Animal Shelter Software Features - Everything You Need to Manage Your Shelter

Complete Shelter Management Solution

From the time you login we can help your organization manage all of your records. We have built a system that takes care of the intake of an animal, daily care, all the way to the adoption of the animal. We use many key features to accomplish this listed below:

Access from Anywhere

Whether you're halfway around the world or sitting in the office; anywhere with internet access you can access Pet Friend. Access your animal records using your smart phone, tablet, laptop, or traditional desktop.

Android and iOS Mobile Apps

Pet Friend works beautifully in any mobile browser — and dedicated apps are available for iOS today, and the Android on Google Play.

Remote Adoption Applications

Share and manage your adoption applications from anywhere. With a simple click you can share, review, and approve adoption applications remotely.

Remote Adoption Finalization — Sign & Pay From the Adopter's Phone BETA

Skip the back-and-forth. After you've approved an adoption, click Send to Adopter and Pet Friend emails the adopter a secure link they open on their own phone or computer. They read the contract, sign with their finger, and pay the adoption fee through Stripe — no need to hand over a staff iPad or collect cash on the spot. As soon as payment clears, Pet Friend automatically marks the animal adopted, clears the kennel, and stores the signed contract on the animal's record.

• Tokenized one-time link that expires after 14 days
• Hosted, PCI-compliant Stripe Checkout — no card data ever touches your shelter
• Works on any phone, tablet, or laptop with a browser — no app install required
• Especially useful for rural shelters, foster-based rescues, and out-of-area adoptions

Payments — Stripe & Square BETA

Accept adoption fees, donations, and other payments through your Pet Friend account — online or in person.

• Stripe Checkout — hosted, PCI-compliant payment page for online adoption fees and donations. No card data ever touches your shelter; just connect your Stripe account and start taking payments.
• Square Terminal — pair a Square card reader for in-person tap, chip, and swipe payments at the shelter. Tied directly to the adoption record.
• Refunds — full or partial refunds on either provider with a single click.
• Webhook-driven ledger — every payment, refund, and status change is logged for audit and reconciliation.

Note: Payments is currently in beta. Connect a sandbox Stripe or Square account to try it before going live.

E-Signatures & Document Signing — a Lightweight DocuSign, Built In

E-signatures are built into adoption contracts, surrender forms, foster agreements, and volunteer waivers on every plan — sign in person on a staff device, or remotely via a secure link sent to the signer's phone.

On the Shelter plan and up, you can also send your own documents to be signed — no separate DocuSign subscription:

• Upload a PDF or Word document — Word files are converted to PDF automatically. The client reviews the exact document right on the signing page.
• Drag the signature where it belongs — drop the signature box onto the page, or let Pet Friend add a signature certificate page at the end.
• Send it anywhere — by email or text, or hand over a tablet with Sign on this device. No account or app needed for the signer.
• Get one merged signed PDF — your document with the signature in place, plus a certificate page recording the signer, their ESIGN/UETA consent, IP address, timestamps, and a fingerprint of the original.
• Filed to the record — the signed PDF attaches automatically to the animal, adoption, foster, officer case, license, or person it came from.

Mobile Friendly Design

Our software supports all mobile devices, if it has a web browser you can access Pet Friend!

Cloud-Based Platform

No more need for IT staff to manage your hardware! We manage everything in one convenient location on the cloud.

Nightly Backups

Our services provide nightly backups to protect your data.

Task Management and Workflow

• Workers tasks
• Task and workflow tracking

Animal Management

• Litter / group intake — enter shared details once and create the whole litter
• Detailed Animal records
• Kennel management
• Share Remote Animal Applications
• Lost Animal records
• Euthanasia records
• Cremation records
• Animal License/Registration
• Animals Supported: Dogs, Cats, Barnyard Animals, Birds, Horses, Pigs, Rabbits, Small & Furry, Scales, Fins, & Other (see full list)
• Transfer animal records to partners that are both using Pet Friend

Humane Officer Management

• Bite records
• Case records
• Call records
• Inventory records
• Mileage records

Care Management

• Animal care
• Behavior care
• Medications
• Medication administration record (MAR) — log every dose as it is given, with who gave it and when, so a shift change never means a double dose or a missed one
• Test Results
• Procedures/Surgeries
• Vet Offices
• Vet Visits

Accounting

• Invoices
• Inventory
• Donations
• Online payments & refunds via Stripe and Square (BETA)
• Animal Expenses

Adoptions

• Applications management
• Adoption management
• Remote adoption finalization — sign & pay link sent to the adopter's phone (BETA)
• Online adoption fee payments via Stripe (BETA)
• In-person card payments via Square Terminal (BETA)
• Foster management with foster matching (filter fosters by species, large-dog capability, kids, capacity) and an active-foster board
• Donation ask on the remote-adoption success page
• Rescue management
• Returned to Owner
• Trap-Neuter-Return

People Management

• Adopter, Donor, Volunteer, and Offender records
• Volunteer Time Tracking and Reporting

