A single-location pet care business has one customer database, one P&L, one set of operating decisions, and one person, usually the owner, who knows everything. A multi-location business has none of those. The customer who books daycare at Site A and boards at Site B is the same person but might be two customer records. The Tuesday morning revenue at Site C needs to roll up to corporate without obscuring what's happening at Site C. The new vaccine policy needs to deploy to every site without overwriting the local exception Site D negotiated with its insurer.
We re-evaluated the multi-location pet care market for 2026 because operators kept reporting the same complaint: products that look great in single-location demos break down past the second or third site, usually around the third year. Most of the products you'd consider for one facility, Gingr, ProPet, PetExec, technically support multi-location. Few of them do it at a depth that survives real operational growth.
Our top pick, DaySmart Pet, comes from outside the pet-care-software world: it's part of DaySmart Software, which makes appointment and salon products at meaningful scale. That ancestry shows in the parts of the product that matter most for multi-location operators, corporate-vs-location separation, accounting export quality, per-site P&L breakouts, and less in the pet-specific features, which are present but rarely category-leading.
Gingr is our runner-up and the better answer if pet-specific feature depth matters more to you than enterprise-grade reporting. The two products bracket most multi-location operators; the right pick depends on what bottleneck you're solving.
Who this guide is for, and who it isn't
This guide is for pet care groups operating two or more physical locations: chains, multi-state operators, franchise systems, and groups built by acquisition. It is not for single-location operators (read the daycare or boarding guides instead). It's also not for service-based operations that span a metro area without physical sites, those are covered in our pet sitting and walking guides.
How we evaluate
Every product in this guide is evaluated against the same operational framework: the things the software has to absorb for an operator to be able to run a real business on it, without spending nights and weekends reconstructing what the software should have captured.
Operational fit, not feature counts
We rank by how well a product matches the work an operator actually does, not by which has the longest feature list. Every recommendation states who it's good for and who it isn't.
Public pricing and documentation
Pricing and feature details are drawn from each vendor’s public pricing pages, documentation, and demos. They reflect a snapshot in time, so always confirm current pricing with the vendor.
Written from an operator’s lens
We frame every pick around how a pet-care business actually runs, with input from working operators where we have it, and we flag what we could not independently verify. See our editorial standards.
We disclose affiliate relationships at the top and bottom of every guide. We do not accept revenue-share terms in exchange for placement. When we link to a vendor it may be an affiliate link, and we may earn a referral fee at no cost to you; it never changes our rankings. The How we test page explains specifics.
DaySmart Pet
The cleanest corporate-vs-location structure in the category, the best accounting export in the category, and the only product where roll-up reporting felt like a first-class feature rather than a quarterly export project. Built for operators with a real finance function.
Group corporate overview · Week of May 19
- Starting price
- $149 / month (Deluxe Growth, the multi-location tier) with DaySmart Payments; $169 without
- Corporate structure
- First-class · corp + location separation
- Accounting export
- Excellent · journal-entry quality
- Best for
- 3+ location groups with a finance function
DaySmart Pet earns this top spot for one specific reason: it treats corporate and location as distinct first-class concepts, with separate roles, separate views, separate edit permissions, and separate reporting surfaces. Most pet-care-specific products treat "multi-location" as "the same product instance, with a location filter." DaySmart treats it as "two different jobs" , and once you have a real operations director and controller sitting above your site GMs, that distinction is the whole game.
The accounting export is the other reason DaySmart wins this category. Journal-entry quality, mapped to your chart of accounts, deferred-revenue handling for package balances done correctly, intercompany flow when a customer books at one location and uses package credit at another. We handed sample exports to two outside controllers; both said it was the cleanest pet-care export they'd seen.
The policy deployment case, new vaccine requirement at every site except one, was the cleanest implementation in the category. Set the policy at corporate, push to locations, override at Site D with effective dates, audit log shows what was deployed when. It's not flashy; it's the right shape for the work.
What annoys us
The pet-specific features are present but rarely category-leading. Capacity logic, vaccine reminders, customer app, they're good, not great. If you're a single-location operator looking at this guide because someone mentioned DaySmart, you should be reading our daycare guide instead, Gingr and ProPet are both better picks for you.
Pricing scales per location and gets expensive fast. Total cost scales with the number of locations, so confirm current per-location pricing with the vendor before you model a multi-site rollout. That's a fair price for what the product does, but it's worth pricing out before assuming this is the budget answer.
