Adding an animal

Every animal your rescue takes in starts with an intake. Press New intake at the top of the Animals list to open the intake form in a panel beside the list. You need Change on Animals to see the button. Only Species is required. Everything else can be filled in now or later from the animal record, and the form asks for the facts you usually know on the day the animal arrives.

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The fields

The fields below are listed in the order a new organization sees them. Your rescue may have rearranged them, hidden some, or made more of them required (see Changing the form). A field your rescue has made required shows a red asterisk. Your rescue’s own custom fields for animals follow these, unless your rescue has placed them elsewhere. When the form is done, press Log intake.

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Breed and Kind

For a dog, a cat, a rabbit or an equine, the field reads Breed. For a small mammal, a large mammal, a bird, a barnyard animal, a fish, a reptile or an exotic, it reads Kind, because the list says what the animal is: a ferret, a cockatiel, a gecko. A second box, Breed or variety, then appears beside it for the detail, such as Abyssinian for a guinea pig or Pekin for a duck. The list comes from Settings → Animal management → Breeds and follows the species you chose. If what you need is not on it, choose Other… and type it. When your rescue has no list for a species, the field is a plain box.

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The adoption fee suggestion

When your rescue has an adoption fee schedule, a line under Adoption fee says what the schedule would charge for this species and age, and what any discounts would take off. Press Use it to put that amount in the box. The schedule only suggests: the fee is whatever is in the box when you save. The schedule is set under Settings → Finance & adoption → Adoption fees.

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The animal ID

You do not type an ID. Every animal is given one automatically when you press Log intake, in the format your rescue chose under Settings → Operations & forms → ID format. It shows on the record, on the list’s ID column and on printed cards.

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What happens when you save

• The panel closes and the animal appears in the list.
• The weight, if you gave one, becomes the first reading in the animal’s weight history, noted “At intake”.
• The animal is not public yet. Publish it from the record when it is ready to be shown.
• A workflow your rescue has set to start “when a new animal is added” starts on the new record.

The intake form records the animal. How it arrived (a stray, an owner surrender, a transfer in) is recorded separately, on the record’s Profile tab under How they arrived, and that is what the Intakes page reports on. See Recording how an animal arrived.

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Adding a litter

Animals that arrive together are entered one at a time, without typing the shared details again. Sex is cleared on purpose: copying it is how a whole litter ends up recorded as male.

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Duplicating an animal

To add an animal much like one already on file, open that animal’s record, press the Actions menu at the top, and choose Duplicate. The intake form opens filled in from that animal, with the same fields left blank as for a littermate. The new animal gets its own ID and is not public until you publish it. Saving takes you to the new record.

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Changing the form

An administrator with Configure on Animals can change this form under Settings → Data & customization → Record layouts: the order of the fields, which ones are shown, and which ones are required. Species and Intake date cannot be hidden. See Record layouts.