pawdex is a tool you pay a monthly fee to use. We don't take a cut of your bookings, we don't process customer payments, and we don't hold money in escrow. When a customer books or walks in, they pay you directly using whatever method you already accept — cash, your own GCash QR, Maya, bank transfer, your POS terminal. Pawdex is just the booking + records system on top.

The Mark Paid toggles you'll see on bookings are your bookkeeping flag — they tell Pawdex "yes, this customer paid me" so your Reports tab can roll up revenue correctly. They don't move any money.

The tabs in your dashboard

Your dashboard link is in your welcome email — open it and bookmark it. That's where you run your business. It has six tabs:

How a booking moves through statuses

Every booking starts as Pending and moves through the funnel as you take action. Here's the full flow:

1. Customer submits a booking → Pending appears in your dashboard instantly (no refresh needed) and you get an email.
2. You tap Confirm booking → Customer gets a "your booking is confirmed" email. Card moves to Confirmed. They're now expecting to show up.
3. Pet arrives → Tap "Check In" (boarders/daycare) or "Pet arrived — start visit" (vets). Card moves to In House / In Exam Room.
4. Pet leaves / visit ends → Tap "Check Out" (boarders) or "Mark Paid + Complete" (vets). The booking goes to History and the revenue lands in your Reports tab.

Two side-roads off this happy path: customer can cancel from their side (you get notified, booking goes to Cancelled) and you can decline a pending booking (customer gets a polite email with your reason).

Two ways to message your customer

On every booking card you'll see two text fields:

• Staff Notes (internal) — Only you and your staff see this. Use it for "reactive to grooming clipper", "pays late but reliable", "owner prefers afternoon pickups" — anything you want to remember next time.
• Message to Owner — The customer sees this in their /dashboard. Use it for "Please bring her usual food", "Buddy was a sweetheart today!", "Reminder: next shot is due May 2027." Be warm — it's a chance to build the relationship.

Pet records — what you can verify before confirming

On any Pending or Confirmed booking, tap Check Pet Records to see the pet's vaccination history. Each record carries one of three trust badges so you know where it came from:

• ✓ AI Verified — the owner uploaded a photo of an actual vax card and Pawdex's AI extracted the data. There's a scanned document you can view.
• ✓ Clinic Record — a vet/clinic on Pawdex recorded the vaccine during a real visit. No scanned document, but it was entered by a clinic.
• No badge — the pet owner typed it in themselves. Treat it as a self-reported claim until you see proof.

If you run a vet clinic

Vet clinics are the only business type on Pawdex that's built around walk-ins by default. Your customers usually don't book a day in advance — they show up with a sick pet, a routine vaccine, or a question. Pawdex handles both the walk-in flow and the online-booking flow so you can support both.

Quick start — under 30 minutes from signup to first walk-in

1. 1

   Confirm your profile + slug

   When you signed up, you picked your business name and a unique slug (the "your-clinic-name" bit in mypawdex.com/your-clinic-name). If anything needs polishing, the Settings tab is where to do it. Add your phone and address — customers searching for a clinic in your city see these.
2. 2

   Add your services on the Services tab

   Consultation fees, vaccines (rabies, DHPP, FVRCP, etc.), deworming, grooming, surgical procedures — whatever you offer. For each service, tick the "🐾 This is a vaccine" checkbox if it's a vaccine — that's what makes Pawdex auto-record it onto the pet's passport when you mark the visit complete. (Naming "Rabies Vaccine" or "Vacc Boost" — whatever your clinic calls it — also works as a fallback even if you forget the checkbox.)
3. 3

   Add your medications on the Inventory tab

   Separate from Services. List the meds + supplies you dispense — Amoxicillin 250mg per tablet ₱25, Surolan otic suspension per bottle ₱450, Bravecto 1000mg per chewable ₱2500, ear cleaner, syringes, etc. These never appear on your public booking page (customers can't book "an Amoxicillin") — they only show up as a searchable picker on the staff side when you dispense them during a visit.
4. 4

   Try a walk-in (the demo moment)

   On the Today tab, tap "+ Walk-In". You'll see two paths: "Pet has Pawdex" (scan their QR tag or type the pet code) and "New / no Pawdex" (type the owner's name, phone, email, and the pet's name + species + breed). Either way takes about 15 seconds and the visit starts immediately — no "clipboard please" moment.
5. 5

   Optional: share your booking link for online appointments

   Some clinics also take wellness checks or surgery prep by appointment. Your link is mypawdex.com/your-clinic-name. Customers pick a service and a date; you confirm in your dashboard. Walk-ins skip this entirely.
6. 6

   Upload your logo + cover photo

   On the Settings tab. This is what customers see on your public page and on your seed listing in the /pet-services directory. A real photo of your clinic exterior or a happy patient works well as a cover.

