Livery Yard Management Software: Where AI Helps With Billing and Notes

A yard should pick on billing and the daily care routine first: LiveryLive is the cheapest listed at 2 GBP per horse a month, LiveryFlow lists one $107 plan, and Konektt prices by yard size. None of them clearly advertises built-in AI, so the AI help comes from a chat assistant drafting invoices, notes and owner messages from your exports.

That is the neutral position, and it matters because the pages that rank for this topic are the vendors' own. Each is accurate about itself and says little about the others. Below is a side-by-side with prices dated October 2026, what each lists for feed, turnout, invoicing and owner messaging, and the specific jobs where AI saves time without risking a horse or a bill.

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The three tools side by side, as of October 2026

I read each vendor's own pages. Currencies differ, so I have kept each in the currency the page used rather than converting. Do not compare headline numbers without matching the currency and your horse count.

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Three details matter more than the headline price:

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• LiveryLive bills on the highest number of unique horses active in the previous month. Its own example: start with 10 horses, remove 2 and add 2, and you are billed for 12. A yard with high turnover, such as one taking in horses for short stays, pays for each horse that passed through.
• LiveryFlow's flat fee has no limit on horses, so it gets cheaper per head as you grow, and it is a stretch for a three-horse private yard.
• Konektt's invoicing was labelled "coming soon" on the page I read. If invoices are your main pain, check the current state with them directly.

Feed sheets and turnout are the weak spot for all three. LiveryLive lists feeding inside its horse records and does not mention turnout on its pricing page, and LiveryFlow's closest item is "Feeding Plans" in horse records. Konektt lists care visit logs and a shared diary. None of the pages I read described a printed daily feed sheet or a turnout board as a named feature, so test that in a trial before you rely on it. If you need a sheet for the feed room wall, the horse feed chart template shows how to build one.

A yard of 20: what each costs and does

Consider an illustrative yard with 20 horses on a mix of full, part and DIY livery, three staff and a manager who does the books on Sunday night. Owners pay monthly. Extras include shavings, hay, farrier visits booked and paid through the yard, and schooling sessions.

• LiveryLive: 20 horses at 2 GBP is 40 GBP a month, 480 GBP a year, with a 6-week trial to run through one full billing cycle.
• LiveryFlow: $107 a month is $1,284 a year.
• Konektt: depends on the tier for 16 to 35 horses, so ask for the figure.

Cost alone favours the per-horse model at this size. But the real comparison is the hours. If the manager spends four hours a month assembling invoices and chasing, and the software cuts that to one, a three-hour saving is worth more than the 40 GBP or $107 in most yards. The right tool is the one that fits your extras and your owners, not the lowest sticker.

The monthly invoice run, and where AI helps

Billing in a livery yard is a pile of small items. A full-livery fee, a few extras and a credit or two. Errors come from re-keying and from items remembered late. AI is good at the checking and the writing around the numbers, and bad at being the system of record.

1. Prepare the extras list

Keep a simple log through the month: date, horse, item, quantity. At month end, export or paste it. Ask an assistant to group it by horse and flag anything unusual. Prompt:

Below is a month of extras for our yard (horse names and items only).
Group by horse. List each horse's items with quantity and rate.
Flag any horse with more than 3 extras, any item with no rate, and any duplicate entries on the same date.
Do not calculate totals; I will check totals in the invoicing software.

Illustrative result: a clean per-horse list, with a flag that one horse has "shavings" logged twice on the 14th. What to fix: assistants occasionally merge items that sound alike. Check flagged lines against your log.

2. Check the arithmetic before sending

Language models are unreliable at arithmetic, so let your software compute totals and use the assistant only as a second pair of eyes. Paste the line items and totals of three or four invoices and ask it to recompute each and tell you any that differ. If it disagrees with the software, recompute by hand. The reasons models stumble are covered in why AI is bad at maths.

3. Write the covering message

An invoice that arrives with no words invites queries. Ask for a short, friendly note:

Write a short message to a horse owner to go with their monthly invoice.
Include: first name as [first name], month as [month], the total as [total], payment date as [date].
Mention that extras are itemised and invite questions by reply. Keep under 70 words. No pressure, no emojis.

Illustrative output: "Hi [first name], your [month] invoice is attached, total [total], due by [date]. The extras are itemised at the bottom. If anything looks unexpected, just reply and I'll look into it. Thank you." What to fix: remove any invented promise such as "we offer a discount for early payment".

4. Late payers

A staged series of reminders, each a little firmer, is easier to send when the wording is ready. The polite reminders tutorial has the structure. For a yard, add a line referring to the livery agreement terms, because a missed payment may affect the horse's care, and that conversation is better led by you than a template.

