For Practice managers
Every article written for this role, by area.
Getting started
- Welcome to VivetraVivetra keeps every patient, owner and visit in one record, whether your practice runs a general clinic, a hospital ward, boarding kennels, a shelter, or equine or livestock wor…
- Signing inEach practice has its own Vivetra address. Your practice manager will give it to you. Bookmark it, because it's the same every day.
- Finding your way aroundVivetra has one menu down the left-hand side of every screen. On a phone or small tablet it's folded away behind the Menu button at the top.
- Your account and settingsMy Account, at the bottom of the menu, is where you change your own details. Nothing here affects anyone else.
Records & admin
- Record a bite incidentWhen an animal in your care bites or scratches someone, record it under Bite Incidents. The record keeps who was hurt, how badly, the animal's rabies status, whether you reporte…
- Find or add a patientPatients lists every animal your practice has on file, whichever module it came in through. Use it to look a patient up by name or species, or to add a new one.
- Find a personVivetra keeps one record for each real person, however many roles they have at your practice: a pet owner who also fosters for your shelter is still one person. Find a Person se…
- Track outside lab resultsLab Results is your follow-up queue for anything sent out of the clinic: samples to a reference lab and referrals to a specialist. Log each one when it goes, and it stays on the…
- Manage callback tasksCallback Tasks is the staff to-do list for patients: the day-after call following surgery, a recheck in two weeks, chasing a lab result. It's for the team, not the client. Remin…
- Work the patient recall listPatient Recalls shows every recall that's overdue or due in the next 30 days: vaccines, refills, wellness checks and the like. Use it to see who needs contacting and to tick off…
- Set up the controlled drug listBefore a controlled drug can be logged or counted, it has to be on your Controlled Drug List. Add each drug and strength you stock, in the unit you want its balance kept in.
- Do a controlled drug countA physical count checks what's actually on the shelf against what the dispensing log says should be there. Every count is witnessed by a second person, and Vivetra tells you str…
- Set up chart templatesChart templates hold starter text for the four parts of a SOAP chart. A clinician picks one on a new note and then edits it freely, so a routine wellness exam doesn't start from…
- Record a privacy or security incidentThe Privacy Breach Log is your register of every security or privacy incident: a lost laptop, an email to the wrong client, someone looking at records they shouldn't. Record eve…
- Add and manage staffStaff is where practice owners add people, set what they can do, and switch accounts off when someone leaves. Only practice owners see it in the menu.
- Set up locations and roomsLocations & Rooms holds two lists: your facilities (the physical sites, if you have more than one) and your housing units (every kennel, cage, run or ward space an animal can be…
- Change your practice's settingsOrganization Settings holds the details that apply to your whole practice: its name and address, time zone, tax rate, logo and colours, and what everyone sees on the sign-in scr…
- Set up the client portalThe client portal is where pet owners sign in to see their animals' records, book and pay. Client Portal Settings is the one place you open it and decide what clients can do. Ea…
- Connect card paymentsTo take card payments from clients, connect your practice's own Stripe account under Payment Settings. The money goes straight to your Stripe account; Vivetra never holds it. St…
- Use emergency accessEmergency Access Override gives you full access for a short time when an animal's care can't wait and the person with the right permission can't be reached. For example, you nee…
- Check state rules and complianceState Rules & Compliance shows the rules Vivetra is applying for your practice's location: how long controlled-drug records must be kept and whether you must report to a prescri…
- Review the audit logThe Audit Log shows who changed whose permissions, and who opened which records. Use it to check up after an emergency access grant or when you suspect someone has looked at rec…
- Export your practice's dataData Export downloads a complete copy of your practice's data: every table in the database and every stored file. It's yours to keep as a backup or take elsewhere. Only practice…
- Add or remove modulesModules & billing is where a practice owner adds or removes clinical modules, such as Boarding or Equine, and sees what that does to the monthly price. Only practice owners can…
- Contact supportContact Support sends a message straight to the Vivetra team: a question, a billing query, a feature idea or a problem. Anyone at the practice can use it.