The walk-in flow, step by step

When a walk-in customer arrives, here's exactly what happens:

1. On Today tab, tap + Walk-In.
2. If the pet has a Pawdex QR tag → tap 📷 Scan Pawdex Tag (use rear camera; works on iOS Safari, Android Chrome, Brave). Hold the phone steady over the tag. The pet code auto-fills and we look up the pet + owner instantly. Confirm and tap Start Visit.
3. If the pet doesn't have a Pawdex account → tap New / no Pawdex. Fill in owner name, phone, email (required), pet name, species, breed. Pawdex sends the owner a friendly invite email after the visit so they can claim a free account and see the records you created — this is how your patients become Pawdex pet parents and bring you repeat visits with their full passport on hand.
4. The appointment is created immediately with status In Exam Room. You can start the visit right away. No queue, no waiting.
5. During the visit, tap + Add service on the appointment card to bill consultations, procedures, or vaccines. For vaccines, a small green form expands so you can record vaccine name, date, expiry, batch, and brand — all of which flow to the pet's passport automatically.
6. When you dispense a medication, tap 💊 + Dispense med on the same card. Type the first few letters (e.g. "amox") to filter your inventory, pick the med, set the quantity (e.g. 14 tablets for a 7-day twice-daily course), and tap Add to bill. The modal stays open so you can dispense the next med without re-clicking. Hit Done at the top when finished. The meds go on the bill — owners see them on the receipt.
7. When the visit is done, tap Mark Paid + Complete · ₱[total]. The booking moves to History, your Reports tab updates, any vaccine line items get auto-recorded on the pet's passport, and (Pro tier) a receipt email + discharge sheet is sent to the owner.

The booked-appointment flow (less common but supported)

If a customer books a vet appointment online via mypawdex.com/your-clinic-name (e.g. for a wellness check, surgery prep, or specific vaccine), the flow looks like a boarder booking but with vet-shaped status labels:

1. Booking appears as Pending. Their chosen service is already on the bill (we auto-add it as a line item).
2. You review and tap Confirm booking → customer gets a "Shimmer's visit is confirmed at Your Clinic!" email.
3. On the day, when the pet arrives, tap Pet arrived — start visit → status flips to In Exam Room.
4. Run the visit. Add more services as needed. Tap Mark Paid + Complete when done.

How vaccine auto-record actually works

This is one of the biggest reasons vets switch to Pawdex, so it's worth understanding clearly. When you create a service on the Pricing tab, you'll see a checkbox: "🐾 This is a vaccine." Tick it for every vaccine you offer. Then, whenever you add that service to a visit AND you tap Mark Paid + Complete, Pawdex automatically writes a vaccination record onto the pet's permanent passport. Defaults: administered today, expires +1 year, no batch/brand. You can edit those later if needed.

Why this matters: the owner's pet passport is now actively richer after every visit to your clinic. When they go to a boarder or another vet next month, that vet sees a ✓ Clinic Record badge with your clinic name on it. That's free word-of-mouth for you.

Edge cases — when the auto-record isn't what you want

• You billed a vaccine but didn't actually administer it (pet was too sick, supply ran out) — tap the small × next to the vaccine line item to remove it before hitting Mark Paid. No record will be written.
• You administered a different vaccine than the one booked — delete the seeded line item and add the correct one via + Add service. The proper vaccine form expands so you can record batch/brand at administration time.
• The auto-record got the dates wrong (e.g. rabies should be 3-year not 1-year expiry) — the owner can edit the record from their passport later. Vet-side editing is on the roadmap.

Services vs Inventory — what's the difference?

