3 answers
- 10-1
Patty,
I hear your frustration. Thank you for posting your question, and hopefully I can explain why it is setup this way.
The existing adoption-related fields on the animal are just that – fields of the animal. There is one Owner and Status field.
When we wanted to start tracking adoptions, we realized that (of course) an animal can be adopted more than once. So using single value fields on the animal record won't work. Although an animal should have one Owner contact record (current owner) and one Status (current status), there would be no way to track things like Adoption Date, Adoption Fee, Donation, and other information related to that Adoption event.
So we created the Adoption feature, which is available with our Data Management service and Website service. There you can track a lot more about an Adoption, instead of just tracking it on the animal's record. When you add an Adoption via the Adoptions feature the system will automatically update the Animal record for you, so there's no double-work.
If you haven't been using the Adoptions feature you can run a report on animals with a status of Adopted, and then include the related fields you need for the report.
If you have access to the Adoptions feature I would recommend that you start using it to enter Adoptions, and you may find it beneficial to enter previous adoptions as well.
Hope that explains why things are setup the way they are – we certainly have room for improvement, but hopefully it will make better sense now.
Add your comment... - 10-1
To add a little information for any users who run across this FAQ, here is our guide on adding adoptions: Adding an adoption
Add your comment... - 10-1
We post our monthly numbers in our newsletter, as well as our year to date numbers, so this report is good for that. If you just want to see all of the adoptions, use Animals-Adoptions (not Reports). No further entry required, though you can create a custom view with the exact type of results you want.
Add your comment...
Why can't I run an Adoption Report simply by selecting Adoptions in the report list? Why are we required to do more data entry and enter the adoption data in the Adoptions Feature? The Adoption Date is already entered in the animal information.