Help Centre › Setup & administration

Practice settings

Your practice's details, branding, which modules are switched on, billing, and how FastVet emails your clients.

Practice settings are the switches that shape FastVet for your clinic. They are set once during setup and revisited rarely — but knowing where they are saves a lot of guessing.

Where settings live#

Who can do this

Administrators only.

Home›Settings

The settings menu covers everything an administrator maintains — users, reference lists, templates and the practice itself. It is a flat list of about twenty tiles, and it is worth a slow read once: several things people hunt for elsewhere are here, including Price Groups, Suppliers, Send Letter and Integrations.

Practice Settings is one tile among them, and it holds only three things — who you are, what you look like, and what is switched on:

Inside Practice Settings	Covers
Practice Details	Name, address, phone, currency, time zone, tax rate.
Branding & Theme	Logo, icon, header colour, and the Mint/Classic choice.
Features & Modules	Which parts of FastVet your practice uses.

Careful

Billing & Payments and Email & Notifications are not inside Practice Settings — they are their own tiles on the main Settings menu. Both are described below.

Practice details#

Your name, address, telephone number, currency symbol, time zone and tax rate. These appear on invoices, statements and letters, and the time zone drives every date and appointment time in the system.

Careful

Get the time zone right before you start booking appointments. Changing it later shifts how existing times are displayed.

Branding & theme#

Upload your logo and icon — they appear on documents and in the app.
Set the header colour to match your practice.
Choose the theme: the modern Mint look or the original Classic one.

Note

The theme applies to everybody at the practice, not per user.

Features & modules#

Turn off what you do not do, and the screens disappear for everybody — a small-animal clinic with no kennels has no reason to see boarding.

Module	Controls
Enable Consultations	The consult queue and clinical visits.
Enable Hospital	In-patient admissions and ward records.
Enable Boarding	Boarding admissions and locations.
Enable Grooming	The grooming queue and records.
Enable AI features	Voice notes and the Previous Visit Summary on consultations. See Voice notes & AI summaries.
Enable online shop	The client-facing online shop and its dispatch queue. Ticking it reveals Offer delivery, a delivery fee and a free-delivery threshold — see Collection and delivery.
Enable loyalty programme	The points programme, and the Loyalty tile on the Settings menu.
Enable client portal	Whether clients can register and sign in at all.
Allow clients to book appointments	Whether signed-in clients may also book. With it off they can still see appointments you made for them.

Tip

Client portal and client booking are two separate switches. Turning the portal on does not let clients book — that is the second switch, and plenty of practices deliberately leave it off.

Billing & payments#

Home›Settings›Billing & Payments

How money is presented and collected.

Setting	Effect
Prices Read Only	Stops staff editing the unit price when they charge an item. Turn it on once your catalogue is trustworthy.
Hide Tax on Invoices	Shows VAT-inclusive totals only, rather than breaking tax out.
Restrict Check Price by role	Vets and administrators see every price; everybody else sees only the items they can charge. Off means all staff can look up anything.
Payment Settings	Your online payment provider — None, or PayFast with its credentials. A sandbox tick lets you test without taking real money.

Email & notifications#

Home›Settings›Email & Notifications

This is where you decide what FastVet sends without being asked.

Setting	Effect
Email invoices & receipts automatically	Sends the invoice the moment a consultation, sale, hospital or boarding stay, or groom is finished.
Email reminders	Sends reminders to clients as they fall due — whatever the vet wrote on them.
Email overdue statements	Sends account statements to clients carrying an outstanding balance.
Email a statement on payment	Sends the client their statement whenever a payment is taken. This only sets the default — the receptionist can untick it on any individual payment.
CC the alternative email	Copies the client's second address, where they have one, on everything you send them.
Text reminders	Sends the same reminders as a text message.
Text appointment reminders	Texts clients the day before an appointment. Nothing else in FastVet tells a client about a booking, so this is the only appointment reminder there is.
Text overdue accounts	Texts clients carrying a balance, on the same daily run that emails statements. The text states the amount; the statement itself stays an email.
Email Server	The mail server and the address your practice sends from.

Note

The three text options only appear once you have connected an SMS Portal account, and each is off until you switch it on — texts cost credits from your own account.

Tip

You can have both the email and the text reminder on at once. That is worth doing for a week while you check the texts are arriving — then turn the email off, so clients are not told the same thing twice.