We split your catalog into two tabs because clinical workflow needs both, but they don't mix. The rule of thumb: if a customer could reasonably book it on your public page, it's a Service. If you sell it from a shelf or a cabinet during a visit, it's Inventory.

• Services — Consultations, vaccinations, ear flushes, dental cleanings, surgeries, daycare. Customer-bookable on mypawdex.com/your-clinic-name, billable on every visit, can be flagged as a vaccine for auto-passport-write. Set deposits (Pro). Stay on the Services tab.
• Inventory — Medications (Amoxicillin, Surolan, Bravecto, etc.) + supplies you sell. Never appear on your public booking page (customers can't book "an Amoxicillin"). Only show as a searchable picker when you tap + Dispense med on a visit card. Live on the Inventory tab.
• Custom one-off items — Sometimes you need to bill for something truly ad-hoc — a special-order med, a one-time supply charge. Inside the + Add service modal there's a "+ Custom one-off item" escape hatch: type a label + price + qty and it goes straight to that bill only, never saved to your catalog.

Dispensing medication during a visit

Two things happen when you give an owner a bottle of medication: you charge them for it (the bill), and you write down how to give it (the dosing instructions). Pawdex separates them deliberately because they live in different surfaces — the bill is a billing concern, the instructions are a clinical concern.

1. Charge for it — tap 💊 + Dispense med on the visit card. Search by name, set qty, hit Add to bill. Line item appears on the receipt.
2. Write the dosing instructions (Pro) — in the Prescriptions section below the bill, tap + Add prescription. Fill in medication name, dose, frequency, duration, refills, and the "how to give" instructions for the owner. These show on the owner's discharge sheet + dedicated Prescriptions page.

If you're writing a prescription for something the owner needs to buy elsewhere (you don't stock it), skip step 1 — only do step 2. The owner gets the instructions but isn't billed by you.

Discharge sheet + auto-emailed receipt (Pro)

When you tap Mark Paid + Complete on a Pro vet account, two things happen automatically:

• The owner gets an email titled "Receipt · Your Clinic Name · Pet name" with the full line-item bill (services + dispensed meds + vaccines), payment status, and a dark "View full discharge summary →" button.
• You see a "🧾 Print discharge sheet" button on the now-completed visit card. Tap it to open the discharge in a new tab, then File → Print or save as PDF.

The discharge sheet is the same URL for both you and the owner (/discharge/[appointment-id]) — auth-aware, so the vet sees the full clinical record while the owner sees the same page minus your private working observations (exam findings). Bill, prescriptions, vaccines added to passport, follow-up dates — everything else is shared.

What I see when I scan another vet's patient

This is the most quietly powerful feature of Pawdex for vets. When you scan a Pawdex QR tag on a pet you've never seen — say, an owner walks in with a dog that was treated at a different Pawdex vet last month — you don't see a stranger. You see the pet's medical history.

A logged-in vet viewing mypawdex.com/p/[pet-code] on a scan sees a collapsible "For Attending Vets" section (collapsed by default, one tap to expand) containing:

• Care alerts — allergies + dietary notes
• Emergency contact — secondary phone if the owner is unreachable
• Currently on — active prescriptions from any Pawdex vet, with dose + frequency + duration + the original clinic name
• Recent visits — last 10, with date + clinic name + diagnosis + treatment plan + follow-up notes from the attending vet

What you don't see: the other clinic's working exam-findings notes (the SOAP "S" observations in vet shorthand). Those stay private to whoever wrote them. You see the patient-facing summary — chief complaint, diagnosis, treatment plan, follow-up — which is what you need to make a sound clinical decision today.

Privacy and audit: every business-side QR scan that pulls medical history is logged. Owners can see who has accessed their pet's records (this view is in development — accesses are being recorded today). Owners can also flip off medical-history sharing per pet from the Edit Pet page if they prefer to keep records owner-managed.

Setting up your scanning device

The QR scanner is the core of the walk-in flow. Honest reality on what works:

• Phone or tablet (recommended) — rear camera, opened in iOS Safari, Android Chrome, or Brave. Built for short-distance focus, scans a small ~25mm collar tag reliably. Most PH reception desks already have one — this is the primary device we recommend.
• USB webcam on a flex arm (laptop-only setups) — search Shopee for "USB webcam flex arm" or "document camera," ~₱400-700. Positions the camera at counter-height so customers can hold the tag in front of it.
• Manual entry (always works) — the Walk-In modal has a text field for the pet code (printed on the tag, format PDX-YYYY-NNNN-XXXXXX). If a camera doesn't cooperate, type the code. Three seconds, same result.

