Consultations · FastVet Help Centre

Starting a consultation#

Who can do this

The consult queue is open to Doctor and Receptionist. The Consult button, and adding or changing anything on the consultation, needs the Doctor role.

Open the consult queue from Home.
Find the patient and press Consult.

A consultation just opened. The invoice holds only the reason for the visit.

Area	What it holds
Order number	Business accounts only: the client's order number, and who brought the animal in. See Business accounts.
Patient panel	The patient's name, sex and weight, with the age, breed, owner, phone number, any balance owing, and notes on the patient and the client. Hover over the age, or tap it, to read the date of birth it was worked out from. The Weight button records the weight for this visit. Until it is weighed, the panel shows the weight from the last visit that was, with an amber marker such as 5 weeks ago once that is two weeks old or more. Hover over it to see the date. The pencil edits the patient. Tap the heading to fold the panel.
Diagnosis	The patient's standing problem list, in your own words. See Diagnosis.
On medication	What the patient is already on. Only appears when there is something. See Prescriptions & repeats.
Previous visit summary	A short AI-written recap of recent history. Only appears once the patient has one, and starts folded. See Voice notes & AI summaries.
Notes	Doctor's Notes (internal) and Client Notes (shown to the client). See Clinical notes.
Alerts	At the foot of the doctor's notes: what this patient is overdue for, or about to be due for, worked out as you open the visit. Only appears when there is something. See Patient alerts.
Invoice	The date, the treating vet, the vitals readings, and every item charged, with the running total.
Discharge sheets	Aftercare sheets attached to this visit. Only appears once there is one.
Reminders	Reminders set from this visit. Only appears once there is one.

Patient alerts#

An overdue vaccination, in amber at the foot of the doctor's notes.

Under the doctor's own notes, FastVet shows what is already true about this patient and nothing else on the screen would tell you. Today that is vaccinations: Rabies 6 weeks overdue, 5-in-1 (DHPPi/L) due now, or Rabies due tomorrow.

Nothing is stored. Each line is worked out from the patient's record as the visit opens, so it is right the moment you read it and there is nothing to tick off. Amber is something that has gone past; grey is something worth offering while the animal is here.

It looks a little way forward as well as back. A dose falling due inside the same number of days your practice gives owners notice of is shown while the animal is in front of you, rather than being sent home to come back for it.
Only the latest dose of each protection counts, so a patient part-way through a puppy course says one thing, not four.
A patient that is up to date says nothing at all, and nothing is drawn.
The grace period your practice sets decides when due now becomes overdue. See Vaccinations.

It reads as a footer to the note, under a thin rule: the practice wrote the note, and FastVet worked out the line under it. Typing in the note does not take it away.

Note

Folding the Notes box away does not hide an alert: it moves onto the folded heading, in the same amber, so it is still the first thing you see.

Note

Alerts need vaccination records switched on. Until then there is nothing to work them out from and nothing is shown.

Who the consultation belongs to#

Beside the date on the invoice is the treating vet, the person whose work this visit is. It is filled in when the consultation opens, and you can change it at any time, including after the visit is finished.

The treating vet, next to the consultation date.

If the patient was queued for a named doctor, that doctor is the treating vet, even if somebody else opened the record.
Otherwise it is whoever pressed Consult.

Note

The picker lists staff with the Doctor role. If nobody in your practice has that role, the picker is hidden; see Staff & roles.

The treating vet is separate from whoever presses Done, so reception can finish a visit without taking the credit for it.

Tip

Choose No vet recorded if the visit belongs to nobody in particular, rather than crediting the wrong person.

Charging items#

Everything you use (the consultation fee, drugs, vaccines, lab work, procedures) is added the same way, through the price picker.

Animated Adding the consultation fee: search, pick the item, confirm it.

Press Add in the footer.
Search for the item by name, or browse by category.
Tap the item you want.
Check the unit price and the quantity. Add a client-visible comment if useful, and press Add.

After each Add the picker stays open for the next item. The Invoice bar under the patient shows the number of lines, the running total and the item you just added. Tap it to see every line: the ones added since you opened the picker are marked Added.

The Invoice bar opened after three items: each one added from the picker is marked, and the total includes them.

Everything except a lab test takes a quantity: drugs and materials by dose or pack, and procedures by how many times you did it. Total Price appears under the price as soon as the quantity is more than one, so you can see what the line will charge before you add it.

Tip

A procedure charged many times over is how a herd kept as a single patient is billed: 47 inseminations is one line with a quantity of 47, not 47 lines.

