Help Centre › Clients & patients

Client tags

Label clients — bad payer, handed over, feed only — and list everyone who carries any combination of them.

A tag is a label you put on a client and take off again. Your practice decides what the labels are, for example Bad payer, Handed over, Feed only or Stud farm.

A client can carry any number of tags, so someone can be both inactive and handed over. You can then list clients by a combination of tags, for example everyone tagged Feed only who is also overdue.

Two kinds of tag#

Your practice creates its own tags and puts them on clients by hand. FastVet also has built-in tags that it works out from the client's account.

	Your tags	Built-in tags
Who puts them on	Staff, on the client record	FastVet, from the client's account
Who creates them	An administrator, in Settings	They come with FastVet
Can you take one off?	Yes	No. It goes when the reason goes
How they look	A coloured chip	A coloured chip with a small dot

Built-in tags are always current. When a client settles their account, Payment overdue no longer shows on them; nobody has to take it off.

Settings › Client Tags, with your own tags above the built-in ones.

What the built-in tags mean#

Tag	On a client when
Payment overdue	They have an unpaid charge older than their own payment terms. A client on 60-day terms is not overdue at 45 days.
Inactive 3 months	They have an account history, but no charge or payment in the last 90 days. A client who has never been charged is not inactive.
New client	Their first charge was raised in the last 30 days.
Over credit limit	Their balance is above the credit limit on their account. Clients with no credit limit never get this tag.
Account on hold	Account on hold is ticked on the client record.
No email or cell	There is no email address and no cell number on file.

Tip

An administrator can rename a built-in tag (for example Payment overdue to Agterstallig), change its colour, or hide it. Renaming changes only the label, not when the tag applies.

Setting up your tags#

Who can do this

Administrators create and edit tags. Any staff member can put a tag on a client.

Home›Settings›Client Tags

Press New tag.
Type a short Name, such as “Bad payer”.
Optionally, fill in What it means so staff know when to use the tag.
Pick one of the six colours. Each colour button shows the tag as it will look.
Press Save.

Each tag shows how many clients carry it. Press Edit to change one of your tags, or Rename to change a built-in tag's name or colour.

Tip

Red for tags that should make staff stop and check, such as Bad payer or Handed over, is a useful convention.

Retiring a tag you no longer use#

Press Retire on one of your tags. FastVet shows how many clients carry it; press Retire it to confirm, or Keep it to cancel.

Retiring takes the tag off every client carrying it, and out of the pickers, lists and report filters.

Careful

Retiring cannot be undone. You can create a new tag with the same name, but it starts empty: it does not bring back the clients who carried the old one, or the notes saying why.

Built-in tags cannot be retired. Press Hide instead to remove one from client records, pickers and lists, and Show to bring it back.

Putting a tag on a client#

You can tag a client in two places.

Client›Account Details

On Account Details the client's tags show under their name, followed by a +. Press +, pick one or more tags, and press Add tag. Press the × on a tag to take it off.

A client's tags on Account Details, with the + to add another.

Client›Edit›Notes & tags

On the edit form, the Notes & tags section has an Add tag button. Pick one or more tags, optionally type the reason in the Why? box, and press Add tag.

The tags on the edit form, with a note saying why.

Tip

Use the note, for example “Handed to Van Zyl Attorneys, 12 Aug”. It shows when you hover over the tag.

Note

Built-in tags have no × and are not offered when you add a tag.

A client's tags also show on their account and on the Pay and Debit screens.

Listing clients by tag#

Home›Reports›Clients by tag

Choose how to match: Any of the tags you pick, All of them, or None of them.
Press the tags you want. The list updates as you go. Clear takes them all off.
Read the three counts above the table.
Press Export in the footer to download the list to Excel, or press a row to open that client.

Clients by tag, with the counts above the list.

In this list: how many clients match.
Reachable by email: how many of them have an email address.
Reachable by SMS: how many have a cell number.

Note

The screen shows 100 clients per page. Export downloads every client that matches, with name, email, cell and balance, and the tags you chose at the top of the sheet.

To find	Set it to
Everyone flagged as a problem	Any of: Bad payer, Handed over
Feed customers who are behind on payment	All of: Feed only, Payment overdue
Everyone except clients with the attorneys	None of: Handed over

Narrowing a report by tag#

Seven reports have a Tags filter beside the period: Debtors age analysis, Invoice register, Credit notes, Payments received (detail), Top clients, Repeats due and Email history.

Home›Reports›the report

Press a tag to include it and press it again to drop it. The report runs again each time.

To answer	Use
Who: a list of clients to phone or email	Clients by tag
How much: money owed, charged, paid or credited	The report, filtered by tag

For example, Who have we handed over? is Clients by tag. How much is with the attorneys? is Debtors age analysis filtered to Handed over.

Note

On a report, two or more tags means clients who carry all of them. For clients with either tag, use Clients by tag. The filter uses the tags clients carry today; see Narrowing a report to tagged clients.