- Keep the problem list and allergies up to dateEach patient has a problem list (what's wrong with them now, and what was wrong before) and an allergy list. Keep both current: allergies to formulary drugs are checked automati…
- Record vaccinations and weightsEvery vaccine given and every weigh-in goes on the patient's chart, so anyone can see what's due and how the animal's weight is trending. Open the patient's record and pick Vacc…
- Review changes made offlineSome screens keep working when the internet drops. What you save is queued on your device and sent once you're back online. Usually that just happens. When a change can't be sen…
- See what a staff member has doneStaff activity pulls together the main things one person has done: the visits and appointments they were the attending vet for, the controlled-drug entries they were part of, an…
- Track staff controlled-drug credentialsEach vet who prescribes or handles controlled drugs needs a current controlled-substance registration, such as a DEA registration and a state registration in the US. Record them…
- Use the patient recordThe patient record is the one page that pulls together everything about an animal: who's responsible for it, its problems, visits, files and links to the rest of its chart. Open…
Vet Practice
- Find or add an ownerOwners is where you look up a pet's owner and add a new one. Everyone can search; adding an owner needs permission to edit owner records, which front desk staff and practice man…
- Merge duplicate ownersWhen the same person has ended up with two owner records, merge them so their pets, appointments and invoices are all in one place. Only practice managers can merge owners.
- Review contact-change requestsContact-Change Requests holds new email addresses, phone numbers and addresses that owners suggested through the portal. Nothing reaches the owner's record until someone on staf…
- Handle refill requestsOwners can ask for a prescription refill from the client portal. Those requests wait in Refill Requests until a vet approves or declines them. Approving one records a real dispe…
- Publish pet care articlesPet Care Articles is where you write the pet-care library owners read in your client portal. Every signed-in owner sees the same articles in the same order; nothing here is emai…
- Book an appointmentThe Schedule shows every appointment for a day or a week, and the booking form underneath it is where you add a new one. Open it from Vet Practice Scheduling › Schedule in the m…
- Review online appointment requestsPet owners can ask for an appointment from the client portal. Those requests wait in Appointment Requests until someone at the practice approves, declines or follows up on them.…
- Set up appointment types and working hoursScheduling Settings is where your practice decides what can be booked: the kinds of appointment and how long each takes, the rooms and equipment, when each vet works, and when a…
- Use the appointment waitlistWhen the schedule is full, put the client on the Waitlist. When a slot opens up you can offer it to them and book it, and Vivetra shows you who's waiting each time an appointmen…
- Send client remindersVivetra sends clients reminders about upcoming appointments, vaccines coming due and recalls. Client Reminders is where you decide how many days ahead each reminder goes out, se…
- Set up wellness plansDefine the wellness plans your practice offers: what each is called, how long a term runs, what it costs, and which services it covers. Only staff with permission to manage plan…
- Set up services and pricesServices & Prices is your practice's price list. Each service or product you add here can be picked when you write an invoice or an estimate, so the same service is described an…
- Create an estimateAn estimate is a quote you give an owner before a procedure, such as a dental or a spay. It shows a low and a high price, because the final cost often depends on what the vet fi…
- Create an invoice and take paymentAn invoice is the bill for a visit. You create it for an owner, add what you charged, send it, and then record the payment. Open it from Vet Practice Billing › Vet Practice Invo…
- Run financial reportsTwo reports under Vet Practice Billing show where the practice's money stands: which bills are still unpaid and how old they are, and how much each vet has brought in. Only vets…
- Enroll a pet on a wellness planSign a pet up on one of your practice's wellness plans, see what the plan still covers, and approve plans clients ask for in the portal. Vivetra records the plan and counts the…
- Manage a booked appointmentEach appointment has its own screen where you check the patient in, confirm, start the visit, reschedule, cancel or record a deposit. Open it from the Schedule by selecting the…
- Print an account statementAn account statement lists every invoice raised for one owner over a period, with an opening balance, a running balance and the balance due. Print it or save it as a PDF to hand…
- Track pet insurance claimsKeep a record of a pet's insurance policies, the claims made on them, and which documents each claim still needs. Vivetra tracks status only: you submit the claim to the insurer…
- Work with an owner's recordAn owner's record holds their contact details, tags, portal account and the pets they're linked to. Anyone can view it. Changing it needs permission to edit owner records, which…
Hospital
- Use the ward boardThe ward board shows every patient currently admitted to the hospital on one screen, grouped by triage level. Use it at the start of a shift, on a wall monitor, or whenever you…
- Admit a patientAdmitting a patient opens a hospital stay. Once admitted, the patient appears on the ward board and you can write treatment orders for them. Use this for planned admissions and…
- Set up departmentsDepartments are your hospital's own list of services, such as Emergency & Critical Care, Cardiology, Internal Medicine or Surgery. Referrals are routed to a department from this…
- Manage ownersOwners is the hospital's list of the people responsible for its patients, called guardians on screen. Each guardian record holds contact details, the patients they're linked to,…
- Take in a new referralReferrals is the inbox for cases sent to your hospital: by referring vets, from emergency walk-ins, internal transfers or owners coming to you directly. Record each one as soon…
- Manage referring practices and vetsReferring Contacts is your list of the practices and vets who send you cases. Add them here once, then pick them when you record a referral.