Note

The quantity reaches the client's invoice: it prints under the line as 47 x Insemination, so the owner can see what they are paying for. A line charged once prints its description alone.

Searching the catalogue. Three or more letters searches every category at once.

Confirming the price and an optional client-visible comment before charging the item.

Tip

Search matches the item name, its category and its subcategory, in any order, so “amox 250” finds “Amoxicillin 250mg”.

Note

The picker only offers items your practice has marked for use in a consultation. If an item you expect is missing, check its settings under Prices.

A consultation with items charged. The total updates as you go.

Dispensing: instructions and a printed label#

When you charge a Treatment item (tablets, ear drops, an injection to go home with) the item editor adds an Instructions box. Once you have written an instruction, a Print Label button and a preview of the label appear beneath it.

Note

Only Treatment items have the Instructions box. If a medicine you dispense has none, its catalogue entry is set to a different type; change it under Update Prices.

A Treatment item, with its Instructions box.

You can type the instruction yourself, or tap Instruction Maker to build it from buttons.

Animated Building “Take 1 tablet 2 times a day with food. Repeat for 5 days. Complete the course.” with the Instruction Maker.

On the item editor, tap Instruction Maker above the Instructions box.
Tap along the row: Take or Apply · how many (1–6, or ¼ / ½) · tablet, drop, dose or ml · how often (1–4, then day or week, or just daily) · With Food, Before Food or After Food · Repeat for 1–5 · days or weeks · Complete course or No Symptoms.
The sentence builds as you tap. Tap a button again to remove it, and edit the text by hand if you need to.

The Instruction Maker, with the sentence it has built below it.

Tip

You do not need every group. “Apply 2 drops 3 times a day” is a few taps; the parts you skip are left out.

Press Print Label to print the label for the box or bottle. It carries your practice details, the date, who dispensed it, the item and quantity, the instruction, and the patient and owner. What goes on it, the label size and printer setup are covered in Dispensing labels.

The label preview. Check the quantity matches the course: here ten tablets for “1 tablet twice a day for 5 days”.

Tip

The instruction also appears on the client's invoice and in the clinical history.

Browsing by category#

The category buttons shown when you first open the picker.

The picker opens on your practice's categories. Choose one to see its subcategories, then choose a subcategory to list its items. Where a category has only one subcategory, the picker goes straight to its items.

Everything is listed in alphabetical order: the categories, their subcategories, the items inside them and the search results. A strength is read as a number, so Betamox 250 comes before Betamox 1000 rather than after it.

A subcategory's items, priced and ready to charge. The line above them is the way back.

The trail along the top says where you are (All categories › Medication › General) and every part of it that is a button goes back to that level. All categories returns to the grid from anywhere, including after you have already chosen an item, so a wrong turn costs one tap instead of leaving the screen.

Once you have chosen an item the trail ends with its name, and the subcategory before it becomes a button as well: press that to go back to its list and take a different one. It is the quick way to correct a wrong strength or size, and it works the same whether you browsed to the item or found it through the search box.

Alongside the categories are a few shortcuts. Which ones you see depends on where you opened the picker and on your role:

Shortcut	What it does	Shown on
Diagnosis	Adds an entry to the patient's diagnosis list.	Consultations
Discharge sheet	Attaches one of your practice's discharge sheets to the visit. Each sheet says which of these it is offered on, and a sheet with no file is never offered.	Consultations, hospital and boarding days, grooming
Discount	Applies a discount line.	Consultations and grooming
Add Price	Creates a one-off charge that is not in the catalogue.	Consultations, administrators only
Vitals	Opens the vitals editor for the day.	Hospital and boarding days

Correcting a line you have already charged#

Tap any line in the items list to reopen it. You can change the quantity, price, lab result, client-visible comment or dispensing instruction without deleting the line and charging it again.

Tap the line in the items list.
Change what needs changing.
Press Save Changes in the footer. Cancel leaves the line as it was.

Note

On a finished visit you can still update a line's result and client-visible comment, useful when a lab result comes back the next day. Price, quantity and instruction are locked; to change what was charged, see Correcting a finished consultation.

Recording vitals#

Vitals are recorded against the visit and feed the trend charts in the patient's clinical history.

Animated Opening the vitals editor from the readings row, taking a set, and saving it.

On the invoice, tap the readings row at the top of the items list. If nothing has been recorded yet, it is an empty row with a heartbeat icon.
Enter the readings you took. Which vitals appear, and how each is entered, is set under Settings → Vitals.
Press Save vitals in the footer, or Cancel to leave without saving.

