Key concepts & glossary

Whelpkeep uses one term for each thing, consistently. Here's what they mean.

Animals and litters

• Sire / Dam — your breeding male (sire) and female (dam). You add these under Sires & Dams.
• Litter — one mating that produces a group of pups, recorded under one state. Its whelp date drives your deadlines.
• Pup — an individual puppy in a litter, with its own page, photos, growth and status.
• Mating date — the date (or dates) the dam was mated. Used to estimate the whelp date and time some state requirements.
• Whelp date — the date the litter was born. The single most important date in Whelpkeep.
• Go-home date — the earliest date a pup may leave for its new home. Whelpkeep defaults this to eight weeks after the whelp date, the legal minimum.

Buyers and money

• Buyer — a person on your waitlist or buying a pup. Buyers never see each other.
• Pick order — your private ranking of who chooses a pup first. Buyers never see it.
• Deposit — an up-front payment a buyer makes to reserve a pup. It is paid into your own Stripe account.
• Balance — what's left to pay after the deposit: the purchase price minus deposits received.
• Sale — the record that ties a pup to a buyer with a price, a deposit, a contract and a microchip transfer.
• Contract — the sale agreement, generated with the correct legal wording for the litter's state and signed online by the buyer.

Records and compliance

• Record — a document or note attached to an animal, litter or pup: a vaccination certificate, vet check, microchip record, pedigree, photo and so on.
• The document reader — Whelpkeep reads an uploaded document and offers the details for you to confirm, so you don't re-type them. See How prefill works.
• State breeder ID — your licence or registration number with your state. Called a BIN in NSW, a source number in VIC, a supply number in QLD and a DACO number in SA.
• The checklist — a per-litter list of what each state requires, which ticks itself off as your records and dates land.
• The stamp — the legally-required wording Whelpkeep adds to a contract or listing, chosen to match the litter's state.

Your account

• Trial — your first six weeks, with every feature on and no card required.
• Plan — how you pay after the trial: an annual subscription, or activating one litter at a time. See Plans & pricing.
• Read-only — what your account becomes if a paid plan lapses: you keep full access to view and export everything, but adding and editing is paused until you re-subscribe.