Notes: from scribbles to usable records

Care notes are the other half of the job. A horse that is off its feed, a loose shoe, a medication given at 6pm: these are recorded on a whiteboard, a phone note or the software's care log. AI can help turn messy notes into consistent ones, but only if you keep the privacy line clear.

A before and after

Before (staff scribble): "Bella ok. left hind a bit warm? didnt finish haynet. owner coming sat"

After (tidied by an assistant, then checked by the manager):
Date: [date]. Horse: Bella.
Observation: left hind leg felt slightly warm. Did not finish haynet.
Action: manager informed. Owner visiting Saturday.
Follow-up: recheck leg at next feed.

The assistant has tidied, not diagnosed. Keep that rule in writing for staff: AI turns notes into tidy records; it does not say what is wrong with a horse. For a vet-related decision, a vet decides. And never put an owner's full contact details or payment information into a general chat tool; first names and horse names are enough.

Daily handover summary

Another use: paste the day's care log (horse names only) and ask for a handover summary for the next shift, with horses needing attention at the top. It takes a minute and replaces a rushed spoken handover, though the manager should still skim the original log.

Feed and turnout: what to do when the software is thin

Because none of the pages I read described a printable daily feed sheet or turnout board, many yards will keep one outside the software. A simple approach: one table, one row per horse, with columns for morning feed, evening feed, supplements, hay, turnout group and notes. Keep the master in a spreadsheet, print it for the feed room and update it when owners change a ration. An assistant can turn a messy list of owner instructions into that table. Paste the instructions without owner details and ask for one row per horse, with unclear items listed separately for you to confirm. What to fix: it may guess quantities. Any feed amount the owner did not state should be marked "ask owner", never filled in, because a wrong ration is a welfare problem, not a typo. Then check the printed sheet against the horse in the stable for the first week.

Owner messaging: one voice, less time

Owners want to know how their horse is. Yard software with a notice board or notifications helps with the broadcast side: hay delivery delays, farrier day, a gate closed for repairs. For the individual messages, an assistant can draft from a short note. Prompt example:

Draft a friendly update to an owner from these notes: [horse] was turned out with her usual group, ate well, had a short walk in the school. Farrier is booked Thursday. Keep it under 60 words. Warm, factual, no medical claims.

Illustrative output: "Hi [first name], [horse] had a good day: turned out with her usual group, ate well and enjoyed a short walk in the school. The farrier is booked for Thursday. Let me know if you'd like to be there." What to fix: models add cheerful claims like "she was in great spirits". Keep only what happened.

A weather or cancellation notice to liveries on lesson days follows the same pattern as a riding lesson cancellation policy, and if you also teach, look at riding school software because lesson booking is a different tool problem.

A month-end run, line by line

To see where the time goes, here is an illustrative invoice for one horse on part livery, using round numbers in dollars so they are easy to follow. Part livery: $380 a month. Extras logged: two bags of shavings at $9 each, one farrier visit organised and paid by the yard at $55, one schooling session at $40, and a credit of $15 for a missed turnout day.

• Base fee: $380.
• Shavings: 2 times $9 is $18.
• Farrier: $55.
• Schooling: $40.
• Credit: minus $15.
• Total: 380 plus 18 plus 55 plus 40 minus 15 is $478.

Multiply that by 20 horses with different extras and the room for slips is obvious: a farrier cost entered against the wrong horse, a credit forgotten, a bag of shavings logged twice. The best process is a short loop. Log extras daily in one place, let the software build the invoice, then paste the line items for the five largest invoices into an assistant and ask it to recompute totals and list any item that appears twice. The second pair of eyes is best at catching duplicates, a typical slip in any manual log, while the software remains the source of truth.

Three yards, three sensible choices

A private yard with six horses

One owner-manager, three liveries, little turnover. A free owner tier or a spreadsheet may be enough, with an assistant to draft the monthly note. The cost of software is small, but so is the problem. Revisit when owners start asking to pay online.

A busy mixed yard with 20 to 30 horses

Three staff, part and full livery, extras every week. Here per-horse billing is cheap, and the trial should be run through a real month-end. Notes in the app matter because staff change shifts. This is the yard the comparison table is aimed at.

A large competition yard with 45 horses and visiting horses

Short stays and a lot of movement. Check how each tool counts horses in a month, because LiveryLive bills for each unique horse active, which suits steady herds better than a busy turnover. A flat plan with unlimited horses may be better, and an incident log and a shared diary start to matter more than price.

