Help Centre › Clients & patients

Clients & patients

In FastVet a client is the person who owns the account, and a patient is an animal belonging to them. One client can have any number of patients, and everything clinical and financial hangs off that pair.

Registering a new client#

There are four ways in, and the one you pick depends on who is doing the typing.

Home›New Client

Option	Use it when
Take details now Classic: “Add New Client”	You are taking the details yourself. Opens the full registration form — addresses, partner, emergency contact, VAT number and invoice notes.
Send by email Classic: “Email Link to add client”	You would rather the client typed their own details. FastVet emails them a secure link to a form, and their answers come straight back into the record.
Send by WhatsApp Classic: “Whatsapp Link to add client”	The same signup link, sent over WhatsApp. Enter their number with the country code, or leave it blank to pick the contact in WhatsApp yourself.
Hand over the tablet Classic: “Tablet Sign Up”	A walk-in fills the form in themselves on a tablet at the desk.

Note

There is no separate “quick” option on this menu. The short one-screen form described below appears automatically when you are registering somebody in the middle of doing something else — putting a walk-in on the consult queue, or taking a booking.

The short form, step by step#

When you are already part-way through something — putting a walk-in on the consult queue, or taking a booking — pressing New Client gives you a short one-screen form instead of the full one, so you can get back to what you were doing. It captures the client and their first patient together.

Home›New Consultation›New Client

Enter the client's first name, last name and cell number. These three are required — everything else can wait.
Add an email address if you have one. Without it the client cannot be sent invoices, reminders or statements, and cannot use the client portal.
Under the patient section enter the animal's name and pick a species — Feline, Canine, Exotic or Production Animals. Both are required. Tap the male or female symbol if you know it.
Use Comment on Patient for something lasting and worth knowing every visit — “nervous with clippers”, “muzzle for nail trims”.
On the walk-in path you also get Reason for Visit. Fill it in — this is what the vet reads on the queue card, and leaving it blank puts them on the queue with no reason at all.
Press Save in the footer.

Note

When you leave the cell number field, FastVet checks whether you already have somebody on that number. If it finds a match it offers a link to open that client instead — take it, rather than creating a second record for the same family.

Careful

Saving this form does more than create the client: it finishes the job you started. A walk-in goes straight onto the consult queue; a booking is created in the slot you had chosen; anything else is added as a call-back so nobody forgets to ring them. You land on the queue or booking list, not back on the client record.

Full client details#

The full form captures everything the practice might need for billing and emergencies.

Group	What goes here
Personal details	Title, ID number, first and last name.
Contact details	Cell, home number, email, and an alternative email. Invoices and statements go to the main email; the alternative can be copied in.
Partner details	A second person on the account who may bring the animal in.
Residential / postal address	Used on invoices and statements.
Emergency contact	Who to call if the owner cannot be reached while their animal is with you.
Additional information	VAT number, private notes about the client, and a note that prints on their invoices.

Tip

Notes on client is for your staff only, and it is read back to them: it appears on the client record, on the account and payment screens, and on the patient panel during a consultation. Keep it to the thing somebody needs to know before they deal with this client. Additional info (shown on invoices) is visible to the client — use it for things like a purchase-order number or a medical-aid reference.

The client record#

Opening a client takes you to Account Details — the hub for that family. From here you can see their patients, their balance, and start almost any piece of work.

A client record showing their patients and the actions available.

Under the contact details sits the balance, and under that — tinted, so it is not mistaken for another contact field — any note your practice has written about this client. It is the same note as Notes on client on the edit form, and the client never sees it.

Note

The note follows the client to the screens where it matters: the account, Pay, Debit, and the patient panel during a consultation. If it is not showing anywhere, nobody has written one — add it with Edit.

Across the top of the record:

Statement opens their account — every charge and payment, with the buttons to print or email a statement, take a payment, or reverse something. It does not send anything by itself.
Sale starts an over-the-counter sale against their account. Each patient row has its own Sale button too, for when the sale belongs to a particular animal.
Map opens their residential address in maps, where one has been geocoded.
Delete marks the client as deleted; the button becomes Undelete afterwards.

