Help Centre › Communication

Reminders & letters

Bring clients back when they are due, and send letters and emails that look like they came from your practice.

Reminders are how a practice keeps patients on schedule — vaccinations, parasite control, chronic medication reviews. Letters and templates are how everything FastVet sends is worded.

Setting a reminder#

Reminders are usually set during a visit, while you are with the patient. A consultation or a hospital or boarding stay can carry several — a recheck in a week and a booster in a year are two different follow-ups, not one that has to be overwritten.

In a consultation, press Reminder in the footer. On a hospital or boarding stay, press Add Reminder in the Stay Summary.
Choose Client Reminder or Doctor Reminder — this decides who hears about it.
Choose what the reminder is for.
Set the date it falls due.
Save.

The screen opens on two buttons, and whichever is highlighted decides who the reminder is aimed at. It is the first thing on the screen and the easiest thing to skip past:

Choice	Who it is for	What happens when it falls due
Client Reminder	The owner.	It goes on the client's reminder list, and — if automatic reminders are on — FastVet emails and/or texts them. This is the one that brings the patient back.
Doctor Reminder	The vet who set it.	The reminder email goes to you, not the owner. The client is never contacted, and it is never sent as a text. Use it for “chase the histology”, not for “vaccination due”.

The two are for different jobs and both are useful. A client reminder brings the patient back; a doctor reminder is your own note to self — “chase the histology”, “ring about the biopsy” — and deliberately never reaches the owner. Pick the one that matches who needs to act.

Note

FastVet shows a line of text under the two buttons telling you who the current choice will reach. Read it before saving — it is quicker than reasoning it out.

Tip

Set next year's vaccination reminder at the moment you give this year's, as a Client Reminder. It takes five seconds then, and it is the single most reliable driver of repeat visits.

Working the due list#

Reminders that have fallen due are collected so somebody can act on them — by email, by text, by phone, or any combination.

If automatic reminder emails are switched on, FastVet emails clients as their reminders fall due.
If text reminders are switched on, it sends the same reminder as an SMS. The message the vet typed is the text, with your practice name and phone number after it — so whatever the reminder is about, that is what the client reads.
Reminders for patients marked deceased are cancelled automatically when the item that recorded the death is charged.

Note

Both are configured under Email & notifications. Email only goes to clients with an email address on file, and texts only to those with a mobile number FastVet can read — the SMS settings tell you how many that is.

Careful

A long reminder costs more to text. A standard SMS is 160 characters — a sentence or two plus your practice name sits comfortably inside that, a paragraph does not. If you text reminders, keep the message you type short.

Sending a letter#

Home›Settings›Send Letter

Composing a letter. The date, the greeting and the sign-off are already there; the letterhead goes on when it is sent.

Choose Send Letter.
Type the recipient email and a subject.
Write the letter. Today's date, “Dear Sir or Madam,” and a sign-off in your practice's name are filled in already — edit any of them.
Press Preview to see it on the letterhead, then Send.

There is no client picker and no list of ready-made letters: it is a free-text letter to an address you type, which is what makes it useful for the recipients who are not on your books — a breeder, a shelter, another practice.

The letterhead comes from your Letter Header, or from your Referral Header if that is blank. A letter sent from a client's own account is recorded against that client, so it shows in the email history under their name.

Texting a client#

Who can do this

Needs an SMS Portal account. Without one the button does not appear.

Home›Search for Existing Client›a client›Send Text

Texting a client, with the credit counter under the box.

Alongside the automatic messages, staff can text a client directly — "your medication is in", "we are running an hour behind", "Bella is awake and doing well". It is the same idea as Send Letter, for the things that are quicker said in a sentence.

Open the client and choose Send Text.
Check the number shown at the top — that is exactly what will be dialled.
Type the message. The counter underneath shows what it will cost before you send it.
Press Send.

Note

A text sent this way goes immediately rather than joining the queue, so you find out at once whether it worked. Everything sent appears on the Text Messages screen.

Careful

If the client has no mobile number, or one FastVet cannot read, the screen says so and the Send button stays disabled. Fixing the number on the client record is what unblocks it.

Texting an owner about a patient in your care#

Who can do this

Needs an SMS Portal account.

Home›Admitted Patients›a patient›Text Owner

An owner who has left their animal with you is the person most glad to hear from you. Text Owner sits in the Stay Summary on both a hospital admission and a boarding stay, and opens the Send Text screen with the patient already named.

A hospital stay offers two starting points:

Starting point	For
Hospital update	A progress note — it opens mid-sentence, because "there is an update" only makes the owner ring you. Finish it: "…she is awake and eating".
Ready to collect	The animal can go home.

A boarding stay offers Ready to collect only. The hospital progress note is worded for a patient under treatment and would read oddly about a boarding guest, so for anything else you simply type the message.

Tip

These are only starting points. Edit before sending — the specific sentence is the whole value of the message.

Letterheads and automatic emails#

Who can do this

Administrators only.

The heading on every invoice, statement, reminder, referral and letter your practice sends is yours to edit, as are the codes that fill in a client's name or an invoice number, and the switches that decide what goes out without anybody pressing a button.

All of it has a topic of its own: Templates & letterheads.

Discharge sheets#

Home›Settings›Discharge Sheets

Discharge sheets are standard pieces of client advice — post-operative care, a dental aftercare sheet, a puppy-socialisation guide. Written once, they can be attached to a consultation, hospital day or boarding day from the price picker's Information shortcut so the client goes home with them.

Note

The menu tile says Discharge Sheets but the button that attaches one says Information. They are the same list.

What has been sent#

The email history report lists everything FastVet has sent on your behalf, with the recipient and the outcome — useful when a client insists they never received an invoice.