If you run a pet hotel or boarding business

Pet hotels and boarders are advance-booking businesses. Customers know weeks in advance when they'll travel, and they book a date range for their pet's stay. Pawdex's booking flow is built around this rhythm.

Quick start — get to your first booking

1. 1

   Confirm your profile + slug

   The Settings tab has your business name, description, contact details, address, and city. The "slug" you picked at signup is the URL where customers find you: mypawdex.com/your-business-name.
2. 2

   Add your services + prices on the Pricing tab

   Standard offerings: Overnight Boarding (per night), Daycare (per visit), and optional add-ons like Bath, Grooming, Extra Walk. Each main service should have a short description telling customers what's included (meals? walks per day? sleeping area?). Add-ons appear only after a customer picks a main service.
3. 3

   Upload your logo + cover photo

   On Settings. The cover photo is what customers see at the top of your public page. Something inviting — your facility's entrance, the play yard, a guest dog napping — anything that says "this is a real place run by real people who like animals."
4. 4

   Share your booking link with past customers

   Your booking link is mypawdex.com/your-business-name. Send it via SMS, Messenger, Viber to anyone who's boarded with you before. They book directly, you confirm in your dashboard. Each new booking sends you an email immediately AND appears in your Pending tab instantly.
5. 5

   Wait for your first booking — then confirm it

   When a Pending booking comes in, tap Confirm booking on the card. The customer gets a confirmation email (subject: "Shimmer's stay is confirmed at Your Pet Hotel!"). On the day of check-in, tap Check In. On check-out day, mark deposit + balance received and tap Check Out.

The boarder booking lifecycle

A typical booking moves through these states. At each one, you and the customer get clear signals.

Pro feature: configurable deposits

On the Lite plan, all services are full-payment-at-check-out by default. On Pawdex Pro (₱1,499/month), you can set a deposit percentage per service on the Pricing tab. The customer sees the required deposit on the booking form and on the confirmation email. You toggle "Deposit Received" on the booking card when they pay it. Pawdex doesn't hold the deposit — they still pay you directly. The toggle is just your bookkeeping flag.

Vaccination verification — peace of mind for your facility

Most boarders require pets to have current rabies and DHPP/Bordetella to protect other guests. Pawdex makes this easy: every Pending booking has a Check Pet Records button. Tap it to see the pet's full vaccination history with trust badges (AI Verified / Clinic Record / Self-reported). If a vaccination is missing or expired, decline the booking and ask the owner to come back once they've seen a vet.

If you run a pet daycare

Daycare flow is similar to boarding but most of your customers book per-day or drop-in. Pawdex supports both.

Quick start

1. 1

   Set up your services

   On Pricing, add "Daycare" (per visit) and any add-ons (half-day, full-day, lunch included, pickup service). Make the unit clear so customers don't get confused at check-in.
2. 2

   Upload your photo + describe your space

   Daycare customers care about safety and quality. A cover photo of your play yard with a few happy dogs builds instant trust. Use the description on Settings to highlight: indoor + outdoor space, supervision ratio, group play vs. separated, what's included.
3. 3

   Share your booking link with regulars

   Most daycares run on repeat customers. Get your mypawdex.com/your-name link in their hands and let them self-book future drop-offs.
4. 4

   Verify vaccinations on Pending bookings

   Just like boarders, daycare needs current rabies + DHPP/Bordetella. The Check Pet Records button on every Pending card shows the full history with trust badges.
5. 5

   Run the day

   Tap Check In when the dog arrives, Check Out when they're picked up. The day's revenue lands in Reports.

Most of the boarder content above also applies to you — same status flow, same deposits-on-Pro feature, same vaccine verification approach. Skim the pet hotel section for the parts that aren't already on this page.

Things every business owner asks us

Quick fixes for common problems

Still stuck? We're a small team.

Reply to any Pawdex email or write us directly. Real people on our Cebu-based team usually reply within a business day.