Paws at Rest - Pet Cremation Tracker with a Scan at Every Hand-Over
Pet Aftercare Platform for a Queensland Crematorium
Designed and built a clickable aftercare platform for a Brisbane pet cremation company with 2 crematoria and about 300 partner vet practices: every pet gets one barcoded identity, is scanned at each hand-over from the practice freezer to the family's home, and cannot move on when a scan does not match.
Most of our work is under NDA. Per agreement, we can share the work but not the company details - all names and identifying information shown here have been changed.
Impact
Dashboard, pets in our care with a quick view panel, pet detail with the full chain of custody, intake scan and weigh, and the cremation schedule per cremator.
Practice freezer, van, intake, cold storage, cremator loading and unloading, processing, packaging, dispatch and receipt. A mismatch stops the step, opens a custody exception and puts the pet on hold.
The schedule refuses a second pet in an individual or private run, checks each cremator's capacity (90 kg individual, 450 kg communal at Rocklea) and keeps private attended pets to their farewell slot.
Pets from 12 partner practices across 2 sites, in every stage from awaiting collection to scattered, with 5 cremators, 11 cremation runs for the day and an open disc-mismatch exception to work.
The Problem
Whipbird Hollow ran on paper collection sheets, handwritten freezer tags, a whiteboard per cremator and a spreadsheet of returns. Tags smudged or came off in the freezer, drivers re-wrote pet names on the van, staff answered around 60 calls a day from practices asking whether ashes had come back, and twice in one year a family questioned whether the ashes they received were really their pet's, with no complete record to show them.
Our Solution
Paws at Rest gives every pet one barcoded identity from the moment the practice registers it. The pet is scanned at every hand-over, a heat-proof ID disc stays with it through the cremator and into the urn, and the system blocks any step where the scan does not match, so practices and families can see where a pet is without phoning anyone.
The Challenge: Proving It Was Their Pet
An individual cremation is a promise that the family receives only their own pet's ashes. Keeping it means tracking about 25,000 pets a year through practice freezers, vans, two crematoria and the return trip, with many hands touching each one.
Identity Lost Between Hand-Overs
A pet passes from practice staff to a driver, an intake technician, cold storage, a cremation operator, an ashes technician and back. Each paper tag or rewritten name was a chance to lose the link between a pet and its family.
Words That Must Mean What They Say
Under the Australian Consumer Law, calling a cremation individual when other pets shared the chamber would likely be misleading. The service definitions have to match exactly what happened, on every screen, certificate and invoice.
Grieving Owners and Private Data
Owner names, phone numbers and messages fall under the Australian Privacy Principles, which Whipbird Hollow follows in full as client policy. Owners are contacted only when the practice records their consent, and there is no marketing to grieving families.
Pets That Must Not Be Handled as Normal
A pet suspected of a notifiable disease cannot go through normal processing, weights that differ from the practice's figure need a reason, and private attended cremations have to line up with a booked farewell.
Our Approach: From Custody Rules to a Clickable Tracker
Spec and Rules Research
Mapped 11 roles from practice staff and drivers to cremation operators, care coordinators and pet owners, 50 screens across staff, driver, practice portal and owner pages, and the data model for pet cases, custody events, ID discs, cremators, runs, ashes records and returns. Wrote down the rules the design follows: the Australian Consumer Law, the Privacy Act 1988 and the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, the Spam Act 2003, Queensland biosecurity and council approvals, GST tax invoices and PCI DSS.
Clickable Demo on a Production UI Kit
Built 5 key staff screens on a production dashboard kit: the dashboard with KPIs, today's flow by stage and cremator status, the pets list with status tabs and flags, pet detail with the chain of custody and hold or release, intake with arriving vans, live scale reading, disc linking and storage, and the cremation schedule with lanes per cremator. A site switcher and a scan-or-search box jump straight to any pet. All actions run on local state.
What a Production Build Adds
Integration with Zebra label printers, connected scales and cremator controllers, Stripe for owner payments, MessageMedia or Twilio and Postmark for messages, Google Maps routing, Australia Post or Sendle for courier returns, Xero invoicing and ezyVet. Staff login by role and site, an append-only audit log, and the remaining screens: collections and routes, cold storage, ashes, returns, farewells, complaints, billing, compliance, the driver app, the practice portal and the owner magic-link pages.
Why It Works: The Record a Family Can Trust
A Mismatch Stops the Line
When the disc scanned at intake belongs to another case, the pet goes on hold with a red bar in the list and a banner on its page, and only a site manager can release it. The chain of custody shows every scan with place, device, person and match result, and cannot be edited.
Two People on the Steps That Matter
For individual and private pets, a second person scans the ID disc at intake, at cremator loading and at packaging. The intake checklist will not confirm until the label, weight, disc, second scan and storage shelf are all done.
Gaps and Variances Are Flagged
A weight more than 15% from the practice's figure asks the technician to check the label and record a reason. Any stretch of more than 72 hours without a scan while a pet is stored is highlighted in its custody record.
Calm Words, Private Details
Every screen uses the pet's name and plain status words such as In our care. Owner phone and email stay hidden until a staff member gives a reason, and each reveal is recorded in the audit log.
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Enterprise Software Engineering - Human + AI
Contact Us
Locations
Global Headquarters
21 Merchant Road, 3rd Floor, Singapore 058267
Main corporate office and leadership operations
North America Office
548 Market Street, PMB 12345, San Francisco, CA 94104
Client operations and business development
India Office
402 Shivalik Shilp II, SG Highway, Ahmedabad 380015
Engineering and delivery center
© 2026 - Copyright. All Rights reserved Oceanlab