Note

Turning the automatic options off never stops you sending things by hand — the Statement and Send Letter actions always work.

Careful

If clients report not receiving anything, check the email history report first. It shows whether FastVet sent the message at all, which separates a settings problem from a delivery one.

Reference lists#

Several lists keep your data consistent. All are maintained from the settings menu.

Settings tile	Used for
Breeds Classic: “Breed”	The breed options on a patient record.
Colours	The colour options on a patient record.
Vitals	Which measurements appear on clinical screens. See Setting up vitals.
Consultation Reasons	The reasons offered when booking or queueing.
Boarding Locations Classic: “Boarding Location”	Your runs, kennels and pens.
Boarding Descriptions Classic: “Boarding Description”	The kinds of boarding stay you offer.
Appointment Slots	The shape of your appointment book.
Suppliers	Who you buy stock from.
Price Groups	Alternative mark-ups — staff rates, senior discounts, rescue rates. See Price groups.
Discharge Sheets	Standard client advice you attach to a visit. See Discharge sheets.

Tip

Keep these lists tight. Every extra near-duplicate breed or reason makes reporting fuzzier and data entry slower.

Setting up vitals#

Home›Settings›Vitals

A vital is one measurement your practice wants recorded — temperature, heart rate, a pain score, a mucous-membrane colour. Which ones exist here is what clinical staff see on consultations, hospital days and boarding days, so this list is worth setting up deliberately rather than growing by accident.

Each vital has a name, and an input type that decides what staff actually get on screen. That choice is the whole of the screen:

Input type	What staff see	Use it for
Scale	A slider that snaps to labelled points you define — Normal · Elevated · Critical.	Anything judged rather than measured: pain score, hydration, demeanour, mucous membranes.
Numeric	A slider over a number range, with a unit shown after the value.	Real measurements: temperature, pulse, respiration, weight.
Free text	An empty box they type into.	Anything that will not fit either of the above. Use it sparingly — free text cannot be compared between visits.

Press Add on the vitals list, or open an existing vital.
Give it a name — this is the label clinical staff see.
Choose the input type.
For a scale, list the points along the scale in order, lowest first. For a numeric, set the minimum, the maximum and a unit such as °C, bpm or kg.
Optionally give it a colour and an icon, which is what makes a row of vitals readable at a glance.
Decide whether to allow a comment alongside each reading.
Check the Preview beside the form — it shows the control exactly as staff will meet it — then save.

Tip

Set the numeric minimum and maximum to the plausible clinical range, not the possible one. A temperature slider running 0–100 °C is unusable; one running 35–43 °C lands on the right value first time.

Careful

Changing a vital's input type or its scale points does not rewrite readings already recorded. Old readings keep the value they were saved with, which can look odd next to new ones. Where you need a genuinely different measurement, add a new vital rather than repurposing an old one.

Note

Removing a vital hides it from the clinical screens but leaves historical readings intact, so a retired vital never blanks out past visits.

Integrations#

Home›Settings›Integrations

Connections to outside systems — IDEXX for laboratory work, and SMS Portal for text messages. See IDEXX integration and SMS Portal below.

Screen	What it is for
IDEXX Integration	Your IDEXX credentials and which estate you are pointed at. Set up once. See IDEXX integration.
IDEXX Test Mapping	Ties an IDEXX test to the item on your price list, so ordering one charges the other.
IDEXX Reference Data	A read-only view of what IDEXX itself holds for your account — species, breeds, genders, the full test list, and your in-house analysers.
SMS Portal	Your SMS Portal account details, your remaining credits, and a test message. Described below.

Note

IDEXX Reference Data is a reference view, not something you maintain — it is read live from IDEXX. Open it when a test you expected is not offered when ordering, when you need a test's exact IDEXX name in order to map it, or to check that an in-house analyser is being seen at all. Tests are badged Reference or in-house, which tells you where a given test would run.

SMS Portal#

Who can do this

Administrators only.

Home›Settings›Integrations›SMS Portal

FastVet sends text messages through SMS Portal, a South African bulk-SMS provider. The account is yours, not ours: you open it with SMS Portal, you buy the credits, and you enter the credentials here. That means you see exactly what messages cost and you are never billed through a third party.

