Veterinary practice management software built around your practice
Most UK practices run on Provet Cloud, ezyVet, Teleos or something like them. Below: what each one covers, the gaps a system written for your practice could fill, and the build priced against your subscription. A first release with the four core features typically costs £3,750–£5,250 and goes live within a month.
£495 for a working prototype in 5 days. It comes off the build.
Next First Gear slot: w/c 19 Oct · 2 of 3 builds booked this month
Is custom worth it for you?
Three questions, and a straight answer.
What veterinary practice management software does, and who offers it
Twelve jobs a vet system is expected to do, checked against five systems sold to UK practices. Mark the ones you rely on with “Need it”. If your system already ticks every one, keep it. Where it doesn't, your marks set the price further down.
| Feature | Provet Cloud | ezyVet | Teleos | Spectrum | Animana | Your practice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First release | ||||||
| Client and patient recordsSpecies, breed, microchip, alerts and the owner's contact details | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Appointment diaryConsults, ops and nurse clinics by vet and room, with online booking | Yes | Yes | Vetstoria | Yes | Yes | |
| Clinical notesConsult templates per species, with history kept untouched when edited | Yes | Yes | Not listed | Yes | Yes | |
| Estimates, invoices and paymentsEstimates that become invoices, account clients and a card terminal | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Booster and recall remindersVaccines, flea and worm treatments and check-ups, by SMS or email | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Stock and dispensingBatch and expiry recorded as you dispense, ready for the yearly medicines audit | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not listed | |
| Controlled drugs registerRunning balance per drug, entries that can't be altered, printable for an inspection | Log | Report | Not listed | Report | Not listed | |
| Phase two | ||||||
| Lab results in the recordIn-house analysers and external labs filed against the right patient | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Pet health plansMonthly plans by Direct Debit, with included treatments ticked off | Yes | Yes | Not listed | Yes | Yes | |
| Insurance claimsClaim forms filled from the record and sent through VetEnvoy | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Client portalOwners book, pay, see vaccination records and ask for repeat prescriptions | PetsApp | Yes | PetsApp | Yes | Yes | |
| Group reportingTakings, stock and diaries side by side across every practice | Pro | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not listed | |
From each product's own site, checked Oct 2026: Provet Cloud, ezyVet, Teleos, Spectrum, Animana. Spectrum is AT Veterinary Systems' product. “Pro” means Provet's Pro plan and up. A named partner (Vetstoria, PetsApp) means the feature comes through that company's product. “Report” or “Log” means the vendor describes a controlled drugs report or log, which the RCVS says isn't enough on its own (see the rules below). A dash means the product's site doesn't list it.
Next: the tools it connects to ↓The first release, and what follows
The first release follows one animal through one consult: the owner and patient records, the diary slot, the clinical notes, and the estimate that turns into an invoice at the desk. That’s where your fees come from and where the RCVS’s record rules bite, so those four start ticked.
Reminders, dispensing with batch and expiry, and a controlled drugs register can join it if you need them from day one. Lab results, health plans, insurance claims, a client portal and group reporting wait for phase two, which is priced on its own and runs for roughly another month.
Where a practice does something no product handles well (an equine yard round, a herd health plan billed per farm, a referral centre’s case log), that’s usually the reason to build, and it goes into the first release.
What AI can do here
Where it helps a vet practice, with a person making every clinical call:
- Draft the consult note. The vet dictates while examining. The system drafts the history, findings and plan in your template, and the vet edits and signs it before it’s saved.
- Write the discharge letter. Procedure, drugs given and aftercare are already recorded, so the letter to the owner drafts itself for a nurse to check.
- Fill the insurance claim. It pulls the history and invoice lines for the condition being claimed, ready for a vet to review before it goes.
A vet or nurse approves anything AI writes before it reaches a record or an owner. I’d add these after launch, priced on their own between £1.5k and £5k.
The tools it should talk to
Pick the accounts package, payment services and messaging you already pay for. Every link you pick adds to the first release's price.
Switching from your current system
What comes across. Clients and their contact preferences, patients with species, breed, microchip and alerts, every past consult note and attachment, vaccination history, account balances and past invoices, health plan members and what they’ve used.
