Your pet business generates geographic data every single day. Every booking has a customer address. Every customer lives in a suburb. Every suburb has a revenue story to tell.
Until now, that data has been invisible. It lives in booking records and customer profiles, but nobody stitches it together to show you the big picture: where your money comes from, where your team spends its time, and where your next growth opportunity is hiding.
That changes with Geographic Intelligence, a new capability inside Petboost Reporting and Insights.
Here is what it does, and more importantly, 12 practical ways you can use it to run a smarter, more efficient pet business.
What Geographic Intelligence Actually Shows You
The Map view inside Reporting and Insights takes your booking, payment, and customer data and plots it geographically. There are six distinct views:
- Revenue mode: Suburb-level bubbles sized by total revenue, coloured by average appointment value
- Customer mode: Individual customer pins colour-coded by recency of last booking (green = recent, red = lapsed)
- Team mode: Team member positions relative to your service area
- Activity mode: GPS check-in and check-out locations from mobile appointments, with geotagged photos
- Weekday mode: Suburb-level dots colour-coded by day of the week, revealing which suburbs generate demand on which days
- Boundaries mode: Suburb boundary polygons shaded by revenue, with weekday filtering so you can see your Tuesday territory versus your Friday territory
Below each map, you get a Revenue by Suburb breakdown table ranking every suburb by total revenue, customer count, and appointment volume.
The system also generates automated insights: plain-language observations about your geographic data with suggested actions. These are not generic tips. They are calculated from your actual numbers.
This is a direct application of the one system of record principle: when bookings, payments, customer addresses, and pet data live in one place, geographic intelligence emerges naturally. You do not need a separate analytics tool or a spreadsheet.
1. Spot Revenue Concentration Risk
The insight: If 80% of your revenue comes from just two or three suburbs, your business is geographically fragile. A new competitor opening in one of those suburbs, roadworks disrupting access, or a local demographic shift could hit your income hard.
What the Map shows you: The Revenue mode sizes each suburb bubble by total revenue. If two suburbs dominate the map, you can see it instantly.
The action: This is not about abandoning your core suburbs. It is about deliberate diversification. Identify the adjacent suburbs where you have a few customers but low penetration, and consider whether a letterbox drop, a local Facebook ad, or a referral incentive could grow your presence there.
2. Find High-Value Growth Suburbs
The insight: Some suburbs consistently produce higher-value appointments but you only have a small number of clients there. These are your growth suburbs: areas where the demand (and willingness to pay) exists but you have not yet saturated.
What the Map shows you: The Revenue mode colours suburbs by average appointment value. A small, dark-coloured bubble means high value but low volume. The automated insight engine flags these specifically: "[Suburb] has the highest average appointment value ($X) but only Y appointments. Growing to just 5 more appointments here could add ~$Z."
The action: These suburbs deserve targeted attention. A small, focused campaign (even a handful of flyers at the local vet or pet shop) in a suburb where your average appointment is $120 will return more than a broad campaign across suburbs where your average is $65.
3. Consolidate Travel Routes for Mobile Businesses
The insight: If you are a mobile groomer, dog walker, or trainer, your biggest invisible cost is travel. Every minute between appointments is a minute you are not earning. If you are driving to Suburb A on Monday, Suburb B on Tuesday, and back to Suburb A on Wednesday, you are burning fuel and time unnecessarily.
What the Map shows you: The Weekday mode reveals exactly this: which suburbs you visit on which days of the week. The automated insight engine detects scatter: "[Suburb] is serviced across 5 different days of the week (X appointments). Consolidating to 2-3 days could reduce travel time."
It also flags team-level scatter: "[Team Member] visits [Suburb] across 4 different days. Consolidating these visits could save significant travel time."
The action: Restructure your weekly schedule to batch clients from the same suburb onto the same day. Mondays are your Bondi day. Tuesdays are Randwick and Coogee. This one change often saves hours per week.
4. Assign Team Members to Geographic Zones
The insight: When multiple team members criss-cross the same suburbs on different days, nobody "owns" an area. This creates inefficiency and inconsistency for clients.
What the Map shows you: The Team mode shows where each team member operates relative to your customer distribution. Combined with the Weekday mode, you can see whether Sarah and James are both visiting the same suburbs on different days.
