Animal transfers

Animal transfers let you hand an animal off to someone else's ScaleVault account — buyer, adopter, or fellow breeder — while keeping your own records intact. The buyer gets a fresh copy of the animal's profile and history in their account; your copy stays exactly as it was.

This feature is available on Adult plan and above (Adult, Colony, Apex, and Rescue).

Before you start

You need a public share link (QR code) for the animal already set up — see QR codes & quick actions. Buyer transfer builds on that same link, so create or copy the share link first.

Unlocking a transfer (seller)

From the animal's detail page, choose Manage Buyer Transfer:

1. Optionally add the buyer's email and a note (e.g. pickup instructions).
2. Optionally choose when the link opens — up to 90 days ahead. Leave it blank to open it now.
3. Set how long the link stays open once it opens (1 hour to 14 days).
4. Click Unlock Transfer to generate a one-time claim link.

A link scheduled to open later works straight away for previewing: you can send or print it now, and a buyer who opens it early sees the animal and when it opens, but can't accept, decline, or sign up through it until then.

Reopening Manage Buyer Transfer on an animal with an open transfer shows that transfer's current buyer email, note, incentive choice, opening time and time left, so saving it only changes what you edit.

Copy the link and send it to the buyer however you like — text, email, or printed alongside the animal at pickup/a show. Re-unlocking an animal that's already unlocked keeps the same link and just updates its settings. Any copy of the link you already handed out keeps working.

If your account has a signup incentive configured (see below), unlocking shows an Offer buyer a signup incentive toggle — on by default. Turning it off for a specific transfer means that buyer won't receive a trial extension or credit even though your account normally offers one. Offering the incentive never costs you anything either way.

While a transfer is unlocked or awaiting the buyer, you can:

• Lock Claim Link — kill the link immediately without cancelling the transfer record itself.
• Cancel Transfer — cancel the pending claim outright.

The Manage Buyer Transfer modal also shows when the current claim link expires, so you can see at a glance whether it's still valid.

You can also manage an open transfer from the Transfers page: click Edit on any unlocked, scheduled or awaiting-buyer transfer to change its buyer email, note, opening time, expiry or incentive choice, or to lock or cancel it, without going to the animal's page.

Unlocking transfers for a whole show at once

If you're bringing several animals to a show, you don't have to unlock each one individually. From the show's Animal Care Packet report, click Unlock All for Transfer to generate a claim link and QR code for every animal in the show in one step, with the same expiry window and signup-incentive toggle described above.

Animals that died or that a buyer has already claimed are left locked, as are departed animals with no open claim link; the report lists them, along with any animal that couldn't be unlocked. A departed animal whose link is still open keeps it and gets refreshed like any other, so it's fine to mark a sale before the buyer claims. An animal you'd already unlocked from its own page keeps its link, buyer email, note and incentive choice — Unlock All only refreshes its records and extends (never shortens) its expiry, keeping its opening time.

If the show has a date still ahead, the links default to opening at the start of show day and staying open until the end of the 7th day after the show. You can print the QR sheet weeks early, and nobody can claim from it before the show. On or after show day they open straight away and close at the same point. You can change both in the Unlock All dialog, which warns you if the links would close before the show ends. Reopening the report later shows the same QR codes again without changing their expiry or contents. A packet covers up to 200 animals; if a show has more, the report says how many were left out. See Shows & expos and Printable reports.

Claiming a transfer (buyer)

Opening the claim link shows a preview of what's being offered — the animal's name, species, genetic traits (if any), and a count of the records included (feedings, weight logs, sheds, handlings, events, medications) — without needing to sign in first, even if your account normally requires a login to view share pages. The page also shows when the claim link expires, with a warning once it's within 24 hours of expiring. If the seller scheduled it to open later, the page says when it opens, and Accept/Decline stay disabled until then. Buyers who aren't logged in can log in to an existing ScaleVault account, or create a new one right from the claim page and land back on it afterwards.

Accept Transfer copies the animal and its history into the buyer's account as a brand-new record. Decline Transfer lets the buyer turn it down. Accepting or declining needs an Editor role or above in the buyer's account, and a seller can't decline their own transfer (use Lock or Cancel instead). The buyer can be on any plan — only the seller needs a plan that includes transfers.

You can't delete an animal while its claim link is live. Lock the claim link first, or wait for the buyer to claim it. Once the buyer accepts, you'll get an email letting you know.

What gets copied

• Animal profile (name, species/morph, sex, weight, hatch date, and so on)
• Feedings, weight logs, sheds, handling logs, events, and medications
• Structured genetic morph traits — but only traits from the shared global trait library. A seller's own private, account-specific custom traits aren't visible in the buyer's account, so they aren't copied; the animal's free-text morph and genetics notes fields still carry over either way.
• Parentage — the sire, dam, and line names are added to the genetics notes. The parent animals themselves stay in your account.
• The species' care settings (temperature, humidity, foods, incubation), if the buyer doesn't already have that species. A species the buyer already has (matched by scientific name) is reused as-is.

Your side of the sale isn't copied: the sale price, buyer name, departure date/reason, and your original acquisition date, source, and price all stay with you. It's fine to mark the animal sold before the buyer accepts.

Everything is copied at the moment the buyer accepts, from your records as they are then — so anything you log between unlocking and the buyer accepting (a last feeding at the show, say) goes with the animal. The preview the buyer sees before accepting is from when you last unlocked, so its record counts can be a little lower than what's actually copied.

What stays with the seller

Your copy of the animal and its full history are never modified or removed. The transfer only adds a new record to the buyer's account — think "copy," not "move."

Signup incentive

Some accounts offer a small perk to buyers who accept a transfer:

• New to ScaleVault (never had a paid subscription, never had a transfer trial): their free trial becomes the length the seller offers — for example 30 days from accepting, in place of the usual 14-day trial. A buyer only ever gets this once, from any seller. If they already have a longer trial, it isn't shortened.
• Everyone else, including a new buyer's second and later transfers: a discounted month for each animal accepted, worth the seller's credit amount (for example $5 off).

Discounted months don't pile onto a single bill — each one discounts a separate billing period. A monthly subscriber gets one per month until they've used them all; an annual subscriber's renewal uses up to 12 at once (six $5 months is $30 off). A month's discount can cover up to the full plan price. Buyers who haven't subscribed yet keep their months until they do, and can see how many they have on their Billing page.

This is optional and configured per account. If your account doesn't have incentives set up, you can request them from Billing — submit an application with a short justification and your requested trial length or discount amount, and our team will review it. At most one incentive is ever applied per transfer.

Tracking a transfer

The Manage Buyer Transfer modal always shows the current status (unlocked, awaiting buyer, accepted, declined, expired, or cancelled — a link that has simply run out shows as expired) along with when it was last updated. Every step is also recorded in the audit log.

Sellers can also see every transfer they've sent — status, buyer, and incentive outcome — on the Transfers page. Before the buyer accepts, the incentive column says whether the incentive is Offered. Afterwards it shows what the buyer got: the trial and when it ends, or the discounted month and whether it's waiting, coming off their next invoice, or used. If the buyer got nothing it says why — for example, the incentive wasn't offered on that transfer, or the buyer has paid before so wasn't eligible for the trial.

Buyers see every trial or discounted month they've received from a transfer, and its status, under Perks from animal transfers on their Billing page.