Two capacities under one roof
Daycare capacity is a staffing number: the spots you can sell on a Tuesday are set by the dog-to-staff ratio you are willing to run. Boarding capacity is a capital number: the nights you can sell were fixed the day the runs were built. The two sides share a roof, a payroll and a booking platform while answering to entirely different levers, so the first CFO exercise is splitting them: attendance against bookable spots by weekday on one side, occupancy by night on the other.
Both are perishable. An unfilled Tuesday spot and a run standing empty on December 23rd are not inventory awaiting a buyer; they expired. That is why utilization, not revenue, is the headline number here: revenue can climb for a year while the building quietly sells a shrinking share of what it could.
Labour follows the same split. Weekday attendants scale with daycare bookings, while overnight and statutory-holiday coverage scales with boarding, at premium pay exactly when demand peaks, a cost our accounting work for daycares already isolates by period. The CFO question is whether every scheduled hour has booked dogs to serve, because hours without dogs are a margin leak no rate increase repairs.
Peak pricing is a policy, not an apology
The summer weeks and the Christmas fortnight will fill regardless; the question is on what terms. Peak-period rates, minimum-night stays over the holidays and firm deposit terms each convert excess demand into margin instead of a longer waitlist, and each is a decision with numbers behind it: what a fully staffed peak night truly costs, what a no-show costs in a sold-out week, what the waitlist says about the rate. We model the policy before the booking window opens and read the platform data afterward to see what held.
Off-peak is the mirror problem. Midweek boarding rates and daycare packages exist to fill capacity that would otherwise expire, and the test for any discount is strict: it should sell a spot that had no other buyer, never reprice one that did.
Add-ons are sold to dogs already in the building
Webcam access, exit baths, training sessions and enrichment walks share one economic feature: the customer is already checked in and the staff are already on shift, so the incremental cost is minutes while the price is real. The numbers that matter are the attachment rate, the share of stays leaving with at least one add-on, and revenue per occupied night measured against the bare rate. Together they tell you whether the front desk is offering or merely processing.
| The number | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Boarding occupancy by night | Which weeks earn peak pricing, and whether more runs would actually sell |
| Daycare attendance vs bookable spots | Whether growth needs marketing or another attendant on the ratio |
| Revenue per occupied night | Whether peak rates and add-ons are landing or leaking |
| Add-on attachment rate | How much margin the building earns beside the stay itself |
| Labour hours per dog-day | The line between profitable staffing and a quiet giveaway |
| Package and deposit liability | Visits and nights already sold that future weeks must still serve |
A cash plan that survives the second week of January
Kennel cash is front-loaded twice a year: peak takings arrive together with deposits for stays not yet delivered, and all of it feels spendable in the week it lands. None of it entirely is. A deposit is a night still owed, the HST inside every payment belongs to the CRA, and the trough that follows each peak arrives with the fixed costs intact: rent, liability insurance priced for a business built on incident risk, and utilities on a building kept warm and supervised around the clock.
The instrument is a 13-week rolling cash forecast that nets those claims out of the headline bank balance and sizes the reserve each trough requires. Kennels that run one stop treating late January as an emergency; it becomes a scheduled season with a funded plan.
More runs, or a second roof
Growth comes in two shapes: adding runs at the site you have, inside the limits your licence and zoning allow, or opening a second building with its own slow ramp. Both get modelled from your own history, occupancy by season, labour per dog-day, attachment, rather than from optimism, and when the model clears, the same numbers become the lender file through Business Financing Advisory.
The ongoing engagement is a monthly Fractional CFO rhythm built on a close you can trust: utilization on both sides of the building, attachment, labour per dog-day and the cash runway to the next peak, for operators across Mississauga and the GTA. Scope is sized to the facility and quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call.
