Help Centre › Stock & pricing

Protocols

Bundle the items that always go together — a spay, a dental, a vaccination — into one line the vet charges in a single tap, either at a fixed package price or at the sum of what was actually used.

A protocol is a set of price-list items grouped under one heading. The vet picks the protocol once and everything in it lands on the bill together, with the quantities you set as defaults and one price for the lot.

Two things make them worth setting up properly. Nothing gets forgotten — the fluids, the anaesthetic and the take-home antibiotics come along with the procedure whether or not the vet remembers them. And the price is consistent: a standard spay costs the same on a Tuesday as it does on a Saturday, whoever charged it.

What the client is charged — read this first#

This is the part practices most often have backwards, so it is worth being exact.

A protocol is billed as one line, at a single figure called the Protocol Charge. That is what the client pays. The items inside it are recorded against the visit — so the stock comes off the shelf and the clinical record is complete — but they are never billed separately.

By default that charge is the protocol's own fixed price: the whole bundle for one agreed figure, whatever it contained. That is the everyday behaviour and the reason protocols exist. The vet can switch it — most usefully to Calculated, which prices the bundle at the sum of what was actually used — but either way it arrives as a single line and the components carry no prices of their own.

A charged protocol on the bill: one price on the protocol line, its items listed underneath with quantities and no prices. The consultation total is the protocol charge.

In that screenshot the dental package is R1,050. Beneath it sit the scale and polish, a bag of fluids and ten antibiotic tablets — R1,195 worth of catalogue items at their own prices — and the Consultation Total is R1,050. Not R2,245.

Note

So a protocol is not a discount bolted onto a list of charges. It replaces the charges with a single figure you control. The items are the record of what was done and what was used.

The one thing to get right is therefore the Protocol Charge itself — see The four charge modes and, if you use price groups, Protocols and price groups, which does not behave the way its name suggests.

Building a protocol#

Who can do this

Administrators. Protocols are catalogue items, so they live with the rest of your prices.

Home›Stock & Prices›Update Prices

Add a new price item, or open an existing one.
Set its Type to Protocol. A Protocol Details section appears.
Give it a description — this is what the vet searches for and what the client sees on the invoice, so "Dental Package" beats "DENT-PKG-01".
Set the price. This is the default Protocol Charge — the fixed price for the bundle.
Only if you intend to use price groups on it: fill in Cost and Markup % as well. Leave them blank and every price-group chip will charge zero.
Press Add first price to protocol and pick the items that belong in it, one at a time.
Give each one a Default Amount — the quantity that normally goes with this procedure.
Choose which screens it appears on under This price will be visible to, and save.

Protocol Details: the items in the bundle, each with the default quantity the vet will start from.

Note

A protocol cannot contain another protocol — the picker hides them when you are choosing components. Bundles are one level deep.

Tip

Set Default Amount to what the case usually takes, not the minimum. The vet can change it in seconds on the day, and a default that is usually right is one less decision during a consultation.

Why some items have no quantity#

In the Protocol Details list some rows have a Default Amount box and some read Not Applicable. That follows the item's type:

Item type	Quantity?	Meaning inside a protocol
Materials, Treatment	Yes	Consumables and medicines, where how much you used varies. These can be adjusted per patient — and set to zero.
Procedure, Lab	No — Not Applicable	A procedure is done or it is not; a test is run or it is not. These are always included when the protocol is charged.

Careful

This matters for the pattern in the next section: only Materials and Treatment items can be zeroed out on the day. A procedure or a lab test in a protocol comes along every time, so put in a protocol only the ones that genuinely always apply.

The pick-list protocol: putting every option in and zeroing the rest#

There is a second way to use protocols that is not obvious from the screen, and practices who work this way rely on it heavily. Instead of one protocol per exact combination, you build one protocol containing every option, with all the quantities defaulted to 0. On the day, the vet raises the quantity to 1 on the one they actually gave and leaves the rest at zero.

Vaccination is the case it was made for. Rather than a protocol per vaccine, you build one Vaccination protocol holding all of them — rabies, 5-in-1, feline trivalent, kennel cough — each with a Default Amount of 0.

Build one protocol with every vaccine your practice stocks as a component.
Set every Default Amount to 0.
The vet charges the protocol, then types 1 against the vaccine actually administered.
Everything left at 0 is dropped — it never reaches the visit, the invoice or the stock ledger.

Note

Items left at zero are not charged, not recorded and do not touch stock. They simply do not come along, so an unused vaccine leaves no trace on the patient's record.

The gain is that the vet is choosing from a list of the right options instead of remembering a product name and searching the whole catalogue, which is both faster and much harder to get wrong. It also means the vaccine given is a recorded item on the patient's clinical history rather than a note.

Careful

Two things to watch. The Protocol Charge does not change when you zero an item — it is a fixed price, so a pick-list protocol only works where the options cost roughly the same, or where you switch the charge to Calculated (see below). And a pick-list protocol should contain no Procedure or Lab components, because those cannot be zeroed and would be charged into every visit.

Tip

If your vaccines differ a lot in price, set the protocol's charge mode to Calculated when charging it. The vet then pays for exactly what they ticked, and the pick-list still does the remembering.

Charging a protocol#

Who can do this

The Doctor role, the same as any other consultation charge.

Animated Picking a protocol, adjusting a quantity, comparing the charge modes, and adding it to the bill.

On the consultation press Add and search for the protocol by name.
A Protocol Summary panel opens instead of the usual item editor.
Adjust the quantities to what you actually used. Set anything you did not use to 0.
Check the Protocol Charge, changing the mode if you need to.
Press Add Protocol.

