Pet Types is a tool designed to help you better organize and manage the pets in your care. Whether you offer services for dogs, cats, birds, horses, or other unique critters like turtles or ferrets, Pet Types gives you the flexibility to keep your Time To Pet account tidy and accurate.
Clients will now select their pet's type from a dropdown list of predefined pet types that you can customize for your business, which will determine what Pet Fields become visible to them when completing their pet's profile. Pet Types will also allow you to specify which pet types apply when creating vaccinations for your company, rather than having them apply to all pets by default.
This will help you streamline data collection from your clients, improve reporting and organization within your company, and standardize how pet information appears across your account.
IN THIS ARTICLE
Check out this video from our Customer Experience team on setting up Pet Types for your company!
How Do Pet Types Work?
Pet Types is a new field that is available for every pet profile in your Time To Pet account. Instead of entering each pet's type manually, you can now define the types of pets your company services, which will determine the information your clients are asked to fill out when they complete their pet's profile and choose their pet's type from the dropdown list of options you configured:
By default, every company will include the following Pet Types:
Dog
Cat
Other (This option opens up a free-text field that allows clients to enter custom entries like "Turtle", "Ferret", etc.)
Note: If your business doesn't service dogs or cats, you aren't able to edit or delete these options, but you can hide them by navigating to the Settings > Company Settings > Pet Fields section of your account and clicking Edit on the Pet Type field. A new panel of options will open that allows you to Hide those entries, which will prevent clients from selecting them from the dropdown list:
Custom pet types that you have entered, however, can be removed from the list.
Adding & Managing Pet Types
To determine which pet types your business supports and clients are able to select from when completing their pet's profile, follow the steps below:
Navigate to the Settings > Client Settings > Pet Fields section of your Admin Dashboard.
Click Edit next to the Pet Type field:
Enter new Pet Types into the text field toward the top of the panel of expanded options that opens up, and click Add Custom Pet Type to add it to the list of available pet types for your clients to choose from:
Drag and drop the pet types you've entered by using the four-sided arrow to the left of the eye icon to change the order in which the options appear to your clients.
When you're satisfied with your list, click Save Changes — and you’re done! The entered pet types will now appear in the Pet Type dropdown menu when a pet is added to Time To Pet or their profile information is being edited.
What Happens to Existing Pet Types?
When Pet Types are enabled, Time To Pet will automatically convert existing pets to match the default types. Dogs and cats will convert to those matching default fields, while all other listed pet types that were created before Pet Types launched will convert to the Other type, with a text entry next to them with the type they were originally listed as. This is done to preserve the original pet types and prevent the loss of any data:
The system does this by looking at the current text value within the Type field and mapping it as follows:
Existing Value | New Pet Type |
Dog | Dog |
Cat | Cat |
snake | Other |
kitty | Other |
pup | Other |
fish | Other |
To update Pet Type fields listed as Other, you can either go to the pet's profile and select the correct Pet Type from the dropdown once you update the Pet Types your company services in the Settings > Company Settings > Pet Fields section of your account, or you can use the Bulk Pet Type Migration Tool to update multiple pets at one time. We have more detailed information on this tool and how to use it below.
Best Practices For Companies With Existing Pet Types
If your company already has pets that you or clients have added to your company before the release of this feature on 03/13/26, we recommend going through the following process for your business to ensure that your pet types are standardized and you can take advantage of the features this tool empowers:
Create the standardized pet types you want your company to use to reflect the types of pets you offer services for in the Settings > Company Settings > Pet Fields section of your account (see the Adding & Managing Pet Types section of this article for more details)
Once you have created these Pet Types, review all pets that were placed in the Other category to determine the Pet Type that best suits them, or if a new Pet Type needs to be added for them
Use the Bulk Type Migration Tool in the Settings > Advanced section of your account to organize your pet types and convert your existing pet types to the new standardized types you created
Use the default "Other" option sparingly — it’s there for edge cases, but standard types will make your account cleaner and easier to manage long-term
Using the Bulk Pet Type Migration Tool
The Bulk Pet Type Migration Tool allows you to easily convert the existing pet types that were entered into the Type field on your clients' pet profiles into the standardized Pet Types you set with our new system. Rather than going to each client's profile and updating their pet profiles manually, this tool lets you update multiple pets at once. It's especially useful if you or your clients have used pet type variations such as doggy, pup, kitten, kitty, etc.
Check out this video from our Customer Experience team on using the Bulk Pet Type Migration Tool!