Good for
- Three-plus location pet care groups
- Franchise systems with corporate-vs-site separation
- Operators with a real finance function (controller, outside CFO)
- Groups built by acquisition (each site brought a different stack)
Not good for
- Single-location operators
- Two-location partnerships still operationally identical
- Pet-specific feature-depth needs (Gingr fits better)
- Anyone allergic to enterprise sales cycles
Gingr
The most complete pet-specific operating system in the category, with native multi-location that's gotten meaningfully better across 2024 and 2025. The right answer for fast-growing groups under twelve locations where pet-specific feature depth matters as much as enterprise reporting.
Group dashboard · today
- Starting price
- Custom (Enterprise; Gingr lists multi-location as custom-priced)
- Corporate structure
- Good · improved 2024–2025
- Pet-specific depth
- Excellent · category-leading
- Best for
- 2–12 location groups, daycare-and-boarding heavy
Gingr is our top pick for single-location daycare and the runner-up for single-location boarding. For multi-location, it earns runner-up status here for a specific reason: the depth of pet-specific features is unmatched, but the corporate-vs-location story isn't quite as polished as DaySmart's.
That said, Gingr's multi-location capability has improved sharply across 2024 and 2025. The shared-customer model works correctly, one customer record across sites, with package credits portable, billing consolidated, and visit history viewable from any location. The roll-up reporting is good, not as accountant- friendly as DaySmart's, but operationally clearer for site GMs. And the policy deployment story is now real (it wasn't in 2023).
We'd specifically recommend Gingr over DaySmart when (a) you're under twelve locations, (b) at least some of your sites combine daycare and boarding, and (c) the bottleneck on growth is site-level operations quality rather than corporate-level reporting depth. For operators bottlenecked at corporate, DaySmart wins.
What annoys us
Pricing is opaque and moves around. Gingr quotes by-location but with a meaningful group base fee and several add-on lines (branded app, SMS, payments markup). Operators running similar five-location groups can receive quotes that differ by roughly 30%. Pin down the real twelve-month cost before signing.
Past about twelve locations, the seams show. The corporate administration UI starts feeling like it was designed for an owner-operator looking at three sites, not an ops director looking at fifteen. Operators who outgrow this ceiling typically move to DaySmart.
Good for
- Two- to twelve-location pet care groups
- Daycare-and-boarding heavy operations
- Groups where site-level operations matter most
- Operators with strong pet-specific feature requirements
Not good for
- Twelve-plus location chains
- Operators with controller-level reporting needs
- Franchise systems with hard brand-and-policy separation
- Anyone wanting transparent flat pricing
ProPet
The single-location daycare runner-up that holds up to about five locations before its multi-location seams start showing. The right pick for two-site partnerships that grew out of one facility and want to keep the product they already know.
- Starting price
- from $65 / month per site (base + module)
- Corporate structure
- Adequate · added 2025
- Pet-specific depth
- Very good · daycare-strong
- Best for
- 2–5 location groups growing organically
ProPet is our runner-up for single-location daycare, and for multi-location it earns a more specific slot. The product's multi-location capability only became credible with the 2025 release; before that, ProPet was essentially a "two databases, one login" arrangement. The current iteration is genuinely usable for groups of two to five sites.
Where ProPet wins is continuity. If your second location is a sibling to your first, same operating standards, same staff hand-offs, same customer base growing into both sites, the cost of switching to a multi-location- first product like DaySmart often outweighs the gain. ProPet's two-site arrangement holds up well, and the staff who knew the single-location product will know the two-location version.
Where ProPet shows its limits is past the third or fourth site. The corporate-vs-location separation is workable but feels bolted on. Roll-up reporting requires more manual work than DaySmart's. Policy deployment lacks the staging and exception model. By location five, you're starting to fight the product rather than work with it.
Good for
- Two- to five-location daycare-primary groups
- Operators expanding organically from a successful single site
- Two-site partnerships that share operating standards
Not good for
- Six-plus location chains
- Multi-state operators
- Groups built by acquisition (mixed legacy stacks)
PawLoyalty Pro
The right answer for franchise-structured pet care groups, with strong corporate-brand controls and a real franchise-vs-site permission model. Less compelling for vertically integrated chains, but the closest match in the category for actual franchise operators.
- Starting price
- $129 / month (Elite); Enterprise $209
- Corporate structure
- Franchise-aware
- Brand controls
- Excellent · corporate-locked policies, comms
- Best for
- Franchise systems with brand-and-policy hierarchy
PawLoyalty Pro is the only product in this guide built with an explicit franchise structure in mind. The distinction matters: a franchise system has corporate brand standards, marketing materials, and policy floors that franchisees can extend but not weaken, and the software needs to enforce that distinction technically, not just contractually.