And in the footer:

Send Update Link opens WhatsApp with a private link the client can use to correct their own contact details. They do not need a portal login — the link itself authorises just their record.
Edit changes the client's own details.
New Patient adds another animal to this client.

Note

If the client has an unfinished sale, it shows as a Pending Sales button here — tap it to pick the sale back up rather than starting a new one.

Each patient then gets its own row of buttons, and this is where most of a receptionist's day actually happens:

On the patient row	Does
Queue	Sends this animal to a queue — see Putting a patient on a queue.
Booking	Starts an appointment for this animal.
Sale	An over-the-counter sale recorded against this animal rather than just the account.
Patient Data	Documents and photographs — see below.
Visits	Every consultation this animal has had.
History	The full clinical history.
Edit	The patient record — species, breed, colour, chip, photo.
Boarding	Checks this animal into boarding.
Deceased	Records the date and cause of death. Shown in red because it is not easily undone.

Patients with a recorded date of death stay on the list, greyed out, so their history is never lost.

Tip

A patient already waiting shows a chip on its row — “In consult queue · waiting 25m” — and any appointments they have coming up are listed underneath. Glance at that before you queue or book them again; it is how you avoid the same animal appearing twice.

Note

Boarding only appears if your practice has the boarding module switched on, and the Queue form only offers the purposes your practice uses.

Note

Arriving here from New Consultation also shows a short weigh-in form, so you can record a weight and send the patient to a queue in one step. See Putting a patient on a queue.

Adding and editing a patient#

Every animal has its own record carrying species, breed, colour, date of birth, microchip number and a photograph.

Open the client, then choose New Patient — or tap an existing patient to edit it.
Fill in the name, species, breed and colour. Breed and colour lists are maintained by your practice, so they stay consistent for reporting.
Record the date of birth if known — it drives the age shown on every clinical screen.
Add a microchip number and any sterilised or deceased flags.
Press Save.

Tip

Adding a photo is worth the ten seconds it takes. It appears on the queue cards and clinical screens, and it is the quickest way for staff to confirm they have the right animal.

Moving a patient to another client#

Animals are rehomed and families separate. Rather than re-creating the patient — which would strand its clinical history — move it.

Client record›Patient›Move Patient

Careful

Moving a patient takes its entire clinical history with it to the new owner. Past invoices stay with the client who was billed at the time.

Documents and photographs#

Patient Data holds anything you want to keep against the animal that is not a consultation note — referral letters, x-ray images, consent forms, insurance paperwork. The screen lists everything ever attached to that patient, whoever added it and whenever, so it doubles as the patient's document drawer.

Documents and images attached to a patient.

Open the client, tap the patient, and choose Patient Data.
Choose Add, then pick the file — or several files at once — and type a short description in Please enter comment. That description is what staff read in the list, so name the document rather than the file.
Press Add again to upload. Everything you selected goes up together under that one description.
Tap any row to open the document, or the red bin to remove one. Done closes the screen.

Note

JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF and PDF files are accepted. Images show a thumbnail in the list; a PDF shows a red PDF icon, and opens in a new tab when you tap the row.

Tip

Everything uploaded here also appears on the patient's clinical history as Clinical History: File Uploaded, dated the day it was added — so a consent form filed today sits in the timeline next to the consultation it belongs to.

Clinical history#

History on a patient row opens the single chronological view of everything that has happened to that animal — visits and what was written at them, lab results, medication, vitals, weight trends and attached files, newest first, with filters and a search box over the lot.

Tip

This is the screen to open before a consultation. It answers “what did we do last time, and did it work?” faster than digging through individual visits — and it can be opened mid-visit without losing the consultation you are in.

It has a topic of its own: Clinical history.

Merging duplicate clients#

Who can do this

Administrators only.

Duplicates happen — somebody phones in and is registered again, or a surname is spelled differently. Merging folds one record into another, keeping all the history.

Home›Search Client›Merge Clients

Animated Merging a duplicate client into the record you want to keep.

From the client search choose Merge Clients.
Find and select the record you want to keep.
Find and select the duplicate to fold into it.
Check the summary carefully — patients, invoices and ledger entries all move across.
Confirm the merge.

Careful

A merge cannot be undone. Make sure you have the “keep” and “duplicate” the right way round before confirming — the duplicate record disappears.