To use the Bulk Pet Type Migration Tool, you must first locate the tool in your account settings. You can do this one of two ways:
Navigate to the Settings > Advanced > Bulk Pet Type Migration section of your account to access the tool directly, OR
Navigate to the Settings > Client Settings > Pet Fields section of your account. Then, click Edit on Pet Type to open the edit options for the field. Here, you can click the link on the included tooltip to access the Bulk Pet Type Migration tool:
Step One: Select Pet Types to Migrate
To begin, review the Select Pet Types To Migrate section of the page, which will contain a list of the existing values that were entered into your old Type field:
Select the values you want to convert by checking off the boxes to the left of each listed type:
Depending on the values listed, you can also choose to select or deselect the pet types listed in bulk using the Select All and Select None options that can be found at the top of the section.
To use the example pictured above, I have selected Frog and Tortoise because I intend to convert these fields to the new Reptile category I created using the new standardized Pet Types feature. If you had a list with several variations of dog, you might select the following fields to migrate to the default Dog pet type:
dog
doggy
pup
puppy
Note: Existing pet types can only be converted to one pet type at a time, so be careful when selecting fields to avoid migrating over the wrong pet types. For example, if you want to convert existing type values to the Dog category, you wouldn't want to choose any variations of cat, kitten, or kitty to migrate in the same instance as the dog, doggy, etc. fields.
Step Two: Select New Destination Pet Type
Once you have selected the pets you wish to migrate, choose the new Pet Type that you would like the chosen pet fields to be classified as from the dropdown menu found in the Select New Destination Type step:
Using the Frog and Tortoise examples from step one, if I decided I wanted to classify them both as the Reptile pet type, I would select Reptile from the dropdown menu here, with both types checked off in step one. All of the selected pet types from step one will reflect the new type you choose in step two.
Step Three: Review The Migration
When you've made your selections in steps one and two, and you are ready to proceed, click the Review Migration button to initiate the migration process:
A new window will appear, asking you to confirm the changes you're about to make:
Note: As mentioned in the window above, this action cannot be undone.
Can I Use The Bulk Pet Type Migration Tool More Than Once?
Absolutely! You can repeat the migration process as many times as needed. You may do one migration for fields like pup / doggy / dog to the Dog type, followed up by a migration of kitty / kitten to the Cat type, and then another migration for fish / beta / goldfish to the Fish type.
Pro Tip: This feature also supports vaccination tracking by pet type, allowing businesses to require specific pet types for certain vaccinations, rather than applying each and every vaccination to every pet type by default. For more information, please see our help documentation on this feature here: Pet Vaccinations.
Pet Fields By Pet Type
Time To Pet also allows you to configure your company's Pet Fields so they only appear for specific pet types. This helps keep pet profiles clean and ensures clients only see the fields that are relevant to the pet they are adding.
For example, if you have a pet field for Litter Box Setup, you can configure that to appear only to pets that have been marked as Cats, while a field like Cage Location could be limited to pets marked as Birds, Rodents, or Reptiles. This makes it a breeze for clients to fill in their pet's information when activating their account for the first time.
Setting Up & Viewing Pet Fields By Pet Type
When creating a new Pet Field or editing an existing one, you will see an Appears For setting. This will allow you to determine whether it appears on all pet profiles or only on those of select pet types:
Note: This setting works for both default and custom Pet Fields. The exception to this rule is the Pet Type field itself, which cannot be made conditional.
If you select All Pet Types, the field will appear for every pet added in Time To Pet, regardless of its type.
The Specific Pet Types option, on the other hand, will only appear when the Type field matches the pets you select here. You can select one pet type or multiple, depending on the type of information you're asking for:
Once a pet type has been selected for a pet, the fields that appear on the pet's profile will automatically update to only show fields related to the selected pet type. Both pet parents and staff members will see this when viewing or editing the pet's profile.
IMPORTANT: When first enabled, all existing Pet Fields will default to the All Pets selection to avoid disrupting current workflows.
Pro Tip: Since Pet Fields By Pet Type depend on the selection made in the Pet Type field, we recommend placing this field toward the top of a pet's profile to help ensure that clients are given the correct fields to fill out as quickly as possible.
A common setup that a lot of pet professionals use is:
1. Pet Name
2. Pet Type
3. Remaining Pet Fields
What Happens To Existing Pets?
When a Pet Field is set to appear for specific pets only, that change will apply instantly to both new and existing pets. If an existing pet's Type doesn't match what was selected for the field, it will be hidden by the system and will no longer be visible on their profile. Admins can update this setting at any time.
Note: If any data was previously entered into the field, the system will preserve it. If the Pet Field is later adjusted to appear for that pet's type, the field and any data that was entered will be made visible again.
Special Case: “Other” Pet Type
When creating or editing a Pet Field, it's important to note that Other is not available as a selectable Pet Type when the Specific Pet Types option is chosen for the Appears For setting.
If you have selected Other for a pet's type on their profile, Pet Fields that have been configured to apply to specific pet types will not appear for these pets, as it is incompatible with the Pet Fields By Pet Type feature.