Animals

The Animals page is your shelter's roster — every animal in your care. From here you find animals, open a profile to see everything about one, take quick actions like checking an animal out for a walk, and bring new arrivals into the system.

Who can use this page: everyone can view animals. Creating, editing, transferring, and offboarding are staff and administrator actions.

Two labels on every animal: status and availability

Each animal shows two badges, and they mean different things:

• Status is where the animal is in its overall journey through the shelter.
• Availability (the second badge) is whether the animal can do an activity right now.

They're independent — an animal can be Active (status) but on a Medical hold (availability) at the same time.

Status — the animal's lifecycle

Status	Meaning
Active	In your care and part of the daily roster.
On hold	In care but set aside (for example pending a decision).
Foster	Living in a foster home.
Adopted / Transferred / Returned to owner / Released	A final outcome — the animal has left your care.
Euthanized / Passed away / Lost	A final outcome recording that the animal is no longer in care.

Animals with a final outcome are offboarded — they drop off the active roster but their record is kept for history and reporting.

Availability — can it do an activity now?

Availability	Meaning
Available	Free to be checked out for an activity.
In activity	Currently checked out / in an activity.
At vet	Away receiving veterinary care.
Quarantine / Medical hold / Behavior hold	Held back from activities for health or safety reasons (setting these requires the holds permission).
Restricted / Unavailable	Not available for activities.
Unassigned location	Has no location set yet, so it can't be checked out.

Find an animal

Use the search box to look up a name, species, or identifier, and the filters to narrow by species, status, intake type, or availability. Click any column heading to sort. The count ("Showing 14 animals") reflects whatever filters are applied.

Row actions (the icons on the right)

Each row has quick-action icons. What you see depends on your role:

• Check out / check in — start or end a checkout. Checking an animal out records that it's with a person or at a location (and flips availability to In activity); checking it in closes that record.
• QR code / card — show the animal's QR code and print its shelter card (also called a habitat or kennel card). See Print a shelter card.
• Transfer — move the animal. See Moving animals.
• Offboard (archive icon) — record a final outcome (adoption, transfer, euthanasia, etc.). Euthanasia asks for confirmation. Offboarding never deletes the record — it moves the animal off the active roster.

Intake a new animal

"Intake" means adding an animal to the shelter for the first time.

1. Click New intake in the top-right.
2. Enter the basics — at minimum a name, a species, and an intake type (how the animal came to you, e.g. stray or owner surrender).
3. Choose a location so the animal has somewhere to live and can be checked out.
4. Save. The animal joins the roster and is automatically assigned a unique identifier (its ZSS ID).

Bringing in a whole list at once? Use Imports instead of adding them one by one.

Bulk editing

Tick the checkboxes on several rows to act on them together — for example setting the handling tier for a group of animals at once. Bulk actions save time when the same change applies to many animals, and each change is recorded individually in the audit log.

The handling tier says who may handle an animal:

• Volunteer-friendly — any volunteer.
• Experienced only — experienced handlers; new volunteers are kept away.
• Staff only — staff handling required.

Print a shelter card

A shelter card is the printable card you hang on a kennel or habitat. Open an animal's QR / card action to view its QR code and print the card. The QR code lets staff and volunteers pull up that animal on the mobile app by scanning — handy for confirming you're working with the right animal at the kennel.

Open an animal's profile

Click a row to open the full profile. It's organized into tabs:

• Overview — demographics, identifiers, tags, weight, handling tier, status and availability, location, and intake/outcome details.
• History — a timeline of every status and availability change, with who changed it, when, and why.
• Surveys — the activity surveys recorded for this animal.
• Goals — this animal's daily activity goals, including any per-animal overrides to the species defaults (see Activity goals).

Moving animals

Use Transfer to move an animal. There are three kinds of move, and they mean different things:

• Change location — move the animal to a different location within your shelter (a different kennel, room, or site). Day-to-day location changes.
• Foster placement — send the animal to live with a foster. Its status becomes Foster; it stays your animal.
• Transfer to another organization — hand the animal off to a different shelter. This is a final outcome for your shelter.

Locations come from your shelter's location tree — see Organization settings.

Fields explained

Field	What it means
Status	Where the animal is in its journey — for example available, on hold, fostered, or adopted.
Handling tier	Who may handle this animal: volunteer-friendly, experienced-only, or staff-only.
Activity state	Whether the animal is free, in an activity, or temporarily held from activities.