What Barclo does in one sentence: you set up your services and availability, your clients book online, and Barclo handles the calendar, reminders, invoices and payments, all in one place.
Barclo is built for dog walkers, groomers, daycare and boarding operators, pet sitters and trainers. Many owners who use it have never used software like this before. It's designed to be simple, and you'll have it running in a single sitting.
There's a natural order to getting set up. Follow these nine steps and you'll go from zero to taking real bookings quickly.
The nine steps
- Sign up and set up your business info. Create your free account, pick your business type, and fill in your name, logo, contact details and address. These appear on invoices and your public profile. Getting started · Business settings
- Set your working hours. Tell Barclo which days and times you're open. This controls when clients can book. If Saturday is marked closed, no one can pick a Saturday slot. Working hours
- Configure payments and policies. Add your bank details so invoices show how to pay you. Optionally connect Stripe for card payments. Set your cancellation policy, it protects you and is shown to clients when they book. Payments · Policies
- Create your services. Add everything you offer, walks, grooming, daycare, boarding, training. Each service has a type, price and duration. This is the most important step: services are what clients book and what generates your invoices. Services
- Set up walk slots (group-walk businesses only). If you run group walks, set up your recurring time slots, e.g. Monday to Friday 09:00 to 11:00, max 6 dogs. Clients book into these slots, and Barclo tracks how many dogs are in each. Walk slots
- Add your team (if you have staff). Add the people who deliver your services. Solo? Skip this step entirely. Team members
- Add your clients and their pets. Enter your existing customers and their animals. You can add pets right alongside each client. Alternatively, invite clients to register through your portal and they'll add their own details. Clients · Pets
- Turn on your booking portal. Switch on the client portal in Settings → Portal. Share the link with clients so they can book themselves 24/7, without phoning or texting you. Client booking portal · Public profile
- Take your first booking and send an invoice. Create a booking (or let a client request one through the portal), mark it complete, and send the invoice. If you've set up invoice automation, Barclo creates the invoice for you. Bookings · Invoices
Good news: you don't have to do these in strict order. The dashboard shows a setup checklist that tracks your progress, but this order is the smoothest path because each step builds on the last.
Your daily rhythm once you're set up
After the initial setup, most days start on the Calendar, you'll see today's bookings, walk-slot capacity, and any staff assignments at a glance. New messages from clients appear in Messages. Invoices that need sending sit in Invoices. That's the loop: calendar → bookings → invoices, day after day.
Ready to start?
Head to Getting started and you'll be set up before your next cup of tea.