- Give referring vets portal accessYou can give a referring vet a private link to your referral portal. With it they can follow the cases they sent you and read the reports you've sent back, and, if you allow it,…
- Read referral reportsReferral Reports shows how your referral network is doing: how many cases each referring practice sends you, and which relationships have gone quiet. It only reads your referral…
- Build a treatment-plan estimateA treatment-plan estimate tells the owner what a course of treatment is likely to cost, as a low-to-high range. You build it as a draft, send it, record whether the owner approv…
- Bill a hospital stayA hospital invoice is the bill for a stay. Each one starts from an approved treatment-plan estimate: converting the estimate creates the invoice with its lines (see treatment-pl…
- End a hospital stayEvery hospital stay ends one of three ways: the patient goes home (discharge), moves to another facility (transfer), or dies. The End Stay screen handles all three, and is also…
- Log contact with the owner during a stayThe owner contact log is a record of every time the hospital tried to reach a patient's owner during a stay, and what happened. Log failed attempts too ("no answer", "left voice…
- Record a death in hospitalWhen a patient dies during a hospital stay, the death record captures what happened: when, how, whether CPR was attempted, how the owner was told and what happens to the remains…
- Record a trauma or neurologic scoreThe trauma score screen holds every Animal Trauma Triage (ATT) and modified Glasgow Coma Scale (mGCS) score recorded on a visit, and shows how they've changed. The first score i…
- Work a referral caseEach referral has its own page where you move it through its stages, assign it to a department and specialist, attach the records that came with it, and send reports back to the…
- Write treatment ordersTreatment orders are the instructions for an admitted patient's care: medications, fluids, feeding, walks, monitoring and procedures. When you give an order a dosing interval, V…
Boarding
- Handle an overstay or abandoned petWhen an owner doesn't collect a pet at the scheduled pick-up, flag the stay as an overstay. The worklist then keeps a record of every attempt to reach the owner and any written…
- Set vaccine requirements for boardingVaccine Requirements sets which vaccines each species needs before a stay, and how many days before the stay each one must have been given. When staff assign a guest to a room o…
- Manage boarding owners and their petsOwners under Boarding holds the people who board pets with you, called guest owners. Each owner's record has their contact details, their pets, their client portal access and an…
- Send automatic messages and mass alertsVivetra sends boarding and grooming clients a set of automatic, one-way messages, such as booking confirmations, reminders and ready-for-pickup notices. Automatic Messages shows…
- Book a boarding stayReservations shows every boarding and daycare stay over a date range, and it's where you book a new one. Use it when an owner calls or walks in to book.
- Manage rooms, kennels and cleaningRooms & Kennels shows every kennel, run or room and who's in it right now, or how full you are over a range of dates. Assign Rooms is where you put a guest in a unit, move them,…
- Use the boarding waitlistThe Boarding Waitlist holds requests for stays you couldn't fit when they were asked for. A request is a note to follow up, not a booking: nothing is held or reserved until you…
- Set online booking rulesOnline Booking Rules decides what a client must have on file before they can book a stay or groom themselves, online. It's also where you switch real-time self-booking on or off.
- Bill a boarding stayBoarding Invoices is where you bill a stay, take or record payment, and handle refunds. An invoice starts as a draft, goes out as sent, and ends paid or void.
- Set boarding rates, policies and add-onsBoarding Rates & Policy holds what a night or a daycare day costs, your peak periods, and your cancellation rules. Boarding Add-Ons holds the extras a stay can have, like an ext…
- Sell and track prepaid creditPrepaid credit is value a client buys up front and spends later: either a credit balance, like $200 of credit for $180, or a number of visits, like ten daycare days. Prepaid Pac…
- Book and run grooming appointmentsThe Grooming Day Board shows every groom booked for a day, one column per groomer. From it you book new grooms and open any appointment to check the pet in, start, finish, cance…
- Manage grooming clientsClients under Grooming lists everyone who brings a pet in for grooming. Each client's record holds their contact details, their pets, their standing grooming release, any per-pe…
- Use the grooming waitlistThe Waitlist under Grooming holds requests for a groom you couldn't fit in yet, such as when an owner asks online for a slot that's full. You review each request, offer a slot,…
- Bill a grooming appointmentInvoices under Grooming is where you bill grooming clients: create a draft, add the services, mark it sent, take payment, and correct it afterwards with a credit note.