The action: Consider assigning each team member to a geographic zone. Sarah handles the eastern suburbs. James handles the inner west. This reduces total travel time, gives each team member a sense of ownership over their area, and means clients see the same person consistently (which builds loyalty).
5. Target Letterbox Drops and Local Marketing With Real Data
The insight: Traditional local marketing (letterbox drops, posters at vet clinics, flyers at dog parks) still works in the pet industry. But most business owners guess which suburbs to target. With geographic data, you do not have to guess.
What the Map shows you: The Revenue by Suburb table ranks every suburb by revenue contribution. The Boundaries mode shades entire suburb areas by revenue intensity. You can see, at a glance, which suburbs produce the most, which produce the least, and which are completely untouched.
The action: For retention, drop flyers in your top-revenue suburbs to stay visible. For growth, identify the "gap suburbs": areas surrounded by high-revenue suburbs where you have zero or minimal presence. These are the most promising targets because nearby suburbs have already proven there is demand.
6. Identify Multi-Pet Household Clusters
The insight: A family with three dogs is worth roughly three times a family with one dog, but they are still one client relationship to maintain. Multi-pet households are your most efficient revenue source.
What the Map shows you: The Customer mode captures pet count per customer. The automated insight engine identifies multi-pet household concentration: "X% of customers are multi-pet households. [Suburb] has the highest concentration (Y multi-pet families)."
The action: Suburbs with high multi-pet concentration are prime territory for multi-pet package deals. "Book all three dogs and save 15%" works brilliantly when you know exactly where these families are clustered.
7. Flag Distant, Low-Return Suburbs
The insight: If you have two clients in a suburb 25km from your base and they generate $180 in total revenue per month, the travel time to service them may not be worthwhile. This is revenue leakage: you are technically earning money, but the time cost erodes your effective hourly rate.
What the Map shows you: The automated insight engine flags outlier suburbs: "X suburbs (including [Suburb A], [Suburb B]) contribute only Y% of revenue combined. If these are far from your base, the travel time may outweigh the return."
The action: You have three options. First, consolidate these clients onto a single day so you only travel there once per week. Second, gradually transition them to a provider closer to their home (a professional, respectful approach). Third, adjust pricing for distant locations to account for travel time.
8. Use GPS Check-In Data for Service Verification
The insight: For mobile businesses, knowing where your team actually delivered service (not just where they were supposed to be) is both an operational and trust tool. It gives you a verifiable record that a service was performed at the client's location.
What the Map shows you: The Activity mode plots GPS check-in and check-out locations, plus geotagged photos. Dashed lines connect events for the same appointment, showing the path a team member took. The insight engine tracks coverage: "X% of appointments have location data."
The action: Enabling GPS check-in/check-out creates an audit trail that is useful for resolving disputes, verifying service delivery for insurance purposes, and understanding actual (not planned) routes. It is not about surveillance; it is about having data that backs up great work.
9. Analyse Weekday Demand by Suburb
The insight: Not all suburbs have the same demand pattern. A suburb near schools might peak on weekdays (parents dropping off pets on their way to school). A suburb near offices might peak on weekends (professionals who are home to hand over pets). Understanding these patterns helps you schedule more effectively.
What the Map shows you: The Weekday mode colour-codes suburb data by day of the week. You can visually see which suburbs light up on which days. The Boundaries mode takes this further by letting you toggle specific weekdays on and off, showing your "Monday territory" versus your "Thursday territory."
The action: Align your scheduling with actual demand. If Suburb A consistently generates weekend appointments and Suburb B generates weekday appointments, scheduling a team member in Suburb A on a Tuesday is fighting against the natural demand pattern.
10. Visualise Your True Service Area
The insight: Most pet business owners have an idea of their service area in their head, but it is usually based on a rough sense of "how far I am willing to drive." The actual data often tells a different story.
What the Map shows you: The Boundaries mode draws suburb polygons across your entire service area, shaded by revenue. This gives you a real, data-backed view of your geographic footprint. You might discover you are servicing 25 suburbs but 80% of your revenue comes from 8 of them.
The action: Use this visualisation to define a firm service area policy. Share it with your team so everyone knows where you do and do not service. Use it as the foundation for your Google Ads radius targeting (see our Google Ads geo-targeting guide) and your Meta exclusion zones (see our Meta ads targeting guide).
