Permissions are set per role under Settings → Team & volunteers → Team roles.
Switching it on
Under Settings → Operations & forms → Pet food pantry, the Running a pantry card holds two choices. Press Save to keep them.- We run a pet food pantry switches it on. It adds the page, the Pantry client role on a person’s form, and a ready-made report of pounds given out by month.
- What you keep about the people you serve decides what a visit records about who it was for. See the next section.
What you keep about the people you serve
Some pantries need to know who had what, so limited food is shared fairly. Others ask nobody for a name, because a food line that asks for names is one some people stop coming to. The choice is your rescue’s:
Changing it later changes what the next visit asks. Nothing already recorded is removed or renamed.
Limits and proof of need
Some pantries share limited food by a rule: so many pounds a month for each pet, so many visits a month, and proof that a household needs the help. Each rule is optional, and none of them stops a visit. A household over a limit is still served: whoever is at the table sees a warning, and decides. Under Settings → Operations & forms → Pet food pantry, the Limits and proof of need card holds them. Leave a box empty for no limit, then press Save.
The warnings read like Has had 40 lb this month, of 40 lb., This visit brings them to 45 lb, over their 40 lb., Here 2 times this month; your pantry allows 2. and Proof of need ran out on Sep 3, 2026. They are shown when a household is chosen, as the foods are added, and again after the visit is recorded.
Partner agencies
A partner agency is an organization you give food to in bulk, such as a food bank or another shelter’s own pantry. Under Partner agencies in the pantry’s Settings page, choose one from Add from your directory and press Add. They come from your organizations, so adding one needs See on Organizations too. The bin icon stops listing one; what you gave them stays on the record. A visit to a partner agency counts toward your pounds without being a household or a walk-up, and the rule about names does not reach it, because an organization is not a person. The This month card lists what went to each under To partner agencies.The foods you give out
Once the pantry is on, Foods you give out lists each food the way it is handed out, with what one of it weighs. A visit says how many of each went home, and the pounds add up from there: a 5 lb bag of dry dog food is 5, a 5.5 oz can of cat food is 0.34. Press Add a food and fill in:
Edit changes a food. A visit already recorded keeps the name and pounds it gave the food out under, so changing a weight never rewrites a month you have already reported.
A food you no longer stock is not deleted: Stop giving it out moves it to No longer given out, where it stays so the visits that gave it out still read properly. Give it out again brings it back.
Recording a visit
The Record a visit card is the distribution table. It needs Change on People, and at least one food on the list.1
Who it is for
Choose A household, A walk-up, not named or A partner agency: the page offers the ones your rescue’s rule about names allows, and a partner agency once you have one.For a household, type a name or phone number into Household and pick them. Somebody new is added with New household: a First name, and a Last name and Phone if they will give them, then Add the household. They are added to People with the Pantry client role. Change picks somebody else.
2
When and where
Date is today unless you change it, and cannot be a day still to come. Site is one of your rescue’s locations, or No site; it is offered when your rescue has locations.
3
The pets it is for
Dogs, Cats and Other pets. For a household they start as the pets on file for them, and you can change them: a neighbor’s dog this month is a fact about this visit, not a new pet of theirs.
4
What went home
Choose each food and how many. Another food adds a line. The total in pounds is shown as you go, and for a household with a limit, what the month comes to with this visit.
5
Save
Add any Notes, then press Record the visit. The page says how many pounds went to whom.
Households and their pets
A household is a person with the Pantry client role. The Households card lists them with the pets on file today and the day they were last here, most recent first, and Find a household searches by name or phone. A name opens the person’s record on its Roles tab. There, the Pet food pantry section holds:- Any warnings, and this month’s visits and pounds against their limit when your pantry sets one.
- Proof of need: the date it is on file until and what it is, or none on file. Add or Change sets them. The document itself goes on the person’s record with their other documents.
- Pets the food is for: each pet with its kind, size and name if they gave one, and the day it joined the household. Add a pet takes the Kind, Name, Size, How many (more than one for, say, a colony of outdoor cats) and Since.
- Mark gone for a pet that has died, been rehomed or moved out. It stays listed, crossed through with the day it went, and visits before that day still count it. Still here undoes it. The bin icon deletes a pet entered by mistake.
- Visits: how many and the pounds in all, then the most recent ones. Record a visit opens the pantry page with this household already chosen.
Importing households
A pantry that has kept its households in a spreadsheet brings them across under Settings → Data & customization → Import, on the Pantry households tab. See importing pantry households. A household’s pets are theirs. They are never animals on your rescue’s list, and the pantry never changes your intake or outcome counts. When two records turn out to be the same person, merging them moves the pets and the visits to the one you keep.This month, and the report
Above the page, four counts for the month so far: Visits, Households (or Pets fed, for a pantry that keeps no names), Walk-ups and Pounds given out. The This month card adds the pounds up by food, by partner agency, and by site when there is more than one. Pounds by month opens the ready-made report Pet food given out by month in Reports: a bar for each month, split by food. Reports also offers two lists of your own to build from, Pet food pantry visits and Pet food given out. They are offered once the pantry is on, and stay while it has visits, so a report you saved still opens after it is switched off.For Shelter Animals Count
Shelter Animals Count’s Community Services Database has a line for pet food: under Support Services, Pet Food counts the animals that received pet food through a pantry in a month, by species and by age. Pet food is a community service, not an intake or an outcome, so it is not in the national reporting file. The For Shelter Animals Count card on the pantry page shows a month’s figures in their rows and columns: Species, Up to 5 months, Adult, Age unknown and Total. Month offers the last twelve whole months, last month first. Enter the figures in your own Shelter Animals Count portal, in the Community Services Database; RescueConsole sends nothing. How the month is counted, which the card also says under the figures:- Animals, not visits. A household that came more than once is counted once: the most dogs, cats and other pets on any of its visits that month. A walk-up has no name to match against another visit, so each walk-up visit counts.
- A partner agency’s visit counts the pets recorded on it, which is often none.
- Other pets by their kind. A household’s other pets are counted as the kinds it has on file. Other pets whose kind is not on file, and every walk-up’s other pets, are left out, because Shelter Animals Count counts by species. Fish and exotic / other pets are left out too: Shelter Animals Count has no category for them.
- Age. A pantry does not record a pet’s age, so dogs, cats, rabbits and equines are under Age unknown, and every other species is under Adult, as Shelter Animals Count asks.