A mistake that shows up at the first invoice run

Picture a manager, in an illustrative case, importing owner records from a spreadsheet and finding that two owners with the same surname have been merged into one account. Both receive a combined invoice for two horses on different livery packages, and one pays the wrong amount. The cause is a messy import, not the software. The fix is a checking step before go-live: export the imported list, paste owner and horse names (no contact details) into an assistant and ask it to list near-duplicates, then fix them by hand. Do it every time you import, and again after a month.

Moving over without a month of double entry

1. Week 1: clean the spreadsheet. One row per horse, one per owner, consistent rate names. An assistant can standardise "full livery", "Full Livery" and "FL" in a minute.
2. Week 2: import, then check ten horses against your records.
3. Week 3: run the new system alongside the old for one invoice run. Compare totals owner by owner.
4. Week 4: switch, tell owners what is changing and when, and ask them to report anything odd within seven days.

The message to owners deserves care, because a new invoice format causes questions. Ask an assistant for a short note explaining the change and the new payment link, then read it as an owner would: does it say what they need to do and by when?

Privacy and keeping control of the records

Yard records hold names, phone numbers, bank details and sometimes health information about animals. Three habits keep this safe. Keep personal data out of general chat tools, using first names and horse names only when you paste. Check each vendor's terms for who owns the data and how to export it. And keep a second copy of your owners list and care logs somewhere you control, because a vendor's pricing or product can change, as the whole software market keeps showing. Before you sign, ask each vendor three things in writing: what format the export comes in, whether invoices and care logs are included, and how long your data is kept after you cancel.

How to choose, in six questions

1. What is the one job you hate most? If it is invoicing, test invoicing first. If it is feed and turnout, test those.
2. How many horses, and how much do they move? A stable herd suits per-horse billing. A busy, changing one may not.
3. Does it connect to your accounts? LiveryLive lists QuickBooks, Xero and Stripe. If you already use one, that saves re-keying.
4. Who has to use it? If the grooms will not touch a phone app, the notes will stay on the whiteboard whatever you buy.
5. Can owners see what they need, and no more? Check the owner view for bills, notices and their horse only.
6. Can you get your data out? Ask for an export of horses, owners and invoices before you start.

Run the trial through one real month-end. A tool that looks easy in week one can fall down when a part-livery owner has a credit and two extras. LiveryLive's six-week trial is long enough to cover a full invoice run, which the 14-day one at LiveryFlow cannot.

When a six-horse yard can skip software

A yard of six horses with one owner-manager may not need any of these. A spreadsheet with a tab per horse, a monthly sheet of extras and a message template does the job at no cost. The AI jobs above work just as well on a spreadsheet export. The point at which software earns its keep is usually when owners want to pay online, when more than two people write care notes, or when the invoice run takes more than three hours. The livery agreement tutorial is worth doing first in any case, because clear terms make billing disputes rare whichever system holds the numbers.

My checking approach: put twenty real records from your yard through each tool in its trial, and score each on how many were right the first time. That one test beats any feature list, and it works the same for software and for the AI step around it.

Questions yard managers ask

Do these tools include AI?

None of the three pricing pages I read in October 2026 mentions a built-in AI assistant. The practical route is a general chat assistant working on exports and notes you give it, not a feature inside the yard software. If a vendor adds AI later, ask what data it reads and whether you can switch it off.

Is per-horse or flat pricing cheaper?

Per-horse pricing wins for small yards and flat pricing wins for large ones. At LiveryLive's listed 2 GBP per horse a month, 20 horses is 40 GBP, while a flat $107 plan wins only when your horse count is large. The page quotes pounds for one and dollars for the other, so convert at today's rate before you compare.

Can AI write owner invoices?

It can draft the covering message and check the arithmetic, but your software or accounting package should produce the invoice itself. Give the assistant the line items and rates, and ask it to flag anything that does not add up before you send.

What should I keep out of an AI chat?

Bank details, passwords, full owner contact lists and anything about a horse's health that identifies an owner. Use first names and horse names only, and keep the assistant to drafting and checking.

Further reads

• How to Catch Duplicate Invoices and Payment Fraud With AI — Spot double-entered charges before owners do.
• How to Use Xero's JAX for Invoices and Cash-Flow Questions — If your yard bills through Xero, use its own assistant.
• Dog Walker Software: Scheduling, Walk Updates and Invoices Compared — Another animal-care business comparing updates and invoices.
• Quote to Cash: Connect Quotes, Invoices and Payments With AI — Join extras, invoices and payments into one flow.
• How Freelancers Use AI for Invoices, Proposals and Chasers — Chasing payment without damaging the relationship.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: the LiveryLive, LiveryFlow and Konektt pricing pages, re-checked 27 October 2026.