Running your own business is difficult especially for us dog walkers and carers. We juggle clients, road works, high fuel prices, group walks, muddy Retrievers, balancing the books and maintaining a diary we can actually decipher.

So when it comes to being a professional dog walker we want to be enjoying the fun aspects of being in pet care rather than worrying about chasing clients for overdue monies owed etc etc. Enter DiggDawg, a mobile application available on Google Play and The Apple store that is designed to take away much of the stress of managing your business. Let's look at some of the key features of the app and how it can benefit your business.

A data store for your clients and dogs

Before I built DiggDawg I normally used a combination of a paper diary (which became a nightmare) and google forms. There is nothing wrong with this approach but in case of an emergency digging through Google Forms to find the right client in an emergency is time consuming. I never took my diary out with me so even storing contact information here would have been difficult.

With DiggDawg you’ll be able to store all of the important information you will ever need from emergency details to their chip number or dietary requirements.

YouTube: Building profiles

A flexible and responsive calendar

We’ve all been there, our business is starting to take shape and we’ve got more clients than we know what to do with. Constant changes to groups due to adhoc shift workers or last minute requests to grab Poppy before you head out on your second walk of the day can easily mess up using a paper diary or online calendar.

DiggDawg’s event calendar allows you to define a variety of events that are customisable to suit your needs. You can add group walks, single one off walks, day care events, boarding events, expenses and even roll your own events for events such as visits or a pet tax literally anything you want it to be. You’ll have your diary in your pocket and can quickly and easily amend walks as those pesky Karen’s bombard you with requests.

The custom event feature is also flexible enough if you want to add small furries to pack. You may have a cat pop in or needing to feed the hamsters and thankfully DiggDawg will manage all of this for you.

YouTube: Calendar events

A complete history of a clients events

A very handy feature in which you can see an individual client's complete event history in one place. Imagine flicking through a paper diary trying to work out how many walks a particular dog has done in the space of a month? No thanks, it's an absolute nightmare.

DiggDawg shows on a monthly basis all of the events a dog or pet has ever been assigned to. You’ll know exactly how much you have made and even be able to mark events as paid/unpaid. Got a client that pays you on a monthly basis and you can’t remember if you walked Rudi on Monday last week or whether you are charging correctly? Well that's what the app is for :)

PDF Invoicing

A simple yet powerful feature allows you to select a date range and define what events you want to bill your client for. Since you’ve been so organized and completed a client's profile we’ll pull all of their data, do a bit of magic and pull a PDF out of a magic hat ready for you to email your client. You won’t need to remember how much you need to charge DiggDawg takes all of this information from the event history - not to shabby eh?

YouTube: Event history and PDF invoicing

Balance the books

By now you’re probably starting to see a pattern, you build your clients and your diary and DiggDawg does the rest. It is the exact same for your expenditure, the app will keep tabs on what you’ve earned and breaks it down by event type i.e. walks or boarding as well as take into account any expenses you have had for that week or month.

I’m assuming a lot of us are sole traders and quickly being able to see what we have spent and earned is essential when it comes to that end of year return. When I did my first return I had to go through my paper diary and tally up everything and it was a dreadful experience. Thankfully being a user of the app myself it's now pretty effortless to see everything in a clean and readable format.

Documents store and group sms messaging.

From terms and conditions to new starter forms we probably use a variety of online tools such as dropbox to store these files. A recent addition to the app was the ability to upload documents where at the tap of a button you can send a document to your client via their email address. You can also assign specific documents to a dog so when creating boarding events or daycare events for that dog a reference to the document will be present to quickly view if the need arises.

Need to send payment reminders on a weekly basis? What about holiday details for that 2 week break in sunny Spain? Create reusable templates where you define the message, select which clients you want to send to and DiggDawg will create a group sms message that you can send in one simple action.

Each client receives the message independently and any correspondence is only between you and your client. For now it's just SMS messaging and I will be exploring what I can do with whatsapp in the future.

YouTube: Admin area

A reasonable monthly cost

When I began testing the app I asked all of the testers to give me feedback on the app and one of the questions I asked was what they’d be willing to pay monthly for the app. With varying suggestions I launched the app at a monthly cost of £7.99 however I’ve decided to drop the price to £5.99 for various reasons. I feel that in comparison with other options out there that the price drop would reflect value for money and hopefully you do as well.

We’ve only just begun the journey

I’ve walked you through some of the key features of DiggDawg and how it can help you manage your dog care business and this is only just the start. The app is not even a year old and we’ve already seen some key features added at the request of an awesome and patient user base.

The app is in a good place and will only see minor adjustments when needed however there are so many avenues I want to explore to make this app the go to for dog walkers so watch this space.

Thanks for reading.

Much love Grahamne

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