This month’s newsletter brings lots of exciting new developments at K9 Bytes®! A major part of our success over the last twenty years, has been always trying to grow along with the state-of-the-art technology available. We have joined two major social networks in order to bring you constant up-to-date news about K9 Bytes®. Please join us on Twitter and Facebook!

We also want to remind new and continuing clients alike to join our K9 Bytes® User’s Group on Yahoo Groups. The User’s group is a forum where K9 Bytes® users can meet and discuss a variety of K9 Bytes® related topics to their mutual benefit. Feel free to visit us in all these wonderful social networks to chat, share ideas, and have fun while we continue to work side-by-side in order to take the pet care industry to a new level of software excellence. Once again, thank you for your support over the years... We couldn't do it without you!

Technical Support News

We wanted to give you one last heads-up that we will no longer be using our answering service. Our answering service is being replaced by a message with detailed instructions on how to create tickets through our Customer Resource Management system or CRM. Telephone customer service operators are available only during customer service hours. For more information on how to use the CRM, click here.

New Products and Specials

Reminder Forest Shadows

One of the more popular products we currently offer is the webcam. The reason for the increasing number of businesses using webcams is the many new tools in the K9 Koordinator that utilize the pictures of the pets. We are currently using a brandnew model of webcams compatible with all recent Windows operating systems. The pictures of the pets now can be visualized in the ‘K9 Bytes® Manager’ screen for security purposes. Also, it helps your staff get acquainted with clients faster and better, improving the level of customer service you can offer. Pictures can also be used in newsletters and other mailing options. The most popular feature to use pictures in is the automatic reminders. Clearly, reminders do not require any effort from you since they are sent automatically when booking boarding and grooming appointments. And the best part, CUSTOMERS LOVE THEM! Get ahead of your competitors, it doesn’t take much effort to take one photo per pet. We even have facilities taking new photos monthly due to the great feedback they are getting from them!

To get you started, we would like to offer you a great deal in a brand new webcam!

What's New in the K9 Koordinator?

We would like to include some of the improvements that have been included in the K9 Koordinator since our last newsletter. The current release of K9 Koordinator Cheetah is version 6.0.314. If you are running behind, you want to be running the latest version! It is full of wonderful new features. Use the K9 Bytes® Updater to automatically check for and download the latest K9 Koordinator. Click here for instructions on how to dowload and use the Updater. Here is a list of changes since our last newsletter:

Layout

1. Added check in and out date to layout when accessed from edit reservation or edit stay.
2. Added run transfers to the chart run card.

Reports

1. New “Services by Section” report. Offers a simple view of scheduled services. Useful for large facilities that have different buildings serviced by different employees. Similarly, we have a new boarding check out list as well as a new medication and diet report “by the sections.”
2. New feature to print a “Business Summary” under “Tools.” The summary will give you general statistics about arrivals, departures, overnight pets, and grooms between two dates. It will also give you a comparison with a month before, and a year before, which are good indicators of your business performance.
3. New report for recorded pet records. The report is part of the “Clients and Pets” reports. This report lists all pets marked for each record under “Records” in the pet’s file between two dates. Pet records can be configured under “Set Up,” “Pets,” and “Records.”
4. “Worst Sellers” retail report was modified to include products with no sales, before it would include only products with at least one sale.

Daycare

1. New ability to determine a check out time for daycare different than the check out date for boarding.

Run Cards

1. The feature to print all run cards from the reports screen now has the option to print only daycare, only boarding, or both.
2. Under “Settings” and “Printers and Peripherals,” the run cards can be configured to show with red color those special instructions that have been alarmed for a pet.
3. Run cards printed in advance (before the pet checked in) can now be printed for different reservations by selecting the reservation type option under “Reservation Details” in the pet’s file, before clicking the “Run Cards” icon.

Grooming

1. The groomer’s schedule can now be configured under “Set Up,” “Features” to work based on the default time set up for the breed or based on the start time only.
2. The grooming schedule can now be display with different starting times, and time intervals of 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes. These options are available in the "Grooming Schedule" screen located at the top left, were the clock icons and the number of minutes can be changed. Additionally, the default time interval can be configured under “Set Up,” “Basic Services,” “Grooming,” and “General.”
3. For security reasons, the address of the client will no longer appear in the groomer’s worksheet, except if the groomer assigned is a mobile groomer.

General Features

1. Only needed for NETWORK version. Online “live” search with each keystroke can now be turned off. This is useful for network computers that are currently experiencing slow-down during searches. The feature can be turned on/off by going to “Set Up,” “Features,” and selecting the desired option in “Turn Off keystroke search in search screen.” This feature has to be configured in every computer. If the computer doesn’t experience a slow down we recommend keeping this feature on.
2. New security level for “Client and Pets” reports.
3. Expiration month for credit cards on file now will display at reservation screens, point of sale, and check out screen.
4. The total number of run transfers already pre-assigned for a reservation will now display in the reservation screen.
5. For clarity, the show clock status message in the search screen now reads “You are clocked IN” and “You are clocked OUT” instead of “Clocked In” and “Clocked Out.” The “Show Clock Status” feature can be enabled under “Set Up,” and “User Interface.”  We recommend this setting for all facilities using the time clock system.

Services

1. New feature to display and automatically schedule services for boarding appointments booked during the last visit. This feature can be found in the boarding reservation screen.
2. When extending a stay or reservation, the system will prompt to automatically extend any services already booked for the old check out day.