- Set up grooming services and packagesServices & Packages is your salon's price list. A service is one thing you do, like a bath, a full groom or a nail trim, with a default length and a base price. A service can ha…
- Set up grooming stations and groomer shiftsGrooms are booked against two things: a station (a tub, table or dryer) and a groomer who is working at that time. Stations lists the stations you have, and Groomer Shifts holds…
- Record a grooming incidentIncidents under Grooming is where you record anything that happens during a groom, such as a nick, a clipper burn, a quicked nail, a bite, an escape or a matting shave-down, and…
- Set the grooming vaccine policyVaccine Policy sets which vaccines a pet must have before you groom it, for which species, and how long before the appointment each one must have been given. The grooming check-…
- See boarding and grooming revenue togetherBoarding + Grooming Revenue is one report covering both sides of the business: net revenue for each, how often a stay comes with a groom, bundle revenue, grooming revenue by cha…
- Check a guest in and outEach stay has its own page where you check the pet in at drop-off, tell the owner when it's ready, and check it out at pick-up. It's also where you cancel a booking, record a no…
- Log daily care during a stayThe Husbandry care screen for a stay holds the owner's care plan (feeding, medication, walks, play) and a check-off log of what was actually done. If a boarded pet needs real me…
- Record a death in careIf a pet dies while it's checked in, record it on the stay's death-in-care record. The record stays editable as a draft, then you finalize it so the original account can't be ch…
- Record belongings and incidentsEvery stay has a Belongings & incidents page. Log what the owner left with the pet at drop-off, mark it returned at pick-up, and file a report when something happens during the…
- Send a stay report cardA report card is the note you send an owner during a stay: how their pet ate, who they played with, a couple of photos. Once published, it appears in the owner's client portal.…
Equine
- Find or add a horse ownerOwners is the list of everyone who owns a horse your practice looks after. Search it before you add someone, so the same person doesn't end up on file twice.
- Manage stablesStables are the barns and farms your practice visits. Add each one once and it shows up as a location when you book a farm call and when you set a horse's current stable.
- Schedule a farm callA farm call is one stop at a barn on a given day. Every horse you see there is a visit grouped under that stop, and the stop carries one travel fee that's shared across the owne…
- Handle farm call requestsOwners can ask for a farm call through the client portal. Their requests wait in Farm Call Requests until someone schedules, declines or cancels them.
- Create an invoice and record paymentEquine invoices bill one party for work on one horse: either an individual owner or an ownership group. Who can be billed, and their share, are worked out from the horse's recor…
- See the breeding season at a glanceBreeding Overview shows the whole breeding program on one screen: which mares are in season or due soon, which embryos and shipments are still waiting on something, and which st…
- Manage a stallion bookA stallion book is a stallion's season: the mares booked to him, how full the book is, and when he's available. It doesn't hold coverings or pregnancy checks; those live on each…
- Print a reproductive history summaryThe reproductive history summary puts a horse's whole breeding record on one printable page, ready to send with a referral or to an owner. It's built from the live record every…
- Put a horse on a quarantine holdA quarantine hold records that a horse is isolated, for example after a positive Coggins, an exposure or an import, and who you reported it to. Vivetra records the hold; it neve…
- Register an authorized agentAn authorized agent is someone the owner trusts to make decisions about the horse day to day, such as a trainer, riding instructor, farm manager or boarding barn. Record them he…
- Set up an ownership groupAn ownership group is a syndicate or partnership that owns a share of a horse as one party. Set the group up once, then give it ownership shares on each horse it owns.
