Make It Yours: Fields, Printouts & Age Settings

No two shelters work quite the same way, so Pet Friend bends to fit yours. Let me show you how to shape the forms your staff use every day, and build a printout that shows exactly what you want.

We'll start in the Admin area, under Field Settings. This is where you decide what your team has to fill in, and what they never see at all.

First, pick the form you're setting up. Intake, adoptions, and fosters are each configured on their own — so a rule you set here won't surprise you somewhere else.

Now, every field on that form is listed, grouped just the way it appears on screen. Each one has two simple choices.

Tick Required, and your staff can't save the form without it. It picks up a little asterisk too, so they can see it's needed before they start typing.

Or tick Hidden, and the field disappears from the form completely. A shorter form means quicker intakes and fewer mistakes — and don't worry, anything already saved in that field is kept safe.

You'll notice a few fields marked locked. Those can't be switched off, simply because the record can't exist without them — an adoption always needs an animal.

And if you track something nobody else does, you can add fields of your very own. They've grown into a full tool under Forms — with sections, more types, and cage card printing — and there's a video all about them in this guide.

Now for the other half. Over in the Forms area, you'll find Custom Printouts — this is where you choose exactly what prints for each animal.

Give a new one a name, like Intake Sheet, or Vet Packet. It starts you off with the fields most shelters want, so it's useful right away.

Then simply tick what belongs on it. Everything from the animal's record is here — their details, the intake, the physical exam, medical, behavior, and notes.

You can add whole tables too, like their medications, vaccine records, and kennel status. And if you built custom fields, they're right here waiting as well.

Rename anything just for this printout, put it in the order you want, add a note at the top or the bottom, and switch on a signature line if it's something you'll hand over to be signed.

Have a look with Preview before you print. Empty fields simply drop out, so even a sparse record still comes out clean and tidy.

From then on, your printout waits in the Print menu on every animal — right alongside the cage card. And the moment an intake is finished, it's offered on the animal's page, so the paperwork's ready to hand over.

One last thing worth setting up. On intake, fill in the date of birth, and Pet Friend works out the exact age for you — six weeks three days old, one year two weeks old.

You'll see it the moment you pick the date. And because it's worked out from the date, it's always right — unlike an age typed into a notes field, which is out of date a week later. For a litter whose birthday you don't know, just estimate it; from then on the age stays accurate on its own.