11. Benchmark Suburb Performance Over Time
The insight: Running the Geographic Intelligence analysis across different date ranges lets you compare suburb performance period-over-period. Is Suburb A growing or declining? Did a new competitor eat into your revenue in a specific area?
What the Map shows you: By changing the date range and re-running the analysis, you can compare the Revenue by Suburb table across months or quarters. If a suburb dropped from $3,200 to $1,800, that is a signal worth investigating.
The action: A declining suburb might mean a competitor has opened nearby, a major client has churned, or seasonal factors are at play. The data does not tell you why, but it tells you where to look. This is the benchmarking against your own history principle in action: compare yourself to yourself, not to arbitrary industry averages.
12. Inform Pricing Strategy by Area
The insight: Different suburbs have different willingness to pay. If your average appointment value in one suburb is $95 and in another it is $140, that tells you something about the local market. Charging the same price everywhere might mean you are underpriced in premium suburbs and overpriced in price-sensitive ones.
What the Map shows you: The Revenue mode colours suburbs by average appointment value. High-value suburbs stand out immediately. The Revenue by Suburb table shows exact figures.
The action: This does not necessarily mean changing your prices suburb by suburb. But it does inform decisions about service mix. In high-value suburbs, promote your premium services (full grooms, spa treatments, add-ons). In price-sensitive suburbs, lead with your core services and package deals. The data tells you where each strategy will resonate.
The Bigger Picture: Data You Already Have, Made Visible
None of this requires new hardware, tracking devices, or expensive analytics platforms. It uses data your business already generates every time a customer books an appointment, pays for a service, or registers their address.
The difference is unification. When bookings, payments, customer profiles, pet records, and team assignments all live in one system, geographic intelligence is a natural output. When they are scattered across spreadsheets, Square, Google Calendar, and a notebook, it is invisible.
This is one of the 8 signs of a healthy pet business: a single system of record where every piece of data connects to every other piece. Your address data connects to your revenue data connects to your scheduling data connects to your team data. The map is simply the visualisation of connections that already exist.
Try It Yourself
Geographic Intelligence is available inside Petboost Reporting and Insights. If you are already on Petboost, head to Reporting and Insights > Map and run your first Geographic Analysis. If you are not on Petboost yet, start a free trial at business.petboost.com/register. No credit card required.
Related Petboost Features
- Reporting and Insights: The home of Geographic Intelligence, along with financial, booking, customer, service, and team analytics
- Self-Service Booking: Let clients in your top suburbs book themselves 24/7
- Pro Automations: Automate booking confirmations, payment collection, and reminders
- Prepaid Packages: Build loyalty in high-value suburbs with prepaid bundles
Frequently Asked Questions
What data does Geographic Intelligence use?
Geographic Intelligence uses data your business already generates: customer addresses from bookings, payment amounts, appointment dates, team member assignments, and GPS check-in/check-out locations (if enabled). No additional data entry or external tools are required.
Do I need a specific Petboost plan to access the Map?
Geographic Intelligence is part of the Reporting and Insights module available on Petboost. Visit pricing for details on which plans include reporting features.
How does revenue by suburb work?
Petboost aggregates your appointment revenue by each customer's suburb. The Map view displays this as sized bubbles (bigger = more revenue) with colour intensity representing average appointment value (darker = higher value per appointment). You can also view a ranked table of all suburbs.
Can I see which team members work in which suburbs?
Yes. The Team mode shows where each team member operates. The Weekday mode goes further by showing which suburbs each team member visits on which days, helping you identify route consolidation opportunities.
What are boundary overlays?
Boundary mode draws suburb polygons across your service area, shaded by revenue. You can toggle specific weekdays on and off to see your "Monday territory" versus your "Friday territory." This is useful for understanding daily geographic patterns and planning team schedules.
How can I use this data for advertising?
Your geographic data directly informs local ad targeting. See our Google Ads geo-targeting guide for setting up radius and suburb targeting, and our Meta ads targeting guide for Facebook and Instagram campaigns.
Does Geographic Intelligence work for mobile pet businesses?
Absolutely. Mobile businesses (dog walkers, mobile groomers, trainers) benefit the most. The Weekday scatter detection and team efficiency insights specifically identify travel waste and route consolidation opportunities for mobile operations.