The vitals editor open on a consultation.

While the editor is open, the items list and the other footer buttons are hidden. Saved readings show as coloured pills in the readings row; tap the row again to correct them.

The saved readings, above the invoice items.

Tip

Leave blank any reading you did not take. Recording a weight at every visit, with the Weight button in the patient header, is what makes the weight trend useful.

Clinical notes#

The Notes section holds two notes. Tap a note (its text, the empty line or the pencil) to edit it. It saves as you type, and closes when you press Save or tap away.

Note	Who reads it	What belongs in it
Doctor's Notes	Staff only.	The clinical record: history, findings, differentials, your reasoning and the plan.
Client Notes	Staff and the client.	What the owner needs to take home: how to give the medication, what to watch for, when to come back.

Careful

Client Notes is shown to the owner. If your practice uses the client portal, it appears on the visit in their account under “Notes for you”. Check which note you have open before you type.

If your practice has AI features, a third note, the AI Note, sits between them. Its Record button records the consultation and writes a note into the AI Note for you to read and correct. It is internal, like Doctor's Notes. See Voice notes & AI summaries.

Tap the Notes heading to fold the section away. When folded, it shows which notes have something in them. FastVet remembers the choice until you close the browser.

Who can do this

Writing in the notes needs the Doctor role; everyone else sees them read-only. A doctor can still correct the notes after the visit is finished: see Adding notes after the visit is finished.

Note

Of the written notes, only Client Notes reaches the client portal. The diagnosis and Doctor's Notes do not.

Adding notes after the visit is finished#

You can add to or correct the Doctor's Notes and Client Notes on a visit that has already been finished. Open the visit itself and type in its notes. There is no need to start a new consultation for it: that adds a second, empty visit to the patient's record.

Tip

Already reading the patient's clinical history? Press Open Visit / Add Notes on the visit's card and you are straight in. The route below is the one to take from the client's account.

Home›Search Client›the client›…›Visits›View

Open the client and press … on the patient's row to show its buttons. Under Records, press Visits.
Find the visit by its date and press View.
Tap the Doctor's Notes, or the pencil beside Client Notes, and type. The note saves as you type, or press Save when you are done.

The patient's buttons, opened with …. Visits is next to History.

Every visit the patient has had, each with a View button.

A finished visit with its Doctor's Notes open for editing.

Only the notes can change. The date, the items and what was charged stay as they were. To change the charge, see Correcting a finished consultation.

Who can do this

Writing in the notes needs the Doctor role. Other staff can open the visit and read the notes, but cannot change them.

Diagnosis#

The Diagnosis panel is the patient's standing problem list, not a note for this visit alone. Entries stay on the patient until somebody removes them, so use it for “chronic kidney disease”, not “vomiting today”. They also show under the patient on the client's account, where the five most recent are listed and the rest are counted.

Press the + on the Diagnosis panel, or Diagnosis in the price picker.
Type the diagnosis in your own words.
Press OK.

The panel shows how many entries there are. Tap an entry to change its wording, use the expand icon to see the full list, and use the button beside an entry to remove it once it has resolved.

On a list of more than five entries, a Clear all button appears beside those icons while the panel is open. It takes the whole list off in one go, after asking you to confirm, which saves working down a long list one entry at a time. It is there for patients brought over from another practice management system: those arrive with every diagnosis they have ever had still open, often a hundred or more, and almost none of it is a live problem.

A long problem list, with the confirmation open: Clear all is on the panel heading, and says how many entries it will take off.

Note

Removing a diagnosis, one at a time or with Clear all, does not delete anything: the entry comes off the problem list and off the consultation, and the record of it stays. Putting one back means adding it again.

Tip

Diagnoses are free text, so agree a house style: “CKD” or “chronic kidney disease”, not both. Open diagnoses can be added to a referral letter with one tap.

Protocols and packages#

A protocol is a bundle (a puppy vaccination course, a dental package) that adds several items at once.

A protocol is billed as one line, at the Protocol Charge. The items inside it are recorded against the visit, so stock is taken off and the clinical record is complete, but they are not billed separately and appear underneath without prices.

A charged protocol: one price on the protocol line, its items listed beneath it without prices.

Search for the protocol and pick it. A Protocol Summary opens instead of the usual item editor.
Set each item's quantity to what you actually used. Set anything you did not use to 0.
Check the Protocol Charge: Normal is the package price, Custom lets you type a price, and Calculated charges the total of what you used.
Press Add Protocol.