- Track horse insurance policies and claimsKeep track of a horse's insurance policies, and of any claims and the paperwork each one needs. Vivetra only tracks status. It never sends a claim to an insurer; someone submits…
- Work with a horse's recordEvery horse, pony, donkey or mule has an equine record on top of its ordinary patient record. It holds the horse-specific facts: registrations, markings, its current stable, who…
Livestock
- Set up farm clients, operations and premisesEvery livestock record hangs off three things: the farm client (the person or business you bill), the operation (a production unit that client runs, like a dairy or a feedlot) a…
- Manage animal lotsA lot is a group of animals you manage and treat as one unit, such as a pen of feeder steers, identified by a USDA group/lot identification number (GIN) rather than by individua…
- Build and apply herd-health protocolsA herd-health protocol is a reusable vaccination or treatment program, like "fall-born calves: first vaccine at weaning, booster 21 days later". You build it once as a template,…
- Record a treatment authorizationA treatment authorization records standing permission to treat from whoever has legal authority over an operation's animals. It covers the common case where a feedlot manager or…
- Set up a herd health contractA herd health contract records an ongoing retainer or consulting arrangement that covers a whole operation, rather than one visit. From the contract you can generate each period…
- Read the antibiotic use reportThe antibiotic use report shows how much antimicrobial your practice's livestock clients used, as milligrams of active ingredient per population correction unit (mg/PCU). Use it…
- Plan a livestock farm callA farm call is one stop at a premises: the date, the attending vet and a single travel fee. The visits for the animals you see there are grouped under it, so the travel fee is c…
- Bill a farm clientLivestock invoices bill one farm client for one operation. You create a draft, add line items, then take payment or mark it paid. Invoices can also be started from a herd health…
- Print and send a preg-check reportThe pregnancy-check report is the desk copy of a preg-check session: the same report the producer was handed at the chute, for the practice's file, for printing, and for sending…
- Put a lot under a quarantine holdA quarantine hold records that a whole lot is under a regulatory disease hold, such as a TB reactor herd, a brucellosis trace or an HPAI order, and who you reported it to. Vivet…
- Record disease tests and movement certificatesFor an individually tracked animal you can record brucellosis, TB and trichomoniasis tests, keep the herd's routine TB schedule, and issue a movement certificate. Vivetra keeps…
- Track an individual animalSome animals are worth tracking one by one: a herd bull, a show heifer, a sick steer pulled from a pen. These are individual (Tier 1) animals. Each has a normal patient record p…
Shelter
- Record an intakeEvery animal that comes into your care gets an intake: one record for this stay, from arrival to outcome. You record it on the Intakes screen, then keep it up to date on the int…
- Manage surrender requestsSurrender Requests is your managed-admission queue: people who've called or walked in asking to surrender an animal, report a found animal or arrange a transfer, before the anim…
- Track litters and cohortsA cohort ties together animals that arrived together, such as a mum and her kittens, a bonded pair or a hoarding seizure. Each animal still has its own intake and its own outcom…
- Place and release holdsA hold keeps an animal from becoming available while something is pending, such as a stray's legal holding period, a bite quarantine, a medical isolation or a court case. The Ho…
- Log behavior and assess an animalRecord what you see an animal do, every day, in a sentence. Those daily observations build a running behavior record, and every so often you write a summary assessment over them.
- Run your foster programFoster is where you keep your list of foster caregivers and record which animals are out in foster homes, and when they come back.
- Use the animal journal with a foster caregiverEach foster placement has a shared journal. The caregiver posts updates from their client portal and you reply from the Foster screen, so the whole conversation about the animal…
- Add and find adoptersEvery adoption application needs an adopter on your roster. The Adopter roster on the Adoptions screen is where you add new adopters and look up ones you already have.
- Give adopters and fosters portal accessAdopters and foster caregivers can have their own client portal account, where they see their animals, forms and fees, and fosters post to the animal journal. You invite them, a…
- Process an adoptionAn adoption moves through three steps on the Adoptions screen: you create an application for an adopter and an animal, approve it, then finalize it. Finalizing is what records t…
- Publish adoptable listingsA listing is the public-facing write-up for an animal you're ready to adopt out: its name, a headline, a description, the adoption fee and what it's like with dogs, cats and chi…
- Put adoptable animals and donations on your websiteVivetra gives your shelter two pages anyone can open without signing in: a list of animals looking for a home, and a donation form. You link to them from your own website, or sh…
- Check census and length of stayCensus & Length of Stay shows how many animals are in your care right now at each of your sites, how long they've been with you so far, and the average stay for animals whose ep…
- Read the live release reportThe Live Release Report shows your live release rate and every outcome recorded in a date range, grouped the way the Asilomar Accords and Shelter Animals Count group them. Use i…
- Report to Shelter Animals CountShelter Animals Count builds your monthly figures for Shelter Animals Count's Intake & Outcome Database, lets you check and freeze them, and, if you switch it on, files them for…
- Track legal casesLegal Cases keeps the court facts for cruelty, neglect and custody-dispute cases: the docket number, seizing agency, court, bond and hearing dates, and which seized animals are…
- Invoice for shelter servicesShelter Invoices is where you bill the shelter's own fees: adoption fees, surrender and reclaim/impound fees, owner-requested euthanasia, medical services and donations. You cre…
- Record an outcomeAn outcome records how an animal left your care: adopted, returned to its owner, transferred, released, or died. Recording it closes the intake, and it's what the live release r…
- Record bottle-baby careThe Neonatal / Bottle-Baby Care flowsheet tracks a neonate's daily weights, feeds, elimination and weaning for one intake. Use it for bottle babies in the shelter or in foster.