Consultations

This is the page where you write up what happened during an animal's visit — the notes, the vitals, and the charges that go on the bill. If you only learn one screen in Wattle, make it this one.

A quick word on names. In the app, one patient visit is called a visit (you may also hear it called a consult or consultation — they all mean the same thing). It is a single record for a single visit: notes, vitals and charges, all in one place.

The handy thing to know up front: you almost never need to leave this page. Notes, vitals and billing all live on the one screen, side by side. Notes save themselves as you type — and where something is final, the app makes you ask for it.

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How the page is laid out

The consult page has three areas:

• The header (top) — patient name, a back arrow to the patient, the visit number, the visit date and time, the provider (the staff member responsible), the status pill, and the Finalise button. If the patient has any active alerts, an Alerts pill appears here too (more on this below). A ⋯ More actions menu sits at the far right.
• The left column (the clinical side) — your Clinical Notes and any linked Estimates. This is where the medicine happens.
• The right column (the practical side) — a Patient context card (active alerts and reminders due at a glance), Visit Vitals (weight, temperature and so on), Billing Items (the charges that make up the bill) and an Attachments card (photos and files for this animal).

You can do everything from here. You do not need to open another screen to add a charge or record a weight.

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Starting a visit

Start a new visit for a patient

Usually: vet or nurse

Step by step

1. Find the patient. Go to Patients and click their name.
2. Open the Visit History tab.
3. Click New Visit.
4. Wattle opens a fresh consult page, ready for you to type. The patient, the owner and you (as the provider) are all filled in automatically.

Other ways to do this — there are several doors into the same room. They all create the same kind of visit.

• ⭐ From a checked-in appointment: Open the appointment from the Schedule. When its status is checked-in, the main button reads Start consult. Click it. The appointment moves itself along to in-progress and the new visit opens. This is the tidiest path when the visit came from a booking. See The schedule.
• From the patient's Summary tab: Click New Visit.
• From the patient's Latest Vitals tab: Click New Visit (handy when you're about to weigh the animal).
• From the patient's Medications tab: Click New Visit (handy when the visit is mainly a prescription).

Don't overthink which door to use. The New Visit buttons dotted around the patient file are simply shortcuts to the same action — they all land you on the same consult page. If in doubt, use Visit History → New Visit.

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Writing clinical notes

Edit the clinical notes

Usually: vet or nurse

Step by step

1. On the consult page, look at the left column for the Clinical Notes card.
2. Click into the big text box (it says Enter clinical notes here… until you start).
3. Type your notes as you normally would.
4. Stop. Two seconds later, Wattle saves automatically. You'll see the little indicator near the card's title change.

The save indicator — what it's telling you

There's a small status word next to the Clinical Notes title. It quietly keeps you informed:

You do not need to hunt for a Save button. There isn't one for notes, and that's by design — the app does it for you. The indicator is small, so the first few times, glance up and watch it tick over to Saved. Once you trust it, you'll stop noticing it.

Need to save this instant? Press Cmd+S (Mac) or Ctrl+S (Windows). This forces an immediate save instead of waiting the 2 seconds — useful right before you step away or close the page.

A note on the box itself: the notes box is generous — it starts tall and, once your notes outgrow it, scrolls inside rather than pushing the page down. If you want it bigger or smaller, drag the small handle at its bottom-right corner.

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Patient context at a glance

The right column opens with a Patient context card — a quiet, read-only summary of anything about this animal that you'd want in front of you while you work, without having to leave the consult to go and check.

It shows two things, when they apply:

• Active alerts — the patient's flagged warnings (for example a temperament note or a drug sensitivity), each with a small coloured dot for severity.
• Reminders due — anything that's due or overdue for this patient (under a Reminders due heading). Overdue items are marked with an Overdue · prefix so they stand out.

If the patient has neither active alerts nor anything due, the card simply doesn't appear — so when you do see it, it means there's something worth a glance.

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Recording vitals

Record vitals during a visit

Usually: nurse or vet

Step by step

1. On the right side of the consult page, find the Visit Vitals card.
2. Click the small pencil (Edit) icon.
3. A little window (titled Visit Vitals) opens with four boxes in a 2×2 grid: weight, temperature, heart rate and respiratory rate. Each shows its unit beside the label.
4. Type the values you have. You can fill some and leave others blank.
5. Click Done to save all of them at once. (Cancel closes without saving.)

The card always shows four small chips — W, T, HR and RR (weight, temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate). Each shows its value once recorded, or a dash (—) until then.

