From spreadsheets to one system: how a Buenos Aires pet store connected its clinic, store and website

Moving from spreadsheets to a management system isn't swapping Excel for a program: it's getting everything that happens in the business recorded in one place, connected. This is the story of Mecohue, a pet store with a veterinary clinic in Wilde, Buenos Aires, that worked with paper and spreadsheets and today has its clinic, grooming service, store register and website in a single platform.

I'm Facundo Campo, the developer of that system: I built it end to end. Here's where we started, the decisions we made and what changed.

How did the business run before the system?

Mecohue is a pet store with a vet clinic and grooming in Wilde, a suburb of Buenos Aires. Like many small businesses with years in the neighborhood, it grew with whatever tools were at hand, and at some point it ran into three problems at once.

The clinic, on paper. Clinic management wasn't digitized.

The register, with no control. Daily sales had no stock control and no record of what was sold to whom.

No online channel. Customers had nowhere to see products or book an appointment: there was only social media.

None of the three is unusual. What was particular is that all three lived in the same business with the same customers: the owner who brings their dog in for a vaccine is the same person who buys the food.

Why one system instead of three tools?

The obvious option was to solve each problem separately: software for the clinic, a register system and a shop on a platform. It works, but it leaves the job of joining everything to someone: customers get entered twice, products live in two places, and to know how the business did in the month you have to gather numbers from three systems.

That's why I proposed a custom platform covering the three legs of the business in a single system: the public site, the clinic management and the shop with its point of sale. The goal was simple to state: every sale linked to a customer, every vaccine to a pet, and the whole business visible in a single report.

What ended up in each part of the system?

What was hardest to bring together?

Merging three systems into one has a cost: each part has different users, different screens and different rules, and it still has to feel like a single tool. Three things took more work than the rest.

Keeping the parts from getting mixed up. The public site, the clinic management and the shop are part of the same system. Each part was built so that a change in one doesn't break another, and each person sees only what matches their job.

Making sure the register never leaves anything half-done. A sale can combine the visit and the purchases, and be paid with cash, card, Mercado Pago and customer account at the same time, and when it's confirmed, the stock is deducted, the payments are recorded and the customer's account is updated in a single operation. If something fails, nothing is saved. I explain it in detail in POS system with inventory control.

Making the report show the whole business. Point-of-sale sales were added to the report that already covered the clinic and grooming, separating what was billed from what was collected. How to think about that report is in sales reports for your business.

What changed day to day?

The underlying change is going from paper and spreadsheets to having everything recorded and auditable in real time. Specifically: every sale is linked to a customer, with the details of how they paid; every vaccine is linked to a pet, with its PDF card; customer tabs live in customer accounts with the balance up to date; customers browse products on the website and check availability or book over WhatsApp in one tap; and the whole business (clinic, grooming and shop) shows up in a report you can check from your phone.

I won't give you improvement percentages because we didn't measure it that way, and I'd rather not make them up. What I can say is that information that used to be scattered across paper, spreadsheets and the memory of whoever was at the counter is now in one place.

Who owns the system?

The business does. Each person logs in with their own user and sees what matches their job, the information is backed up automatically every day, vaccination cards and prescriptions come out as PDFs ready to send, and the website loads fast even with lots of product photos.

For a business owner, what matters is one thing: the system belongs to them and doesn't depend on a subscription to a third-party platform to keep working. What it costs to maintain is explained in how much it costs to maintain a website.

What would I tell a small business that wants to leave spreadsheets behind?

• Start with what hurts most. You don't have to digitize everything at once; a good system lets you add parts later.
• Think about connecting, not just digitizing. Moving each spreadsheet into a different program leaves you with the same problem in another format.
• Gather what you already use. Spreadsheets, record cards and receipt books are the best guide for making the system match how you work.
• Watch how it's used. If the system is used from a phone, it has to be designed for the phone.
• Protect the data. Automatic backups from day one.

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