Clinical history. All of it moves, and I price it into the import. Notes that export as data are rebuilt as records under the right patient and date. Where it only gives PDFs or attachments, I file them against the patient, so a vet opening the record sees the whole history.
How. The first import goes into a trial copy. Your nurses pick patients they know well and compare them with the old system, and I fix every mismatch before the real switch. Check your notice period early: the vendor’s export window often starts when the contract ends.
What your current system lets you take
Taken from each vendor's help pages and terms in Oct 2026. Where they're silent, you'll find the questions I'd put to their support team.
I'm on Provet Cloud
- Settings → Import & Export gives clients and patients as an Excel file, up to 20,000 rows. Bigger lists export from the Clients & Patients screen and arrive by email.
- Reports export as PDF, Excel or CSV, and Provet has an open REST API, which I'd use for clinical histories and invoices.
- Their terms give you 60 days after the contract ends to retrieve your data, after which they may delete it. Export before you give notice.
- I'd ask support for a full export of clinical notes with attachments, which the help pages don't describe.
I'm on ezyVet
- Search results on the Records dashboard export as CSV, though ezyVet's own docs say only some record types can be exported this way.
- There's an API, and a paid enterprise service called Data Lake that copies your data out in bulk.
- My request to them would be a full database export with clinical notes, attachments and invoices, its format and cost, and how long they keep data after you cancel.
I'm on Teleos
- Teleos runs on MySQL, and cloud customers can keep a live copy of the database in their own building. That copy holds everything, so it's the best start for an import.
- I'd ask them for that copy, or a fresh dump, along with a note of which tables hold clinical notes and attachments, and their notice period.
I'm on Spectrum
- Spectrum's reports output to Access, Excel or Word, which covers clients, patients and transactions.
- AT Veterinary Systems keeps an external backup for you. I'd ask for a copy of it, which clinical history and attachments it includes, and how health-plan Direct Debits they collect move to your new provider.
I'm on Animana
- IDEXX's Animana help site wouldn't load for me, so I couldn't read their export steps.
- My questions for IDEXX: can they export clients, patients, clinical records with attachments, invoices and health plans, in what format and at what cost, and how long is data kept after you leave?
Your subscription against a build
The figures start from a four-vet practice on Provet Cloud Core. Put in your own vets, practices and subscription, then set the period.
£556 a month ex VAT
Breaks even in month 13
The build is the middle of your estimate (£4,500), paid up front. The first month's hosting is free, so the plan starts in month two, and one plan covers every practice. Subscription prices are list prices ex VAT and leave out set-up fees and price rises.
What vet software costs
List prices ex VAT, from each vendor's pricing page, checked Oct 2026.
| Product | Price | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Provet Cloud | Core £139 a month including one vet, then £139 per vet. Pro £199 including one vet, then £159 per vet. Enterprise is quoted. | Non-vet staff are free. Multi-location needs Pro. The page doesn't say whether VAT is included. |
| ezyVet | No UK price listed. The US page starts at $260.50 a month. | Owned by IDEXX. Group management and a client app are on its feature list. |
| Teleos | Quote-based, with a licence or a rental scheme. | VetEnvoy insurance claims at no extra charge. |
| Spectrum | Quote-based. | AT Veterinary Systems also runs health-plan Direct Debits for the practice. |
| Animana | Quote-based. | IDEXX's cloud system, linked to its in-house and reference labs. |
When off-the-shelf is enough
A single small-animal practice with ordinary consults, health plans and VetEnvoy claims is better off paying a subscription. The same goes if:
- you’re opening a new practice and your routines are still settling;
- your lab supplier’s own system is the one you want, linked as they designed it;
- your vets like their current system and nothing gets written on paper.
Building pays off for a group paying per vet across several practices, or where part of your work (farm, equine, referrals, a charity’s means-tested fees) lives in spreadsheets because the software can’t hold it.
Open-source software you could run instead
I looked for free veterinary software you could host yourself and change, and didn't find a maintained one. OpenVPMS publishes its code but asks practices for a yearly subscription, so it doesn't count. The closest option is a general business system, checked Oct 2026.
- Odoo Community LGPL-3.0
Good for: Contacts, invoicing, stock with batch and expiry tracking, accounts and a customer portal.