Two things worth knowing:

• Values don't save while you type — only when you click Done. So fill the whole grid first, then save.
• Be careful with the Enter key. Pressing Enter saves everything immediately, even if you weren't finished. If you're moving between boxes, use Tab, not Enter. Press Enter (or click Done) only when all the vitals you want are in.

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Billing — adding charges as you go

The clever part: you add the bill while you work, right here on the consult page. Every service and product you add builds the visit's running total. You don't go to a separate billing screen to do this.

To understand how these charges become an invoice later, see Charges vs invoices.

Add charges (services or products) to the visit

Usually: vet, nurse or receptionist

Step by step

1. On the right, find the Billing Items card.
2. Click the + button. The item picker opens.
3. Search the box or browse by category to find the service or product.
4. Click the item. An Add item dialog opens.
5. Set the quantity (and, for items sold in different units like tablets or vials, pick the unit; you can adjust the price too).
6. Click Add to bill.

The charge drops into the list showing its name (with a small × quantity line beneath when you've added more than one) and its line total on the right. The Total at the bottom updates straight away.

Other ways to do this

• ⭐ Add one item at a time (above) — the usual way.
• Add a package: Some catalogue items are packages that bundle several items together. Click a package and all its items are added at once, at their package prices. Quick — but see the warning below.

Remove or void a charge

Usually: vet, nurse or receptionist

Each charge row has a trash icon. What it does depends on whether the visit is still a draft or has been finalised — and this is important to understand, because the icon looks the same in both cases:

• Draft visit → clicking trash deletes the charge. It's gone for good.
• Finalised visit → clicking trash voids the charge. It isn't deleted; it's marked as void and stays in the record as part of the audit trail.

Step by step

1. In the Billing Items card, find the charge.
2. Click the trash icon on the right of its row.
3. A box headed Remove this billing item? appears. Click Remove to confirm (or Cancel to back out). On a finalised visit it tells you the charge will be voided and the audit row kept; on a draft it simply removes it.

Generate an invoice or estimate

Once billing items have been added, the Billing Items card offers two actions:

• Generate Estimate — creates a draft estimate from the billing items. Available at any time once items are added.
• Generate Invoice — creates a draft invoice from the billing items. Only available once the consultation is finalised.

Both carry across the patient, client, and all billing items, and take you to the new document to review before sending. See Invoices and Estimates (quotes).

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Linked estimates

If you gave the owner a quote, you can see it here.

Check estimates linked to this visit

Usually: vet or receptionist

Step by step

1. In the left column, find the Estimates card (collapsible — click the chevron to open it).
2. Any linked estimates appear as rows showing the estimate number, a status badge and the total.
3. Click a row to open the full estimate.

If there aren't any, you'll see No linked estimates. For more, see Estimates (quotes).

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Attachments during a visit

Usually: vet or nurse.

The right column has an Attachments card. It works exactly like the Attachments tab on the patient's file — and it's the same set of files. A consult shows all of this animal's attachments, not just today's, so you can pull up an earlier photo and compare it with how the patient looks now.

Tie a file to this visit

As well as keeping the files together, you can mark which ones belong to this visit. This is purely a label for the timeline — it helps you (and whoever reads the record later) see what was captured on the day.

• Anything you upload during the visit is tagged "This visit" automatically. Snap or upload it here and it's already linked — you don't have to do anything.
• To link files that already existed: tick the ones you want, then click Link to this visit. To take the label off again, tick them and choose Unlink. You can do this to several files at once.

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Dose calculator

Usually: vet or nurse.

A quick dose calculator is built into the consult so you don't have to reach for a separate app or a scrap of paper. It works out:

• Total dose — your dose rate (mg/kg) × the animal's weight.
• Volume to draw up — that total dose ÷ the drug's concentration.
• A %-solution conversion — turns a percentage solution into mg/mL for you.

It's metric only (kilograms, milligrams, mg/mL).

Open the dose calculator

Step by step

1. From inside a consult, click the calculator icon in the actions row at the top right — it sits just left of the visit status, separated from it. The patient's latest weight is filled in for you, so you can start straight away.
2. Enter the dose rate (mg/kg) and the drug concentration (mg/mL).
3. Read off the total dose and the volume to draw up. The figures update as you type.

You can also open it from anywhere via the command palette — press ⌘K (Mac) or Ctrl+K (Windows) and type Dose calculator. Opened that way it doesn't know the patient, so you type the weight in yourself. See Keyboard shortcuts.

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Housekeeping in the header

These tasks live in the consult header — the strip across the top of the page.

