You can't groom and be a receptionist at the same time — nobody can, and it isn't fair to the dog on your table. PamVA answers every call and text while you work: it books the right slot for the right dog, states your prices plainly, texts owners the moment their dog is ready for pickup, and takes a message when someone needs you personally. You read every word afterward in your dashboard. Set up in person, right here in the Okanagan.
14-day free trial · no credit card · no contracts · unlimited texting — never metered
Groomers tell the same story everywhere: a dog on the table, a dryer running, and a phone that won't stop. Answer it and you've kennelled a half-finished dog to spend ten minutes on a call that's probably "do you do nail trims?" Ignore it and the caller dials the next salon — a survey of salon and spa customers found 69% have skipped booking with a business they couldn't reach (Zenoti, 2025). One groomer sat down and did the math on his uncle's salon: the unanswered phone was costing $2,000–4,000 a month. The fix isn't answering faster. It's not being the one who answers.
Your own numbers appear in your dashboard from day one — every call, every booking, every "ready" text.
The whole loop runs while both your hands stay where they belong. You read it back afterward, word for word.
Mid-groom, lunch, Sunday night. It picks up in seconds, sounds warm, and handles the calls that eat your day — prices, hours, "do you do nail trims?", "can you fit Fluffy in today?" — without you unhooking a dog. Anyone who wants you personally leaves a message that lands in your dashboard and your pocket.
It asks what a good groomer would ask before booking: which dog, what size, how's the coat, when was the last groom. A big doodle gets a big-doodle slot — not a shih-tzu slot with your afternoon wrecked. Your matting and coat policy is stated up front, at booking, so pickup never turns into a surprise-fee argument.
New clients can be asked for a deposit before the slot is theirs. Every booking gets reminders on your schedule — a week out and the day before — answerable with one letter, and your cancellation window does the enforcing so you don't have to be the bad guy.
The single most common interruption in any salon is "is my dog done yet?" When the groom's finished, you tap once and the owner gets a text — no rush, no phone tag, no dog waiting in a kennel while you field the third check-in call of the afternoon.
Grooming software that only knows the owner is missing the point — a three-dog household is three different grooms. PamVA keeps a record per pet, and surfaces the parts that keep you safe.
Breed, size, weight, coat, birth year, groom history, and your notes — per dog, under the owner. Book "Bailey" and the whole record rides along: the last groom, the coat condition, what you charged, what you wrote down.
"Must muzzle — has bitten" shows up in red at booking, at check-in, and on your day sheet — before the dog is on your table, not buried three screens deep in a profile. Anxious dogs get an amber flag and the quiet slot they need. You set the flags once; they follow the dog forever.
Rabies expiry lives on the pet record, and an expired vaccine shows a warning right where you book. No more flipping through paper files or trusting your memory about whose proof is due — the record does the remembering.
Every groomer knows a reminder text doesn't stop the client who confirms and still doesn't show. What stops them is a deposit on the line and a fee that actually gets charged — applied by the system, uniformly, so it's never personal.
Ask new clients for a deposit before the slot is confirmed — paid by card, by text, in a minute. Card-on-file means your no-show fee is real, not an empty threat taped to the counter.
You set the window and the fee once. The system states the policy at booking, reminds at the right times, and applies the fee when someone blows through it — the same way for everyone, which is exactly what makes it defensible.
A cancellation offers the slot to your waitlist automatically, by text, while the hour can still be saved. And repeat offenders? Mark a client "do not book" once, with the reason, and the system politely takes a message instead of ever giving them your Saturday again.
Regulars go on a standing cadence — every six weeks, same slot — without anyone rebooking by hand. Lapsed clients get a consent-gated nudge before the coat becomes a two-hour de-mat. The rhythm is the revenue; the system keeps it.
Owners overwhelmingly prefer text — and most grooming software meters it, sells it by the bundle, or gates it by tier. Here it's simply included: booking, reminders, "ready for pickup", back-and-forth questions. Never counted, never an overage line on your bill.
Arrival windows instead of hard times, travel buffers between stops, addresses captured at booking, and cards on file — because a no-show costs a mobile groomer the ticket and the drive. Your number stays yours; clients text the business, not your personal phone.
A small bath-and-brush isn't a large de-shed. Durations band by size so the schedule reflects reality, and the booking questions catch the doodle booked as "a golden" before it detonates your afternoon.
Invoices and pay-links by text, deposits already applied, accounting sync to QuickBooks or Xero. The groom history shows what you actually did and charged last time — pricing the regulars stops being archaeology.
Confirm-first booking means nothing lands on your schedule without the checks you set — the dog's size, coat, and history questions are asked every time. It's your calendar; Pam just stops you being the one who has to answer the phone to protect it.
The real reason groomers stay with software they hate is the move. Ask around: migrations mean emailing your files to a support queue and waiting days — and some platforms won't give you your appointments back at all. We built the way out:
Upload the export from your current software — or a calendar file, if that's where your book really lives. Clients, pets, and appointments come across: the history and the future ones.