Sign up at smsportal.com and buy some credits.
In the SMS Portal control panel, go to Settings → API Keys and create a key. You get a Client ID and an API Secret.
Copy both into this screen. SMS Portal shows the secret once, when you create it — if you lose it you must create a new key.
Set a Sender ID: the name clients see the message from, up to 11 characters.
Set your dialling code — see below. Without it nothing can be sent.
Send yourself a test message before turning Enable SMS for this practice on.

Note

Your balance is shown in credits and read live from SMS Portal. One standard text uses one credit; a longer message is split into parts and uses one credit per part. Press Refresh balance to re-read it.

Test mode is the safety switch. With it on, SMS Portal checks and prices a message but does not deliver it — nothing reaches a handset and no credits are spent. Leave it on while you are setting up, and turn it off when you are ready to send for real.

Careful

A sender ID is applied where the mobile network allows it. Some networks replace it with their own short code, so a client may see a number rather than your practice name — this is the network's choice, not a fault.

Your dialling code, and who can be reached#

Client mobile numbers are stored the way you dial them at home — 082 123 4567. Mobile networks need the international form, 27 82 123 4567, so FastVet converts them. To do that it has to know which country you are in, and that is the dialling code: 27 for South Africa, 264 for Namibia, 61 for Australia.

Careful

FastVet will not guess this. South African, Namibian and Australian mobile numbers all start with a 0 and look identical once written down, so a guess would send your reminders to complete strangers who happen to have the same digits. Until you set the code, nothing sends.

Once it is set, the screen tells you how many of your clients can actually be reached — for example "1,842 of 2,332 clients can be reached by SMS". The rest either have no mobile number on file or one that cannot be read, and they carry on receiving email as before.

Tip

That figure is worth looking at before you switch reminders on. If it is far lower than you expect, the problem is the numbers on your client records rather than the text messaging — and fixing a few of the busiest clients is usually quick.

Note

Once your dialling code is set you can type test numbers the local way (082…). Before then, only the full international form works.

What has been sent, and what it cost#

Home›Text Messages

Every text your practice has sent is listed here, with what it cost and — when one does not arrive — why. It is reached from the home screen under Clients, next to Follow Up, but only when there is something to see: a tile appears when you are low on credits, when texts are waiting, or when some have failed. A healthy account shows nothing, so the tile means something when it does appear.

Note

Texts wait rather than being lost when your credits run out. Top up and they go out by themselves over the next few minutes — there is nothing to press.

Careful

Don't send these discards the waiting messages for good, and your clients will never receive them. It is there for the case where you have been out of credits long enough that the messages have gone stale. If you are simply topping up, do nothing.

Tip

A failed message usually says exactly what is wrong — most often a mobile number that cannot be reached. Fixing the number on the client record is what stops it happening again.

What the texts say, and what they cost#

Home›Settings›Manage Templates›Text Messages

Text wording lives with your other templates, under Manage Templates — one place for everything FastVet says to your clients. The Manage Templates button on the SMS settings screen is a shortcut to the same list.

One screen holds every text your practice sends — each is only a line or two, so there is no sense making you visit five. You can leave the wording we supply, or write your own.

Message	Sent when
Reminder	A reminder falls due. The wording the vet typed is the message.
Overdue account	A client has an outstanding balance, on the daily run.
Appointment reminder	The day before an appointment.
Hospital update	A staff member texts an owner about an admitted patient — they finish the sentence.
Ready to collect	A staff member tells an owner their animal can go home.

Note

The last two are starting points rather than finished texts: they open ready to edit, because "there is an update" would just make the owner phone you, which is the opposite of the point.

Every text message on one screen, each with its own credit counter.

Codes like #PETNAME# are replaced with the real detail when the message goes out. Tap one to insert it, and use the Preview to see how it reads.

A standard text is 160 characters and costs one credit.
Go over that and the message is split — 306 characters is two credits, and so on.
The counter under the box shows exactly where you are.

Careful

Curly quotes and dashes pasted from Word cost you money. A single one of them is not a standard SMS character, and it cuts every message from 160 characters to 70 — so a reminder that fitted one credit suddenly needs three. The editor names the offending character when this happens; retyping it in the box fixes it. Type your wording here rather than pasting it in.

Note

The message the vet typed on the reminder is the text — the template only adds your practice name and phone number after it. That is why the supplied wording does not greet the client (the reminder already does) and does not tell them to book: a reminder can say anything, and "please call to book" would contradict one about medication waiting to be collected.

Edited a template and want the original back? Clear the box, or press Restore the default.