Board billing with add-ons for horse barns

The idea

Ask a barn manager how they bill and you will hear the same story: base board is easy, but the extras leak. The farrier held three horses in March, someone administered meds twice a day for two weeks, an owner asked for extra hay all winter, and by invoice day it is reconstructed from text threads and memory. Every forgotten line is revenue given away, and managers know it, which is why the pitch is not saving time but stopping leaks.

Equine management suites like BarnManager run $150-plus a month and bundle feed schedules, records, and calendars most barns never touch. The unbundled wedge is capture-to-invoice: log the add-on in the aisle in five seconds, and the month-end invoice writes itself.

Who pays

The barn owner or manager pays $39/month, targeted at barns boarding 10 to 40 horses where monthly billing runs $8,000 to $40,000; recovering two or three forgotten add-ons per horse covers the price many times over. Distribution is equine Facebook groups, boarding-barn networks, and the farriers and vets who visit dozens of barns and see the billing chaos firsthand.

MVP scope

• Horse roster with owner billing profiles and base board rates
• Mobile quick-capture of add-ons from a configurable service menu, including cost-plus-markup items
• Month-end Stripe invoice drafting per owner with dated line items and batch send
• Automatic overdue reminders at 5 and 14 days
• Pro-rated board for mid-month moves
• Skip for v1: feed/care scheduling, health records, lesson billing, staff time tracking, and owner-facing portals

Build BarnBill, a billing app for horse boarding barns. Stack: Next.js (App Router, mobile-first since capture happens in the barn aisle), Supabase (Postgres, auth), Stripe for invoicing and subscriptions.

Core flow: the manager sets up a horse roster, each horse linked to an owner billing profile with a monthly base board rate. The core interaction is add-on capture: from a phone, the manager taps a horse, then a quick-add button from a barn-defined service menu (blanket change $5, med administration $8, extra hay flake $3, farrier hold $25, trailer to vet at $1/mile). Each add-on logs with a timestamp and optional note. The service menu supports cost-plus-markup items, e.g. medication billed at cost plus 20%, where the manager enters the cost at capture and the app applies the markup.

On the 1st of the month, the app drafts a Stripe invoice per owner: base board plus every logged add-on with dates, for the manager to review and send in one batch. Overdue invoices trigger automatic reminder emails at 5 and 14 days.

Pages: horse roster, quick-capture screen, owner list with balances, monthly invoice review, service menu editor, settings, billing.

Non-obvious details: mid-month horse arrivals/departures pro-rate base board by day automatically; every add-on line on the invoice shows its date, because itemised dates are what stops owners disputing the bill.

Pricing: $39/month for barns up to 40 horses, 30-day trial.