Every appointment, every client, every mapping shown to you first — fix what's wrong, download the rows that need attention, and only then commit. No blind imports, no "it deleted everything and re-imported."
Import today, keep taking bookings, and top up the import later — re-runs are safe and never duplicate. Wind the old system down on your schedule, not during one terrifying weekend.
Your data is yours: read it, export it, take it with you. We'd rather earn the renewal than lock the door — and one tip from the trenches: pull your export from your old system before you cancel it. Some vendors only offer it once.
Most good groomers aren't short of demand — they're short of uninterrupted grooming time. The win isn't "more bookings," it's the hour a day you stop spending as a receptionist, the no-shows that stop happening because deposits are real, and the cancellation that gets refilled from your waitlist while you're still mid-groom. At a $90 starting groom, two or three saved no-shows a month covers Front Desk on its own — before you count a single answered call.
The alternatives: a receptionist's wages for a phone that rings in bursts; grooming software that manages the calendar but leaves the phone ringing; or the pile of workarounds — voicemail that says "text us," end-of-day callback lists, a "72-hour reply" greeting. You already know what those cost, because you're living them.
Count last month's no-shows and the interruptions per day, multiply by your average groom. That's the number to weigh this against — and your dashboard runs it for you from day one.
No per-minute meter, no metered texts, no overage bill.
Text-only starts at $69 — every missed call answered and booked, for less than one groom.
One flat CAD price — solo table or six-groomer shop, same bill. Per-van pricing is someone else's business model.
Every missed call answered by text — and booked, while your hands stay on the dog.
Every call answered 24/7 — plus deposits, no-show protection, and the waitlist.
Shop tooling: grooming notes, photos, forms, packages, per-groomer days.
14-day free trial · no card · unlimited groomers on every plan · full pricing & founding offer →
Neither do we — open self-serve booking is how you end up with six large doodles on a Tuesday. Pam asks the questions you'd ask: which dog, what size, coat condition, last groom. Sized services get sized slots, your booking rules are enforced every time, and confirm-first means nothing is final without the checks you set. You're not handing the calendar over; you're handing the phone over.
No. Nothing outbound happens that you didn't turn on: confirmations and reminders follow the schedule you set, re-engagement nudges are consent-gated and off until you say otherwise, and there's no robo-calling — Pam answers, she doesn't cold-call. Every message it sends or receives is in your dashboard, word for word. If you'd have said something differently, you fix it in one sentence and it never says it again.
That's exactly why pet records have behaviour flags. "Must muzzle — has bitten" is set once and then shows in red everywhere it matters: when a booking is made, at check-in, and on your day sheet. The dog that "doesn't like his ears touched" according to the owner gets flagged with what actually happened according to you — and the flag travels with the dog, not with anyone's memory.
By moving the conversation to booking, where it belongs. The coat-condition question is asked when the appointment is made, and your policy is stated right there — plainly, before the owner commits. The fee conversation that ruins relationships is the one that happens after the work is done; Pam's job is making sure it happens before.
One tap. The moment you finish, the owner gets a text — your wording, their name, no rush implied. The check-in calls that clog your line all afternoon simply stop, and the line stays open for people who actually want to book.
Yes — arrival windows instead of hard times, travel buffers between stops, the address captured at booking, and card-on-file so a no-show doesn't cost you the ticket and the diesel. Clients text your business number, not your personal one. Fair warning on what we don't do yet: route optimization is on the roadmap, not in the product.
Export your data from the old system, upload it, and review what we found — clients, pets, and appointments, past and future — before anything is saved. Most books import in minutes, you can re-run a top-up import safely while you run both systems, and if something in your export is odd, send it to us and we'll do it with you at no charge. One honest tip: some vendors only hand over your data once, so pull your export before you cancel.
Text booking is $69 a month, the full Front Desk is $149 — flat, unlimited groomers, no metered texts, no per-van pricing, no overage bills. A groomer put the business case better than we ever have: "our starting groom is $90 — if we avoid 2–3 no-shows a month it's worth it." Your dashboard shows your own numbers within the first month, so you'll know from your data, not our marketing.
Most salons are live within a day. We load your services, sizes, prices, policies, and groomers together — over a screen-share, or in person if you're between Armstrong and Kelowna — then you make test calls until you're comfortable, before a client ever hears it. 14-day free trial, no card.
Ask any groomer what finally made them leave their software: support that vanished behind a chatbot. We're a Canadian company in Coldstream, BC. We set you up on a screen-share or in person, and when you call us — a person answers. We'd be embarrassed if it were otherwise, given what we sell.
We're launching this vertical in the Okanagan and want ten local salons and mobile groomers to prove it with. Founding shops get 50% off their first 6 months — Front Desk for $74.50 — free in-person setup, a free hands-on import of your old system's data, and a rate locked for life — in exchange for honest feedback and a say in what we build next for grooming.
Claim a founding spotHear it before your clients do. Book a demo tuned to a grooming salon — or call the live line and be the caller.