The Protocol Summary: each item with its quantity, the Items Total, and the Protocol Charge with its modes.

Note

The footer button says Add Protocol rather than Add. That is the clearest signal on the screen that you picked a bundle and not a single item.

The pencil beside an item opens the full item editor for it, which is how you reach a component's dosage instruction and medicine label — worth knowing when the protocol includes take-home medication.

The four charge modes#

Whatever the client pays, they pay it as the Protocol Charge — one line. The chips beside it decide what number goes in that line, and they work in genuinely different ways. Above them sits Items Total, the components at their own prices, shown for reference in every mode.

The worked example below is the demo practice's dental package: a package price of R1,050, components totalling R1,195, a cost of R500 and a single price group at 100% markup.

Mode	What it puts in the charge	Here	Follows the quantities?
Normal	The protocol's own price from the catalogue — the package price. This is the default.	R1,050	No — fixed, whatever you use
Calculated	The sum of the components at their own prices × the quantities on screen.	R1,195	Yes — live, as you type
Custom	Whatever you type.	—	No
A price group	The protocol's cost × that group's markup, plus tax. It ignores both the package price and the components.	R1,155 R500 × 2 = R1,000, + 15.5% tax	No

So Normal is the fixed-price bundle — the reason most practices use protocols at all. Calculated is the opposite approach: the client pays exactly what they would have paid if every item had been charged separately, and the charge moves as you adjust quantities. Take the tablets from 10 to 20 and the Calculated charge goes from R1,195 to R1,340; the Normal charge stays at R1,050.

Calculated mode itemises the bundle and prices it at the sum of its parts.

Calculated shows its working — item, quantity, unit price, line total and the calculated total. It is the mode to reach for when a client asks what they are paying for, because the breakdown is already on screen.

Note

Even in Calculated mode the bill carries one line — the protocol, at the calculated amount. The components stay listed underneath without prices. The client pays the same as itemising, but the invoice reads as a package.

Tip

Comparing Items Total with the Normal charge tells you whether your package price still makes sense. Here R1,195 of components is being sold for R1,050 — a deliberate bundle discount. If the components creep well above the package price the protocol is losing money on every case, and nothing else in FastVet will point that out.

Protocols and price groups#

This is the part worth reading twice, because a price-group chip on a protocol does not do what its name suggests.

Careful

Selecting a price group prices the protocol from its cost — cost × (1 + the group's markup) + tax. It does not discount the package price, and it does not look at the components at all.

Which leads directly to the trap:

Careful

A protocol with no cost priced by a price group charges R0.00. FastVet warns you on the spot — an amber line under the price, naming the group — but the way to avoid it is to fill the catalogue entry in: if you intend price groups to work on a protocol it must have a Cost and a Markup %.

On the protocol's catalogue entry	Effect on the price-group chips
Cost and Markup % both set	The chip prices the protocol properly, from cost.
Cost blank	Every price-group chip charges 0.00.

Components have their own price-group chips too, reached through the pencil beside an item. Those follow the same cost-and-markup rule on the component's cost — and because they change the component's price, they change the Calculated total. They make no difference at all in Normal mode, where the charge is the package price regardless.

Note

Price groups work the same way on every item in FastVet, not just protocols. See Price groups for what they are for and how to set them up.

You want	Do this
A discounted package for a staff member or a rescue	Easiest and safest: Custom, and type the figure. Or set the protocol's cost and markup so the group chip lands where you intend.
To bill exactly what was used, at group rates	Calculated, having set the group on the individual components.
Your normal package price	Normal. Leave everything else alone.

Tip

If you only ever use Normal and Custom — which is most practices — a protocol does not need a cost at all. Fill one in only if you mean to use the price-group chips, and then check on screen that the number they produce is the number you expected.

Changing or removing one afterwards#

To	Do this
Change a quantity after adding	Open the protocol line on the consultation and edit the item.
Drop one item from the bundle	Delete that component line. The protocol and its charge stay as they are.
Remove the whole thing	Delete the protocol line.

Careful

Deleting the protocol line deletes everything it added — the components go with it. That is usually what you want, but if you only meant to drop one item, delete that item's own line instead.

Note

Because the components are not individually charged, removing one does not reduce the bill. To charge less, change the Protocol Charge — switch to Calculated or Custom.

Turning an existing item into a protocol#

If you already have a price item that has quietly become a bundle in practice — a "spay" everybody charges alongside the same three things — the price editor will build the protocol for you.

Open the item under Update Prices.
Scroll to Convert to Protocol and press it.
Confirm. FastVet creates a new protocol carrying the same category, price and settings, named with a “(Protocol)” suffix.
Add the components, adjust the name and price, and save.

Convert to Protocol, on an ordinary price item.

Note

The original item is left untouched, and any unsaved edits on the screen are discarded. You end up with two catalogue entries — decide which one staff should be using, and hide or rename the other so they do not both show up in the picker.

What makes a protocol worth having#

It matches a job people actually do. "Standard spay", "dental", "puppy first visit" — not "surgery".
The components are genuinely always used, or are Materials/Treatment items that can be zeroed on the day.
The name is what a vet would search for at 5pm on a Friday.
The price is reviewed. Compare Items Total against the package price a couple of times a year.
There are few of them. Six protocols people use beat thirty nobody can find.

Careful

Do not charge a protocol and then charge its components again by hand. The protocol already covers them — adding the same items separately is a real double charge, and it is the one way a client genuinely can be billed twice for the same work.