Help Centre › Clinical care

Consultations

The heart of FastVet: examine the patient, record what you found, charge what you used, and finish the visit into an invoice.

A consultation is one visit by one patient. It carries the clinical record — notes, vitals, diagnosis, lab results — and the bill, which is built from the items you add as you work.

Starting a consultation#

Who can do this

The consult queue is open to Doctor and Receptionist, but the Consult button itself needs the Doctor role.

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

A consultation just opened: patient details at the top, the reason for the visit, and an empty bill.

The screen is built top to bottom the way a visit runs — who the patient is, what you observed, what you concluded, and what it cost.

Area	What it holds
Previous Visit Summary	A short AI-written recap of the patient's recent history, where they have one. Arrives collapsed — tap to open. See Voice notes & AI summaries.
Patient header	Name, species, weight, owner and any standing notes about the animal or the client. Tap it to expand.
Weight	Records a weight for today and adds it to the patient's weight history.
Vitals	Temperature, pulse, respiration and anything else your practice tracks.
Diagnosis	The patient's standing problem list. Typed in your own words, not picked from a list.
Doctor's Notes	Your internal clinical record for this visit. The client never sees it.
Client Notes	Published to the client in the portal as “Notes for you”. Take-home instructions go here.
Items	Everything being charged, grouped under the reason for the visit.
Discharge Sheets Added	Any aftercare sheets attached to this visit. Only appears once there is one.

Careful

There are two notes boxes and they look alike. Doctor's Notes stays internal; Client Notes is published to the owner. See Clinical notes before you write in either.

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 the catalogue, pick the item, confirm it.

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

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

Confirming the price and an optional client-visible comment before charging the item. Anything sold by quantity gets a quantity box here too.

Tip

Searching is almost always faster than browsing, and it searches the item description, its category and its subcategory at once — so “amox 250” finds “Amoxicillin 250mg”.

Note

The price picker only offers items your practice has marked as usable in a consultation, and only those your role is allowed to charge. 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#

Charge a Treatment item — a course of tablets, an ear drop, an injection to go home with — and the item editor grows two extra things: an Instructions box, and a printable medicine label. They are one job in two steps: write the instruction, then print it.

Careful

Both appear on Treatment items only. Charge the same drug as Materials or Procedure and you will not find them. If a dispensed medicine has no Instructions box, its catalogue entry is set to the wrong type — see Update Prices.

A Treatment item: quantity, price, and an Instructions box the other item types do not have.

You can type the instruction straight into the box. For anything routine the Instruction Maker is faster: tap it open and build the sentence from parts.

Animated Building “Take 1 tablet 2 times a day with food. Repeat for 5 days. Complete the course.” — nine taps, no typing.

Charge the item, and on the item editor find Instructions.
Tap Instruction Maker.
Tap along the row: Take or Apply · how many (1–6, or a ¼ / ½) · tablet, drop, dose or ml · how often (a number, then day, week or daily) · With Food, Before Food or After Food · Repeat for 1–5 · days or weeks · and finally Complete course or No Symptoms.
The sentence assembles as you tap — “Take ½ tablet 2 times a day with food. Repeat for 5 days. Complete the course.” Tap a button again to unset it, and edit the finished text by hand if you want.

The Instruction Maker, with the sentence it has assembled below it. Tapping a button again unsets it, and the finished text can still be edited by hand.

Tip

You do not have to use every group. “Apply 2 drops 3 times a day” is three taps, and the parts you skip simply do not appear in the sentence.

Once the item has an instruction, a Print Label button appears beneath it with a preview of the label. That is the order of operations that catches people out:

Note

No Print Label button? The item has no instruction yet. The label exists to carry the instruction, so it stays hidden until there is one to print. Write the instruction and it appears.

The label prints ready to go on the box or bottle:

Your practice name, address and telephone number, from Practice Details.
Today's date and the name of whoever dispensed it.
The item, and the quantity and unit dispensed.
The instruction you just built.
The patient, its details, and the owner's name.
The line “FOR ANIMAL USE ONLY!”

The label, ready to print. Check the quantity matches the course you have written — here ten tablets for “1 tablet twice a day for 5 days”.

Tip

The instruction is also what the client sees on their invoice, and it is what the next vet reads in the clinical history. Writing it properly once serves all three.

Browsing by category#

The category buttons shown when you first open the picker.

The picker opens on your practice's categories — Consultations, Surgery, Vaccines, Diagnostics and so on. Choosing one shows its subcategories, and choosing a subcategory lists the items. Where a category has only one subcategory the picker skips straight past it, so most categories are one tap from their items.

Choosing a category lists its items, priced and ready to charge.

Careful

If a category opens onto an empty list, its items have not been given a subcategory — browsing needs both levels. Use the search box in the meantime, and ask an administrator to fill the subcategory in under Update Prices.

