Moving and Reserving Animals

A large part of the administrative duties you will need to perform with Animal Shelter Manager revolve around the movement and reservation of animals.

To start with, it is best to explain how the movement system works; each movement record represents a leaving and returning transaction. You can therefore only have one (or no) active movement record at a time. ie. No more than one unreturned movement. This is because the animal cannot leave the shelter in two different ways without being returned first.

A special exception to this is reservations - since they are not actually a movement (the animal hasn't gone anywhere), you can have one or more reservations as well as an open movement. You should turn the reservation into an adoption movement when the animal is adopted and cancel any other outstanding reservations (if it detects multiple reservations, ASM will prompt and cancel other reservations for you when you turn one into an adoption).

Any method by which an animal leaves your shelter requires a movement record. The only exception is death, which is handled through the animal death tab.

Some common situations are listed below, along with what you should do:

1. A new owner reserves the animal
   Create a new movement record and fill out the reservation information. If there is a previous record with a reservation on and no movement, then fill in its reservation cancelled date (unless your shelter allows different people to reserve the same animal, in which case the system is happy to do this).
2. An owner phones up and cancels their reservation
   Find the movement record and fill out the reservation cancelled date.
3. An owner adopts the animal after reservation
   Find the reservation record and fill out the adoption movement information.
4. A volunteer fosters the animal
   Create a new movement record and fill out a foster movement.
5. An animal is returned from fostering
   Find the fostering movement and fill in the return date.
6. An animal is returned from adoption
   Find the adoption movement and fill in the return date.