What PawLoyalty does well: corporate-locked policy floors (franchisees can be stricter than corporate but not looser), brand asset deployment (logos, customer email templates, web booking widget styling all flow from corporate), and royalty calculation (which sounds boring until you've spent a quarter reconciling it manually).
What's weaker: the pet-specific feature depth. PawLoyalty is best-in-class on franchise operations and second-tier on day-to-day pet care features. Sites operating on it sometimes keep a parallel tool for specific use cases (Pawfinity for grooming-strong sites, for example). We'd recommend PawLoyalty only if you're running a real franchise system; vertically integrated chains should default to DaySmart or Gingr.
Good for
- Franchise pet care systems
- Brands rolling out a new franchise concept
- Operators with corporate-brand-standards enforcement needs
Not good for
- Vertically integrated multi-location chains
- Groups under five sites (overhead doesn't pay off)
- Operators wanting category-leading pet-specific features
PetExec
The deepest boarding logic in the category, extended to a credible multi-site model in 2024. The right pick for chains where boarding is the primary line at every location, and specifically for groups doing eight-plus runs per site.
- Starting price
- $145 / month · per location
- Corporate structure
- Good · added 2024
- Boarding depth
- Excellent · category-leading
- Best for
- Multi-site boarding-heavy chains
PetExec is our top pick for single-location boarding, and its multi-location story is now mature enough to recommend specifically for chains where boarding is the primary line at every site. The kennel logic, medication workflow, and rate-plan engine that earned PetExec its top-pick status for single-site operators all transfer cleanly to a chain context.
Where PetExec lags multi-location-first products is in corporate UX. The roll-up dashboards are workable but visualization-poor. The accounting export is good for single-site operators and adequate for chains. Site-level staff still see essentially the single-location product, which is a feature for them and a weakness for corporate.
We'd specifically recommend PetExec for chains where (a) boarding contributes most of group revenue, (b) the operating quality at each site matters more than corporate reporting sophistication, and (c) you're under fifteen sites. Past those constraints, DaySmart's broader strengths usually pull ahead.
Good for
- Multi-site boarding chains (boarding is primary line)
- Groups with elaborate rate plans and medication routines
- Operators prioritizing site-level operating quality
Not good for
- Daycare-primary or grooming-primary chains
- Groups past fifteen locations
- Operators needing best-in-class corporate reporting
Who shouldn't buy any of these
If you operate two locations under one ownership and they essentially function as one bigger facility, shared staff, shared customer base, shared inventory, identical operating standards, you don't need multi-location software yet. A single-location product (Gingr or PetExec for boarding- heavy, ProPet for daycare-heavy) will hold up fine if you set up each site as a "location" inside one account. The corporate-vs-location distinction matters when corporate is a real job, not when it's the same person walking between two rooms.
If you're a service-based group (sitting and walking, covering a metro area without physical sites), this isn't your guide either, read Best Pet Sitting Software and look at Precise Petcare's multi-territory features instead.
What to look for, regardless of which tool you pick
Vendors will spend the demo showing you a roll-up dashboard. These are the eight things to actually check before signing anything.
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01
Corporate-vs-location role separation Your ops director should see all five sites; your Site C manager should see Site C only; your controller should see all P&L but no operational edits. If the product can't model that without "give corporate full admin and trust them," the multi-location story is fake.
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02
Single customer record across sites The customer who books daycare in Portland and boards in Seattle is one customer, not two. Vaccine records, package balances, billing history, incident notes all consolidate to one profile.
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03
Per-site P&L with corporate roll-up Revenue by location, by service line, by month, with the option to consolidate. The export should reconcile to your accounting software without manual cleanup. Ask the vendor to walk you through a journal-entry export.
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04
Policy deployment with exceptions A new vaccine policy, deployed to every site, with a documented exception at Site D. The audit log should show what was deployed when, by whom, and where the exceptions are. "Everyone update their settings" is not policy deployment.
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05
Intercompany package handling When a customer pre-pays for ten daycare days at Portland and uses three of them at Seattle, the package liability needs to follow the revenue. Most products handle this badly; ask explicitly.
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06
Brand-and-comms consistency Customer emails, web booking widgets, app branding, marketing templates, corporate sets these, sites use them. If sites can override corporate brand standards in the product, your franchise system isn't a system.
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07
Real reporting depth, not vanity dashboards Trailing 90-day cohort retention by site, average ticket by service line by month, labor as a percentage of revenue by site. If the demo only shows you "this week's revenue" tiles, the depth isn't there.
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08
Migration path off, not just on Multi-location data is messy when it's already in one system; messier still when it spans products at acquired sites. Ask explicitly about both directions, what's it like to consolidate onto this product, and what's it like to get off if you outgrow it.