Alongside the categories sit a few shortcuts that are not price items. Which ones you see depends on where you opened the picker from, and on your roles:

Shortcut	What it does	Shown
Diagnosis	Records a coded diagnosis for the visit.	Consultations
Information	Attaches one of your practice's discharge sheets — aftercare, diet advice — to the visit.	Everywhere except the price-list admin screen
Discount	Applies a discount line to the consultation.	Consultations
Add Price	Creates a one-off charge that is not in the catalogue.	Consultations, administrators only
Vitals	Jumps straight to the vitals editor for the day.	Hospital and boarding days

Note

No Add Price button? It is reserved for administrators, so that one-off prices do not quietly become the way things get charged. Ask an administrator to add the item to the catalogue properly instead.

Recording vitals#

Vitals are recorded against the visit and build the trend charts on the patient's clinical history.

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

On the consultation, tap the readings row pinned at the top of the items list. On a patient with no readings yet it is an empty row with a heartbeat icon — that is the row.
Enter what you took. Which vitals appear, and whether each is a typed measurement, a row of buttons or a slider, is set by your practice under Settings → Vitals.
Press Save vitals in the footer.

The vitals editor open on a consultation. Temperature, pulse and respiration are typed; appetite and CRT are tapped from the practice's own wording.

Note

While the editor is open the items list is hidden and every other footer action goes with it, replaced by Save vitals and Cancel. That is deliberate: it puts Done — the button that finishes the visit and bills the client — out of reach of somebody looking for a save button.

Saved readings are pinned above the items as coloured pills, so the rest of the visit is worked with the numbers in view. Tap the row again to correct them.

The saved readings, pinned above the invoice items.

Careful

There is a Vitals shortcut in the price picker too, but only on hospital and boarding days. On a consultation the pinned row is the way in — the picker has no Vitals button, and looking for one is the commonest reason people think the feature is missing.

Tip

Leave the readings you did not take blank. A consultation records one set of readings and nothing forces a full house; the empty rows are honest, and a made-up number is worse than no number.

Tip

Recording a weight at every visit — even a rough one — is what makes the weight trend worth looking at. The weight has its own Weight button on the patient panel and is kept alongside the vitals.

Clinical notes#

Open the Notes card and there are two boxes, one above the other. They are the same size, the same colour, and both say “Notes” in the placeholder. They do very different things.

Box	Who reads it	What belongs in it
Doctor's Notes	You and your colleagues. Internal.	The clinical record for this visit — history, examination findings, differentials, your reasoning and the plan.
Client Notes	You, your colleagues, and the client.	What you want the owner to take home: how to give the medication, what to watch for, when to come back.

Careful

Client Notes is published to the owner. If your practice runs the client portal, whatever is in that box appears on the visit in their account, under the heading “Notes for you”. A differential typed into the wrong box is a differential the client reads. Check which box you are in before you type.

Both boxes are part of the permanent record and both are saved with the consultation.

Who can do this

Writing in either box needs the Doctor role. Everyone else sees them read-only. A doctor can still correct notes after the visit is finished — unlike the items and the total, which lock — so a note you realise was wrong can be put right without reversing the charge.

Tip

The habit that stops the mistake: type the clinical picture first, in the top box, then deliberately move down to the bottom box and write the owner's instructions in plain language. If a sentence would confuse or alarm a client, it belongs in Doctor's Notes.

Note

Nothing else from the consultation reaches the client portal as prose — the items and costs are shown, and the diagnosis and Doctor's Notes are not. Client Notes is the one field you write directly to the owner.

If your practice has AI features on, a Record button under Doctor's Notes will dictate the visit and write the note up for you — it writes into Doctor's Notes only. See Voice notes & AI summaries.

Diagnosis#

The Diagnosis panel is the patient's standing problem list, not a field for this visit alone. What you add here stays on the patient and shows on the client's record next to their name until somebody removes it — so it is the right place for “chronic kidney disease” and the wrong place for “vomiting today”.

Open the Diagnosis panel on the consultation, or press Diagnosis in the price picker — both open the same box.
Type the diagnosis in your own words.
Press OK.

The panel header carries a count once there is one — Diagnosis (2) — and you can expand it to see the full list, or remove an entry that no longer applies.

Note

It is free text. There is no coded list to pick from and nothing enforces consistency, which means the value you get out depends entirely on the discipline you put in. Agree a house style — “CKD” or “chronic kidney disease”, not both — and stick to it.

Tip

Open diagnoses are pulled into referral letters automatically, so keeping the list tidy pays off the day you need to refer. Remove what has resolved.

Protocols and packages#

A protocol is a bundle — a puppy vaccination course, a dental package — that adds several items at once so nothing is forgotten and pricing stays consistent.

Pick the protocol from the price picker like any other item. Its components are added underneath it, and you can adjust or remove individual lines afterwards.

A protocol is billed as one line, at the Protocol Charge — by default the fixed package price. The items inside it are recorded against the visit, so stock comes off the shelf and the clinical record is complete, but they are never billed separately, which is why they appear underneath without prices.

A charged protocol: one price on the protocol line, its items listed beneath it with quantities and no prices.

Search for the protocol and pick it. A Protocol Summary panel opens instead of the usual item editor.
Set the quantity on each item to what you actually used — anything you did not use goes to 0 and is dropped.
Check the Protocol Charge. Normal is the package price; Calculated charges the sum of what you used instead.
Press Add Protocol.

