Run your dog business on Go Rocco. It's free.

If dogs are your job, this is the other half of Go Rocco. Go Rocco Business went live earlier this month at provider.go-rocco.com: a calendar for every booking, your client book with each dog's notes, invoices sent with a pay link, and tax-ready records for your Self Assessment. The core is free, with no limits, and clients you bring are yours at 0% commission, forever.

Sixty seconds, recorded on the live portal. Music: "Carefree" by Kevin MacLeod, CC BY 4.0.

Why we built it

Every dog owner on Go Rocco has, somewhere in their life, a walker, a groomer, a sitter or a trainer. Most of those businesses are one person and a phone, running the day out of a diary, a spreadsheet and a bank app, and chasing invoices by text. That's not a criticism; it's what we'd do too.

We could have built a directory and charged for leads. Instead we built the thing you'd actually use every day and made it free, on the theory that if it runs your business well, being found by Go Rocco dog owners is the bonus rather than the pitch.

What's in the free plan

• Today, calendar and bookings. Who you've got, when, and whose dog is whose. Every booking in one diary, whatever its source.
• Your client book. Clients and their dogs, kept properly: vet, feeding, medication, the thing you must not forget. Import your existing book from a spreadsheet in a minute.
• A booking page of your own at book.go-rocco.com/your-name. Set prices and hours once; a client can book tonight.
• Invoices with a pay link. Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay into your own Stripe account. Bank transfers and cash recorded too.
• Care records and report cards. Fed, toilet, exercise, a photo, logged while you have the dog. The owner gets a live feed or an evening digest.
• A private hub for every client with their bookings, receipts, what's to pay and their dog's documents. No account, no app.
• Books and the tax-ready pack. Income lands on its own; add expenses and mileage; download the year for your accountant as CSV, Xero, FreeAgent or QuickBooks.
• Cancellation and no-show fees, repeat bookings, a waiting list, quotes, gift vouchers, classes and packs.
• The animal register and incident reports a licensing inspector asks for, plus a register of every key you hold.

There's a Pro plan at £15 a month for the admin extras: monthly invoice runs, SMS reminders, a custom web address, team seats and rota, the inspection pack, certificates, late payment fees and weather alerts. It never takes anything away from Free, and there's no trial to run out.

Your clients are yours

This is the bit people ask about first, so here it is plainly. Clients you bring, import, add by hand, or who book through your own page are yours at 0%, forever. Whether a client is yours or Go Rocco's introduction is decided by the system from who touched them first, never by a box you tick, and when you join, the clients you already had are yours.

Only a client Go Rocco introduces carries a fee, and only on their first bookings: 15% for 90 days or 10 bookings, capped at £50. Then they're yours too.

Being listed on the marketplace is optional. If you'd like Go Rocco dog owners near you to find and book you, you upload a selfie, photo ID, a basic DBS under 12 months old and £1 million public liability insurance (plus your licence if you board or run a daycare), and we review within 48 hours. Your checks then show as badges. If you'd rather not, everything else works exactly the same.

Built for the rules you actually work under

Council limits on dogs per walk are checked at booking. Home boarders and daycares get the per-animal register and daily record the 2018 licensing regulations ask for, kept as you go rather than reconstructed the night before an inspection. Insurance and DBS renewals are tracked. And the tax pack is exactly that: tax-ready records for your accountant, not tax advice. It doesn't file anything, and we won't pretend it does.

One booking, both sides

When a Go Rocco dog owner books you from the app, it lands on your screen while they're still holding their phone. You accept, they get told, the dog's profile arrives with the booking, and afterwards the same job turns into the invoice. Nobody types it twice.

Both sides of a booking, recorded live on the app and the portal. The people on screen are demonstration accounts.

Getting started

1. Go to provider.go-rocco.com and create a free account, or sign in with your Go Rocco app account.
2. Tell it your business name and postcode, what you offer and what it costs.
3. Paste or upload your client list.
4. Set your working hours and share your booking page.

That's about a minute. Everything else, from getting listed to switching Pro on, can wait until you want it.