Overnight Boarding Kennel Profit Forecasting Spreadsheet

Running a pet boarding kennel can be a very profitable business. The pet care business market has been exploding for the last five to ten years and recently was valued at over $8.4 BILLION dollars. You read that correct. Eight point four billion, with a B, dollars.

With Covid somewhat coming to an end, people are starting to head back to the office again and especially starting to go on vacations. What happens when you go on a vacation and can't bring your dog? You find a dog boarding business nearby and you give them a ring.

If you're contemplating open a boarding business, or if you're already the owner of one and you're just looking for a way to forecast future income, you're in the right place.

Important: If you're the owner or future owner of a dog daycare business (and not a kennel business), please use our dog daycare income forecasting spreadsheet. It's built specifically for dog daycare business forecasting.

If you're thinking about opening up a combined kennel boarding business that will also have a dog daycare aspect, you'll want to use the Dog Daycare & Boarding Business Income Forecasting Spreadsheet. It includes sections for two different revenue streams, instead of just the single revenue stream on this spreadsheet.

If you're opening a pet grooming business, you'll want to use the Pet Grooming Business Income Forecasting Spreadsheet. It's better suited to your needs.

Business revenue forecasting is a difficult thing to do. If it was easy, weather forecasts would be correct every week, and we all know that's far from true! 😂

We here at DoggieDashboard have created the kennel business forecasting spreadsheet that you can download free of charge to help forecast your business's estimated revenue, expenses and overall income.

To get started using the spreadsheet, you'll need to follow these steps:

Step 1: Guestimate your monthly rent or mortgage payment
→ This one is easy. If you're renting your facility, you'll want to type in your monthly rent. If you bought your business, you'll want to type in your kennel's monthly mortgage price. If you built the facility and don't have any monthly fees associated with owning it, you'll just enter those building costs in the Startup Cost field and leave the monthly field blank.

Step 2: Guestimate your monthly utilities payment
→ Every month you're going to be paying fees to your local utility companies. These are going to include water, electric, sewer and most likely natural gas. Try to guestimate how much money you'll be paying for these services. You can use this estimator to get started.

Step 3: Guestimate your monthly insurance payment
→ If you don't plan on having insurance at your business, you better rethink that. Small business insurance is important to have, especially when you're dealing with people's pets. You don't want to think about it, but if a pet escapes your business and gets hit by a car, you could be sued by the pet owner. Some types of business insurance can help you pay for issues like this.

Step 4: Guestimate your monthly business expenses
→ Business expenses include a wide variety of different expenses. This can be software fees that you pay for accounting software, website hosting fees, dog treats that you buy for your clients' pets, pet food you have on hand if owners forget to include some, you name it. Try to guestimate how much you'll be spending on supplies to keep the business running.

Step 5: Guestimate your average employee wage
→ If you intend to have employees, you're going to have to think about how much you'll be paying them. Employee payroll is a huge expense for small businesses. It's possible that you'll have a manager that you pay $25 per hour and a cleaner that you pay $12 per hour, so you'll have to figure out the best estimate.

Step 6: Guestimate your average boarding fee
→ The average boarding fee is one of the hardest estimates that you'll have to make. Pet boarding has hundreds of different pricing combinations. Sometimes you'll have a pet owner that pays $20 for overnight boarding and then you'll have another that pays $30 for the same thing. Maybe one has a larger dog, who knows. Then you have situations where more than one pet is boarded in the same kennel/run. As usual, you're going to have to guess. Let's say you charge $25 for a single pet and $40 for two pets in the same run. Your average is going to be (40 + 25)/2 for an average of $32.50 per overnight stay.

Step 7: Enter the total number of kennels at your facility
→ This one shouldn't be too hard. If you haven't built your kennel boarding facility yet, you're going to have to guess how many slots, runs or kennels you're going to have. The name isn't important, it's the amount that is important. If you already have a business, simply enter the quantity of runs that your business currently has.

Step 8: Fill in monthly employee hours and startup costs
→ Last but not least, you're going to need to fill in the employee hours and startup costs. Employee hours are quite simple. If you have a part-time employee, they work 80 hours per month. That's 20 hours per week for four weeks. If you have two part-time employees, that's 160 monthly hours. Guestimate how many employees you'll have working and you'll be able to get a good idea of how many hours of wage you'll be paying each month.

As for kennel startup costs, this is going to be a bit harder to figure out. If you're already in business, you really don't need to think about this value since it's already in the past. A sunk cost so to speak. However, if you're starting a new business, there are going to be some significant costs before you get started. These could include legal fees, incorporation fees, website design fees, etc. There's also the cost of construction or remodeling that you need to consider. Take your time and try to figure out to the best of your ability how much it will cost to build your pet boarding kennel business.

Here's a YouTube video showing how to use the overnight boarding kennel profit forecasting spreadsheet.

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Below you'll find a screenshot of the kennel profit forecasting spreadsheet. Click on the screenshot to be taken to the Google Docs page where you can download it. Just a reminder, you cannot edit the spreadsheet on the Google Docs page, since it's write-protected. You'll have to click on FILE and the DOWNLOAD and then you can save a version to your computer or Google Docs drive and then you can play around with it as much as you want.

To get started, visit the spreadsheet page here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DkA9lOTayHXRvyGrAm2rtePLhqenIygALNgsrCuaVhs/edit?usp=sharing

We also have another spreadsheet, similar to the one above, but this one takes into account four different revenue streams (daycare, boarding, grooming and training). Check it out here.

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