Note

Protocols have a lot more to them than fits here — how to build one, the charge modes, and the pick-list trick where every vaccine sits in one protocol at quantity zero and the vet raises the one they gave. See Protocols.

Careful

Deleting the protocol line deletes everything it added — the components go with it. To drop a single item, delete that item's own line instead. Note that this does not reduce the bill: the price lives on the protocol, so to charge less you change the Protocol Charge.

Attaching a discharge sheet#

Your practice keeps a set of aftercare pages — post-operative care, a diet sheet, what to expect after a vaccination. Attaching one to the visit is how it reaches the client, and it saves writing the same advice into Client Notes for the hundredth time.

Press Add to open the price picker.
Choose the Information shortcut, alongside the categories.
Pick the sheet you want.

Attached sheets are listed on the consultation under Discharge Sheets Added, below the items. The section only appears once there is one, and it carries a count. From there you can:

Action	What it does
The eye button, or tapping the name	Opens the sheet so you can read it or print it for the client. Only shown where the sheet has a document attached.
The bin button	Detaches it from this visit. The sheet itself is untouched and stays available for other visits.

Note

Sheets are maintained under Settings → Discharge Sheets. See Reminders & letters for adding and editing them.

Tip

A sheet attached to the visit stays on the record, so “what did we send them home with?” is answerable months later — which a verbal instruction is not.

Setting a reminder#

Reminder in the footer schedules a future prompt for this patient — next year's vaccination, a three-month recheck, a course of treatment ending. Once the visit has one, the button shows the count — Reminder (1) — and the reminders are listed on the consultation itself, below the items, where you can open or delete them.

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

Reminders due 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 without losing the consultation you are in the middle of. Nothing you have typed or charged is lost — press back and the visit is where you left it.

The clinical history, opened from inside a consultation.

What you get is the whole record on one page: a written summary of the patient, weight and vital trends, every lab result with its out-of-range values, and a timeline of every visit with the notes, medication and items from each — filterable and searchable.

It answers the questions that actually come up with the animal on the table:

What did we give last time, and how much? — the Medication filter, or type the drug into the search box.
Is this vaccination really due? — the last one is on the timeline with its date.
Has she been losing weight? — the trend chart, rather than three visits' notes.
What did the bloods say in April? — the result, with only the flagged analytes shown.

It is worth reading the whole topic once: Clinical history.

Admitting from a consultation#

If the patient needs to stay, Admit carries them — and everything charged so far — straight into a hospital admission. 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.
Make sure the notes say what you want them to say.
Press Done.

Finishing does several things at once: it closes the consultation, removes the patient from the consult queue, posts the total to the client's account, and puts them on the payment queue for reception.

Note

If your practice has automatic invoice emails switched on, the client is emailed their invoice at this point. See Email & notifications.

Careful

FastVet will ask you to confirm if you press Done on a consultation with no items — that is nearly always a misclick, and it would post a zero-value invoice.

Correcting a finished consultation#

A finished consultation can be reversed from the client's account. Reversing writes a credit against the original charge rather than deleting it, so the audit trail stays intact.

Client›Customer Account›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 is not gone. Open it and it wears a red Cancelled badge with an Uncancel button set into it.

Open the cancelled consultation.
Press Uncancel on the badge.

The patient goes straight back onto the consult queue and FastVet takes you there, with everything already charged still on the visit. Nothing was lost when it was cancelled.

Note

This is the fix for the commonest queue mistake — cancelling the wrong row. Do not start a second consultation for the same patient: uncancel the first one, or you will end up with two visits and two invoices for one appointment.

Referral letters#

Where a case needs a specialist, FastVet composes the referral letter for you from the patient's own history — so the letter arrives with the actual records behind it rather than a summary written from memory. It is started from the clinical history, not from the consultation.

Consultation›History›Compose Referral

From the consultation press History — or open the patient's clinical history any other way.
Press Compose Referral in the footer.
Tick the visits and individual records to include. Recent history is pre-selected, so a typical referral needs no picking at all.
Overwrite the reason-for-referral sentence, preview the letter, and email it to the practice you are referring to.

Note

Compose Referral is greyed out on a patient with no history yet — there would be nothing to put in the letter.

Files that are too large to e-mail. Every file on a ticked record is included, and each one shows its size. Imaging is often far bigger than any mail provider will carry — a single CT or X-ray study can be 20 MB on its own, and the limit at both Gmail and Outlook is 25 MB for the whole message.

You do not have to do anything about that. A file too large to attach is marked with a link icon instead of a paperclip, and is sent as a secure download link inside the letter rather than as an attachment. The specialist clicks it and the file downloads — they do not need a FastVet login. Everything you tick is sent either way.

The links work for 30 days, and the letter says so. After that they stop working.
The link is unguessable, and only the person you sent the letter to has it.
You can see whether the files were actually collected — each link records how many times it was downloaded.

Note

If you would rather not send something at all, untick it. Unticking a large file frees up room, so other files may switch back from a link to a normal attachment.