Daily Use
Patients & Records
Finding and creating animals, reading their medical history, managing alerts, vitals and status.
ForEveryone
A patient is an animal. Its human is the client (the owner) - see Clients. Every patient belongs to one owner.
There are two screens: the Patient List (search and filter) and the Patient Detail page (one animal, split into tabs). You reach the list from the sidebar; you reach a detail page by clicking any row.
Common tasks
| I want to... | Do this |
|---|---|
| Find a pet | Patients → type the pet's name, or the owner's name, phone or email |
| Find a pet by its number | Patients → type the patient number. The # is optional, so 1026 and #1026 both work |
| See deceased pets | Patients → the filter dropdown → Deceased (or All patients) |
| See archived pets | Patients → the filter dropdown → Archived |
| Add a pet | Patients → New Patient → pick the owner → name + species → Create patient |
| Add an owner mid-form | Click the + beside the Owner box - a panel slides in, your form is kept |
| Edit anything | Open the pet → Details tab → change → Save |
| Add or change the photo | Details tab → click the photo box → Save |
| Add an attachment | Open the pet → Attachments tab → Upload (images or PDFs, 25 MB each) |
| Add a medical alert | Summary tab → Medical Alerts card → + |
| Change status | Open the pet → Details tab → Status → Save, or ⋯ → Change Status |
| Archive a pet | Open the pet → ⋯ → Archive patient - or tick rows in the list → Archive |
| Bring an archived pet back | Filter to Archived → the pet's ⋯ → Restore |
| Book an appointment | Open the pet → ⋯ → Book Appointment, or the same entry on the ⋯ of any row in the patient list |
| Start a visit | Open the pet → New visit (top right) |
| Create an estimate | Open the pet → ⋯ → Create Estimate |
| Email the owner | Open the pet → ⋯ → Send email |
| Transfer to a new owner | Open the pet → ⋯ → Transfer to another owner |
| Get the history as a PDF | Open the pet → ⋯ → Generate history PDF |
| Merge two duplicates | List → tick exactly two → Merge selected |
| Delete a pet | Only possible if it has no history at all. Open the pet → ⋯ → Delete patient, or the ⋯ on its row |
The detail page tabs
| Tab | What's on it |
|---|---|
| Summary | Next appointment, Recent Vitals, outstanding balance. Alerts and Reminders cards sit on the left. Click any of the four vitals for its full history and a chart |
| Details | Everything editable - name, species, breed, colour, DOB, microchip, photo, plus Billing & insurance |
| Visit History | Every past visit, newest first - notes, vitals, photos and charges, read-only |
| Appointments | Upcoming and past bookings |
| Attachments | Photos, lab results, referral letters, consent scans |
| Financials | Invoices, balance and payments - and the animal's estimates, which moved here from their old separate tab. A statement covers the whole account rather than one pet, so it lives on the client's Financials tab |
There is no longer a separate Latest Vitals tab. The same four readings sit on Summary under Recent Vitals, and clicking one opens its whole history with a chart of that reading over time - so the vitals are one click closer than they were, not further away. Weight is the one worth watching: the chart plots readings against real dates, so a long gap between visits looks like a long gap rather than a smooth line.
A vital that has never been recorded shows a dash rather than disappearing, so the four always sit in the same places.
Vitals and medications come from consultations - a pet with no visits has none yet.
Walk-throughs
Gotchas
- A pet that has "vanished" is either deceased or archived. These are two different things, and one dropdown covers both. Status says what is true about the animal - a pet is Active or Deceased, and that stays visible wherever the pet appears. Archived just means the record has been filed out of the way; it says nothing about the animal, and an archived pet keeps whatever status it really has. Use the filter dropdown at the top of the list: Deceased, Archived, or All patients to see everything.
- There is no longer an "Inactive" status. A pet that has simply stopped coming to your clinic is archived, which is the thing that actually takes it out of lists, searches and pickers. Inactive did the same job less well: it left the record cluttering every search while claiming something about the animal that was not clinical.
- Deceased is final. Nothing in Wattle turns a deceased pet back into a live one - not the ⋯ menu, and not the Details tab, where the Status box locks and a ? beside it says so. Wattle asks before it sets it, from either place. A deceased pet does get a Date of death box on the Details tab, so if the date is wrong you can correct it there.
- Archiving does not change a pet's status, and it never deletes anything. An archived pet drops out of lists, searches and every picker, keeps whatever status it had, and comes back with Restore. Nothing is moved and nothing is thrown away.
- Delete only appears when the pet has no history at all. If it has ever been booked in, seen, emailed or billed, there is no Delete, and Archive is what you want. That is deliberate: a clinical and financial record should not be destroyable, and Delete exists for the mistyped duplicate you created a minute ago.
- Account Balance on the Financials tab is the owner's total across all their pets, not just this one. For this animal, read the invoices and draft invoices below it, not the headline figure.
- Deleting an attachment can't be undone. Download a copy first if in doubt.
- The history PDF carries no prices - no invoice numbers, no payment status. It's a clinical document. The invoice is the financial one.
- Alerts, Reminders and Conditions: medical alerts are live (red = high, yellow = medium, blue = low). Reminders and the Summary tab's Active Conditions / Current Medications boxes are still being built - if you don't see them, that's expected, not a fault.
- Missing a button? It's usually permissions - creating patients and managing attachments are both gated. Ask whoever set up your clinic.
Stuck? See Troubleshooting or the Glossary.