Vet practice software that sits beside your PIMS, not in place of it

A mixed practice in Kendal starts at half seven on a dairy farm in Burneside, runs morning consults, drives up to a hill farm near Sedbergh and finishes at a livery yard in Windermere. The time is not lost with the animals. It leaks out around them.

None of that replaces your PIMS. Where it has an API, we read from it and write back to it. How such a link works and what it asks of your supplier is on API integration services.

On a farm you administer, leave medicines behind or prescribe. For POM-V and POM-VPS products, regulation 23 of the Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013 asks for a record of the date, the product, the batch number, the quantity, who received it and who prescribed it. On the phone you fill that in where you stand: the holding is already on file, the product comes from your car's stock, the withdrawal period from the data you set up once per product. The farmer signs on the screen and receives the label text by email, which helps with their own medicine book.

The same visit can feed the herd or flock history: what was treated, how many head, and the photos you took. The next vet on that farm sees what you saw.

Most PIMS know what you sold. Fewer know what sits in which car, which batch runs out next month or where one particular bottle went. A dispensary built for you holds stock per location: the pharmacy, the vaccine fridge, every car. Goods in are scanned and recorded with batch, expiry and supplier. Every visit or sale records the recipient. A correction never overwrites: it is a new line with a reason, so the record stays complete for the inspector.

Once a year you count. The VMD's inspection criteria ask for a detailed stock audit at least annually, with discrepancies recorded. The software lays the count beside the records and lists the differences. Expired and returned stock goes to a Disposal client, the way the VMD suggests, so it leaves the shelves on paper too. Controlled drugs keep their own register, bound or electronic and not amendable, as the rules require. The general version of such a system is inventory management software; for a vet practice it adds batch, expiry and the medicine record.

Someone types 'vets' and their town and sees three practices on the map. What they want next is plain: are you open now, and who do I ring tonight? A site that answers that on every page, with opening hours, the out-of-hours number and online booking for a vaccination or a check-up, takes those calls off the front desk.

The RCVS treats a practice name as advertising, so it has to be accurate: 'Veterinary Hospital' only with that accreditation under the Practice Standards Scheme, 'Specialist' only for someone on the RCVS list. The site keeps names and titles in one place, so they match on every page and on your profile. How to set that profile up is in create a Google Business Profile. The booking itself is a booking system for your website.

A mixed practice outside a city often spends longer looking for a vet than for clients. A new graduate wants to know how the out-of-hours rota is shared, how much farm work there is and whether the paperwork waits for them after a round. A job page that says so, with an application in three taps on the phone, beats a PDF. You ask only what you need to call back: name, mobile number and whether they are MRCVS or RVN registered. Planning the team itself, with on-call nights and leave, is staff scheduling software and fits on the same screen.

AI makes no diagnosis and decides nothing about an animal. It does the writing after a consult: four dictated notes become a draft discharge note for the owner, with home care, the medication as you prescribed it and the date of the recheck. The reminder for that recheck is ready as a text. The vet reads it, edits and sends.

The same works for messages that come in overnight: a booster question, a rebooking, a photo of a wound. The AI sorts them before reception starts at 8. Anything that looks urgent goes to the top with a call-back flag, and a person decides. How such a model handles data inside the UK or EU is on AI customer service.

A single-vet companion-animal practice does not need an ERP, and usually not its own app either. A practice with five vets, three cars and an equine side needs more than a diary. This is what we would build per size, beside your veterinary software.

What drives the cost of a custom build in general is in custom software development cost.

Other care practices use the same building blocks. A dental practice plans surgeries and domiciliary visits with NHS claims instead of a dispensary: see dental practice software. Home care runs a round every day, much like a farm vet, with check-in at the door: see home care software.

These are the rules that most often have to live inside a practice's systems, checked against the RCVS, the VMD, legislation.gov.uk and the ICO in October 2026. The table follows Great Britain; Northern Ireland has its own medicines arrangements.

Owner data is ordinary personal data rather than special category data, but it still needs a lawful basis, a privacy notice and a processor agreement with every supplier. What differs between UK and EU rules, if you use European suppliers, is in UK GDPR vs EU GDPR.

Over 46 weeks that is about 265 hours. Add 10 hours from the audit and 12 x 1 = 12 hours from the controlled drug checks: 287 hours. At £17: 287 x 17 = £4,879 a year of time, in this example. What the practice does with those hours is its own call: longer with a patient, a lighter on-call week, leaving on time. This example says nothing about clients or income. Count your calls and visits for one week, and run the sums.

We do not have a veterinary practice as a client yet, but the platform we built for DA Logistics also keeps stock that a government body checks, with a correction log, a discrepancy report and an app for whoever is on the road.