Calendar

• Manage events and vet visits

File Storage

• Upload commonly used forms or files that can be accessed from anywhere

Reports

• 60+ built-in reports across intake/outcome, adoptions, medical, financial, officer, and people
• Custom report builder — build and save your own reports
• Scheduled reports — any saved report emailed to you automatically (daily, weekly, monthly) SHELTER PLAN & UP
• Compliance-ready: Asilomar statistics, Live Release Rate, and state monthly reports
• Shelter Animals Count export — the Basic Data Matrix, generated from your records instead of assembled by hand SHELTER PLUS
• Length-of-stay filters — find the animals who have been waiting longest, by type, age, or kennel
• Vet-legible medical records — printable medical history a clinic can actually read

Switching From Another System

• Shelterluv import — bring your animals, people, and adoption history across with a guided wizard
• PetPoint / CSV import — map your columns once and import; a preview shows exactly what will be created before anything is written
• Import runs against a preview first, so you see the result before you commit to it
• Moving is free. We don't charge to let you in, and we don't charge to let you out.

Your Data Is Yours — No Lock-In

One click exports everything: every table as CSV, plus your animal photos and uploaded files, in a single ZIP. Not a summary, not a report — the actual data.

We think you should be able to leave whenever you want. Software that keeps your data hostage is telling you it can't keep you any other way.

Fundraising and Donations

• Public donation page — share a link and take donations online
• Donation ask on the remote-adoption success page, while the adopter is happiest
• Automatic emailed receipts for donors
• Donations go straight to your Stripe account — your money never sits with us, and we take no cut of it

Integrations — API and Webhooks SHELTER PLUS

• Partner API — read and update your animals and read your adoption applications from your own website or tools, with API keys you issue and revoke yourself
• Outbound webhooks — we notify your systems the moment an animal is created, updated, or adopted, an application arrives, or a transfer is created
• Every delivery is signed, retried if your endpoint is down, and shown in a delivery log so you can see exactly what we sent
• Free embed widget — your adoptable animals on your own website, no API key needed
• Automatic Petfinder and Adopt-a-Pet syncing

Custom Fields SHELTER PLAN & UP

Every shelter tracks something nobody else does. Add your own fields to animal records — text, numbers, or a dropdown of your own choices — and they appear on the record and in your exports. No developer, no support ticket, no waiting on us.

Custom Form Builder & Document Signing SHELTER PLAN & UP

• Build your own forms for adoption, foster, volunteer, intake/surrender — ask the questions you actually ask
• Real field types — short text, long text, dropdown choices, yes/no, date, number, email, phone, and a Signature field — instead of one long text box
• Answers arrive structured, so you can read and filter them instead of wading through paragraphs
• Attach a document to any form — upload a PDF or Word file (Word auto-converts to PDF) that clients review and sign
• Send forms & documents to sign from any record by email, text, or in person, and get back a single merged signed PDF filed to the record
• Applications submitted from your public animal pages land straight in your queue

Notifications, Alerts, and Reminders

• Shelter notifications for animals and tasks
• Automatic alerts — vaccines and medications coming due, overdue tasks, and new adoption applications, on the channels you choose
• Reminders for events and appointments
• Email reminders for events, appointments, and due dates

Administration

• Public adoption listings: per-animal shareable pages (search-engine friendly) and an embeddable widget for your own website
• API access to view animals eligible for adoption
• Cross-organization transfers — send an animal's full record to a partner rescue automatically
• AKC Reunite microchips enrolled automatically after intake or adoption
• Migration importer — switch from Shelterluv (auto-detected) or PetPoint/CSV with a guided, preview-first wizard
• Animal Share link with all your animals eligible for adoption
• Manage User accounts and their access level
• Manage Adoptions and Foster Contracts
• Manage Tax Information (if applicable)
• Manage Number of Kennels
• General Organization Information
• Manage Subscription
• Manage Partners

Training Videos

• Detailed online training videos going over the software

Petfinder Automatic Import

Our software will automatically upload animals eligible for adoption into Petfinder.

Security & Compliance

Built for shelters that answer to a city, a board, or a grant funder. Each control is switched on per organization from your admin settings.

Two-factor authentication and login lockout are included on every plan. The audit log is a Shelter Plus feature. Compare plans ›

• Two-factor authentication (2FA / MFA) — multi-factor authentication for staff accounts using an authenticator-app code (Google Authenticator, Authy, 1Password, and others), so a stolen password isn't enough to get in. Includes one-time backup codes. Meets the MFA requirement common to municipal and grant-funded security reviews.
• Login lockout — automatically blocks password-guessing by locking an account after repeated failed sign-ins, while staying generous enough that a normal typo never triggers it.
• Audit log — a timestamped record of who signed in and who created, changed, deleted, or exported records. The answer to "who did this, and when?" for accountability, disputes, and reviews.
• Passwords are stored with bcrypt, sessions are validated on every request, and automated backups run continuously.

Okta OIDC (SSO) SHELTER PLUS

Our software supports single sign on (SSO) using Okta OpenID Connect protocol.

Supported Languages

We support English natively, with a built-in translator for Spanish and French. Additional languages are available per custom request.

More resources: Compare shelter software | Solutions by organization type | Guides & resources