Daily Use
Clients
Finding, creating and managing pet owners - their details, alerts, balances, payments and duplicates.
ForEveryone
A client is a pet owner - the person who pays the bills and gets the phone calls. Their animals are patients.
Two screens: the Clients list (a table with a search box) and the client file (one person, opened by clicking their row - tabs across the top, and a read-only sidebar with contact details, alerts and balance).
Common tasks
| I want to... | Do this |
|---|---|
| Find someone | Clients → type a name, email or phone |
| Find someone by their number | Clients → type the client number. The # is optional, so 1026 and #1026 both work |
| See who owes money | The dropdown above the table → Outstanding Balance |
| Add a client | Clients → New Client → fill the form → Create client |
| Edit their details | Open them → Details tab → Save |
| See their pets | Linked Patients tab |
| Add a pet for them | ⋯ → Add patient - the owner is filled in for you. Also on the Linked Patients tab when it's empty |
| Add a spouse or carer | Details tab → Additional contacts → Add contact |
| Swap who's primary | Details → the contact → Make primary |
| Add an alert | Sidebar → Client Alerts → + → severity + message → Save |
| See what they owe | Financials tab |
| Take a payment | The Payment button in the header |
| See every money movement | Financials → View full ledger |
| Create an estimate | ⋯ → Create Estimate |
| Email them | Row ⋯ → Email (opens your mail program) |
| Book them in | Add Appointment, then pick which pet |
| Merge two duplicates | List → tick exactly two → Merge selected |
| Archive a client | Open them → ⋯ → Archive client - or tick rows in the list → Archive |
| See archived clients | Clients → turn on Show archived (beside the Status filter) |
| Bring one back | Turn on Show archived → their ⋯ → Restore |
| Delete a client | Only possible if they have no history at all, pets included. ⋯ → Delete client |
Filling in the form
- Client type - Person (usual) or Organisation (a rescue, a council, a company you bill).
- Account terms (days) - how long they have to pay. 0 means "pay at time of service", not "no terms" or an error. Common: 0, 7, 14, 30, 60. If in doubt, use 0.
- Phone - Australian numbers only. For an overseas contact, put the number in the Notes field of an additional contact.
- Standing discount (Account section) - a percentage this client gets on every visit, and a name for it. Leave it at 0 for most people. See Discounting a visit.
- Third-party payer (Account section) - tick this for an account that settles bills for pets it doesn't own. See Third-party billing.
As you type, Wattle checks for a possible existing client by phone, email or name, and shows a yellow note with links if it finds one. Nothing is blocked - open the existing person, or carry on and create a new one.
Walk-throughs
Gotchas
- Archive now works, and it is not the same as their status. Archiving files a client out of the way: they drop out of lists, searches and every picker, keep whatever status they had, and come back with Restore. Nothing is deleted. Turn on Show archived beside the Status filter to find them.
- Delete only appears when the client has no history at all - and that includes owning a pet. If they have pets, visits, invoices or charges there is no Delete, and Archive is what you want. The pets matter especially: deleting an owner would take their animals with them, so an owner with animals is refused. Remove or transfer the pets first if you genuinely need the record gone.
- The sidebar is read-only. Contact details there are for quick reference; edit on the Details tab. There's no separate "Edit client" page any more.
- The sidebar balance card has no payment button. Use the header Payment button or Record Payment on Financials.
- The list jumps back to page 1 whenever you search or change a filter. Normal, nothing lost.
- A greyed-out Email button means no email address on file. Add one on the Details tab.
- Alerts can't be switched off, only deleted. There's an active/inactive flag behind the scenes but no button for it yet.
- "Add Charge" showing "Coming soon" means it isn't switched on for your clinic. Use the normal billing flow - see Charges vs invoices.
Related
Patients · Invoices · Taking payments · Emailing clients · Third-party billing · Troubleshooting