Note

Building protocols and the charge modes are covered in Protocols.

Note

Deleting the protocol line removes all of its items. To drop a single item, delete that item's line; this does not change the bill, because the price is on the protocol line. To charge less, change the Protocol Charge.

Attaching a discharge sheet#

Your practice keeps a set of aftercare sheets: post-operative care, a diet sheet, what to expect after a vaccination. Attach one to the visit to give it to the client.

Press Add to open the price picker.
Choose Discharge sheet, alongside the categories.
Pick the sheet.

Attached sheets are listed under Discharge sheets, below the invoice. From there:

Action	What it does
The eye button, or tapping the name	Opens the sheet to read or print. Only shown where the sheet has a document attached.
The bin button	Removes it from this visit. The sheet itself stays available for other visits.

Note

Sheets are set up under Settings → Discharge Sheets. See Reminders & letters.

Setting a reminder#

Reminder in the footer schedules a future reminder for this patient: next year's vaccination, a recheck, the end of a course of treatment. Once the visit has one, the button shows the count, for example Reminder (1), and the reminders are listed below the invoice, where you can open or delete them.

Press Reminder.
Choose what the reminder is for and the date it is due.
Save.

Due reminders are collected on the reminders screen, and your practice can have FastVet email them automatically.

Checking history mid-visit#

History in the footer opens the patient's full clinical history. Press back to return to the consultation exactly as you left it.

The clinical history, opened from a consultation.

It shows a summary of the patient, weight and vitals trends, lab results with out-of-range values, and every visit with its notes, medication and items, filterable and searchable. For example:

What did we give last time? The Medication filter, or type the drug into the search box.
Is this vaccination due? The last one is on the timeline with its date.
Has she lost weight? The weight chart.
What did the bloods show in April? The lab result, opened on its flagged values.

See Clinical history. For the patient's current prescriptions, press Meds; see Prescriptions & repeats.

Admitting from a consultation#

If the patient needs to stay, press Admit to move them into a hospital admission, taking this consultation with them. You do not need to finish the consultation first.

Finishing the visit#

Animated Writing up the notes and finishing the consultation.

Check the items and the total.
Check the notes.
Press Done. If the consultation has no items, FastVet asks you to confirm.

Finishing closes the consultation, posts the total to the client's account, and moves the patient from the consult queue to the payment queue. FastVet then opens the share screen so you can send the invoice while the client is still there.

Note

If your practice has automatic invoice emails switched on, the client is emailed their invoice when you finish. See Email & notifications.

Correcting a finished consultation#

To change what a finished consultation charged, reverse it from the client's account. Reversing adds a credit against the original charge rather than deleting it.

Home›Search Client›the client›Statement›the charge›Reverse

Once reversed, you can correct the consultation and finish it again. See Reversing a charge.

Bringing back a cancelled visit#

A consultation removed from the queue can be brought back. A cancelled visit is left off the patient's clinical history, so nothing that was never given is recorded against the animal, but it is still listed on the owner's account under the patient's visits, marked Cancelled. Open it from there and it shows a red Cancelled badge with an Uncancel button.

Open the owner's account and find the visit, marked Cancelled.
Press Uncancel on the badge.

The patient goes back onto the consult queue, with everything already charged still on the visit, and FastVet takes you to the queue. The visit returns to the clinical history, and any follow-up reminder that was cancelled with it is re-opened.

Tip

If you cancelled the wrong row, uncancel it rather than starting a second consultation; otherwise you end up with two visits and two invoices for one appointment.

Referral letters#

FastVet can compose a referral letter from the patient's history, so the specialist receives the actual records. You start it from the clinical history.

Home›Search Client›the client›the patient’s …›History›Compose Referral

From the consultation press History, or open the patient's clinical history another way.
Press Compose Referral in the footer.
Enter the recipient email and write the letter. Tap an entry in the Reference panel to insert the AI summary, the patient and owner, vitals and lab results, or open diagnoses and medication.
Under Clinical records attached to the letter, tick the visits and records to include. The last 12 months are ticked for you.
Press Preview to check the letter, then Send.

Note

Compose Referral is greyed out for a patient with no history.

Large files. Every file on a ticked record is included, and each shows its size. A file too large to attach (imaging often is) is marked with a link icon and sent as a secure download link in the letter instead. The specialist does not need a FastVet login to download it. The links work for 30 days, and the letter says so.

Tip

To leave something out, untick it. Unticking a large file frees up room, so other files may go back to being normal attachments.