Sold in July, earned at Christmas
Package money arrives long before the service does. When a client buys a 10-visit pass, the cash is real but the revenue is not: what the business actually holds is an obligation to host that dog ten more times. The same goes for boarding deposits taken months ahead of the summer and holiday peaks, and for gift cards sold at the front desk. Booked as income on the day the card is tapped, they inflate the months when people buy and starve the months when the dogs actually show up.
We carry every prepayment as deferred revenue, a liability drawn down as visits are checked in and stays are completed. That single habit changes what the statements say. Margins line up with the labour that earned them, a slow sales month with full runs stops looking like a crisis, and a lender reading the file for a fit-out loan sees a business that knows exactly how many dog-days it still owes its clients.
What the booking platform knows, and what it does not
Almost every daycare runs on software like Gingr or PetExec: reservations, package balances, vaccination records, add-ons, point of sale. Those reports are operationally excellent and they are not books. Each number needs a translation before month-end means anything.
| Number in the booking platform | What it actually is | Where it belongs in the books |
|---|---|---|
| Packages sold this month | Cash collected, not revenue | Deferred revenue, released one check-in at a time |
| Package credits outstanding | Visits you still owe | The liability the balance sheet must carry |
| Deposits on future stays | Client money holding a run | Deferred until the stay happens or the forfeit terms apply |
| Card processor payout | Several days of sales, net of fees | Split back into gross revenue, processing fees and HST |
| Retail and add-on sales | A different margin line entirely | Separate income accounts, never a lump of "other" |
We build that mapping once, then run it every month: platform reports into QuickBooks Online, supplier bills and receipts through Dext, payments out through Plooto. The reconciliation catches the quiet leaks too, such as processor fees creeping up or packages redeemed that were never sold through the till.
Payroll for a building that never closes
Boarding means staff on site when everything else is shut, and Ontario employment rules price that in. The province has nine public holidays, Christmas and Boxing Day among them, and an attendant who works one is generally owed public holiday pay plus premium pay at time-and-a-half, or regular wages plus a substitute day off. Add overnight shifts, weekend part-timers and seasonal hires for the peaks, and kennel payroll has more moving parts than headcount suggests.
Because payroll is delivered inside End-to-End Accounting rather than bolted on, the premiums, source deductions, WSIB and year-end T4s come out of the same system that produces the statements. Holiday labour lands in the same period as the holiday revenue it served, so you can finally see what a fully staffed Christmas week truly earned.
A month-end that says more than the bank balance
The close we deliver reads the way an operator thinks: earned revenue split by line (daycare, boarding, add-ons, retail), the package liability balance and how it moved, labour as a share of earned revenue, and the HST collected but not yet remitted set aside before it feels spendable. When HST is due on a pass or a deposit follows its own rules, quite different from when the books recognize the revenue, and we cover that on our dog daycare tax services page.
What the clean numbers make possible next, occupancy by run, pricing the peaks, the second-location question, is CFO territory, and it only works when the monthly close is trustworthy. We work with daycare and kennel operators across Mississauga and the GTA; scope is quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call, no hourly surprises.