Change the visit date and time

Usually: vet, nurse or receptionist

Step by step

1. In the header subtitle, you'll see Visit: [number] · [date] · [provider].
2. Click the date (it has a small calendar icon).
3. A calendar pops up. Pick the correct date. Below it, a time box lets you adjust the time (24-hour format).
4. Click Save.

This changes the date of the visit — not the day you typed it up. Use it to correct a visit you're writing up late.

Change the provider (reassign the visit)

Usually: vet or admin

Step by step

1. Click the ⋯ More actions menu (top right).
2. Choose Change provider.
3. Pick the new staff member from the dropdown.
4. Click Save.

Heads up: the list shows all active staff — vets, nurses and receptionists alike — so take care to pick an actual clinician. This is for handing a visit to another vet or nurse. If you're unsure, ask your clinic administrator.

Update the visit status

Usually: vet, nurse or receptionist

Step by step

1. In the header, find the status box (it has a small coloured dot).
2. Click it to open the list of statuses your clinic uses.
3. Click the one you want. It saves immediately and a Status changed message appears at the corner of the screen to confirm.

View the visit's financials

Usually: receptionist or admin

Step by step

1. Click ⋯ More actions.
2. Choose View financials.
3. Wattle takes you to the matching invoice if one exists, otherwise to the patient's Financials tab.

See Invoices and Taking payments.

Delete a visit

Usually: vet or practice manager — this is a permission-gated action (Delete consults, on by default for vets and admins; adjustable in Settings → Roles & Permissions). If you don't see the option, your account doesn't have the permission.

Step by step

1. Click ⋯ More actions.
2. Choose Delete consult (shown in red).
3. A box explains what will happen: the visit is permanently deleted — unless it has any billing history, in which case it's archived instead: hidden from the patient's record, with its billing kept intact.
4. Click Keep Editing to back out, or Discard to proceed. A message confirms which of the two happened.

Any visit can be deleted — draft or finalised. Wattle trusts the permission holder to use it properly; the one thing it will never do is destroy billing records, which is why visits with charges are archived rather than erased. (An archived visit's data isn't gone — contact support if one ever needs restoring.)

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Finalising a visit

Finalising means: this visit is complete and the bill is ready for payment. It's an important, deliberate step, so it deserves its own section.

Finalise a visit

Usually: vet

Before you click, understand what finalising does:

• It locks the charges for audit. After finalising, charges can only be voided (with a trail), not deleted. See the billing section above.
• It marks the visit ready for payment — the status moves on so the front desk can take payment.
• Your clinical notes stay editable even after finalising, so you can keep writing up.

⚠️ Finalising takes effect the moment you click — there's no "are you sure?" step. It stays in place until you click Revert to draft. Don't click Finalise unless the visit is complete and every charge is correct. The safety net is that Revert is always one click away (see below), not that the app stops to ask.

Step by step

1. Check the visit over: notes done, vitals in, charges correct.
2. Click the Finalise button in the header (to the right of the status pill).
3. A short message confirms Visit finalised — ready for payment. The button now reads Revert to draft.

Revert a finalised visit back to draft

Usually: vet

Step by step

1. On a finalised visit, the header shows Revert to draft (where Finalise used to be).
2. Click it.
3. The visit returns to draft. Charges can be deleted again (rather than only voided), and you can keep editing freely.

This is your safety net. Finalising is never a dead end — you can always step back if you clicked too soon or need to fix the bill.

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Looking back at a past visit

View a past consultation (read-only)

Usually: anyone

Step by step

1. Open the patient and go to the Visit History tab.
2. The left rail lists every past visit, newest first. The most recent is selected for you. Most rows are just the date, the visit's title and the clinician — a status badge only appears on visits that are still open (not yet completed or finalised), so anything with a badge is something someone should probably go and finish.
3. Click any visit to see a read-only summary on the right. The header shows what the visit was for (the appointment's reason), when it was booked for, its status and the clinician. Below that, everything from the visit in one scroll: Vitals (weight, temperature, heart and respiratory rate), the Clinical notes, any photos and files attached to that visit, and the charges with a total. Sections with nothing in them simply don't show.
4. To make changes, click Open Consult — this takes you to the full editable page.

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Quick reference

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Related sections

• The schedule — booking & appointments
• Patients (the animals) — where visit history lives
• Charges vs invoices (the money model) and Invoices
• Estimates (quotes)
• The catalogue & prices — medicines and billable items
• How the app talks to you (the cheat sheet) — save indicators, dialogs and status pills explained
• Keyboard shortcuts (for power users) — including Cmd+S
• Glossary