Missing for you: No veterinary features: patient records, clinical notes, the controlled drugs register and VetEnvoy would all be custom modules.
Prefer open source? I can install and host Odoo, then write the veterinary modules on top, under the same open licence.
Your vet system, as a plan you can keep
Your picks as a first release and a phase two, each with its price range. Keep a copy by email, or send it my way.
First release
The first month after kickoff
- Client and patient records
- Appointment diary
- Clinical notes
- Estimates, invoices and payments
Phase two
About a month, after the first release is in use
Nothing picked yet
- First release estimate
- £3,750–£5,250
- Phase two estimate
- None picked
- Break-even on Cruise
- Month 13
Estimates, not quotes: First Gear ends with a fixed price for the first release.
How the estimate works
Each phase starts at £1,500 for what every system needs: logins, hosting, backups and your data imported. Each feature and connection adds £250 to £1,000 depending on its size, and the range is 15% either side of the total. The break-even uses the middle of both phases.
A Tuesday, before and after
Picture a mixed practice with two sites. This is an illustration, not a client’s real day.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| 8am | The farm vet prints the day’s visits and the herd’s last results. | The visit list and each farm’s history are on the vet’s phone, and work without signal. |
| Mid-morning | A booster reminder goes out for a dog that died last month. | Reminders stop when a patient is marked deceased, and the diary shows who’s overdue. |
| Afternoon | Ketamine is written up in the bound register, and the balance is checked by hand at the weekly count. | The dose is entered against the patient and the register balance updates at once. |
| Month end | Health plan Direct Debits are checked against a spreadsheet, and claims are typed into the insurer’s portal. | Plan payments are matched automatically, and claims go through VetEnvoy from the record. |
UK rules that shape a vet system
- RCVS Code of Professional Conduct. Section 2.5 says you must keep clear, accurate and detailed clinical and client records. The supporting guidance on records adds that records are kept secure, that clients can ask for copies, and that a correction must not remove or obscure the original entry. It sets no fixed number of years; you keep records as long as necessary.
- Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013. For every POM-V and POM-VPS medicine you receive or supply, regulation 23 asks for the date, product, batch number, quantity, supplier or recipient and expiry date, kept for at least five years. The VMD’s guidance allows electronic records and asks for an audit once a year.
- Controlled drugs. Registers are kept for two years after the last entry under the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001. The RCVS controlled drugs guidance says a practice management system isn’t a sufficient register unless it meets the rules for a computerised one: entries can’t be altered, and the register is auditable, printable and backed up.
- RCVS Practice Standards Scheme. The scheme is voluntary, and accredited practices are reassessed every four years.
- UK GDPR. Owners’ details are personal data, and the ICO’s guidance asks you not to keep them longer than you need, which means a retention schedule your system can follow.
I build to these rules. Whether a practice meets them is still the practice’s call, and I’d walk your clinical director through how each one is handled before go-live.
Is my data safe?
Access follows the job: reception gets the diary and accounts, nurses see clinical records, only named people can sign the controlled drugs register. Every view and change of a record is logged with who and when. Everything is encrypted, hosted in the UK or EU with a backup every night, and you can take a full copy of the database whenever you like.
Will my vets use it?
A vet uses three screens most of the day: the diary, the consult note and the charge sheet. I build those for speed on a desktop and a tablet. In First Gear, one of your vets tries a real consult on the prototype; whatever slows them down gets changed before the build.
Other ways to solve it
| Route | What you pay | Suits | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vet practice software | A monthly fee, often per vet | One practice with standard consults and plans | Work it can’t model ends up on paper or in a spreadsheet |
| Custom build | First Gear, a fixed-price build, then a run plan if you want one | Groups, mixed and farm practices, practices juggling several systems | The cost lands at the start, and later features come through a plan or another phase |
| Open source (Odoo Community) | No licence fee; hosting and set-up cost money | Practices that want to own the software and can wait for the vet parts | Patient records, notes and the CD register all need building on top |
| Paper and spreadsheets | Free | A locum service or a very small mobile practice | No audit trail, and reminders depend on someone remembering |
Four guarantees, in writing.
They're written into the terms you accept when you pay.
Every build also comes with a 30-day fix guarantee. If something I built doesn't work as the plan describes, I fix it free.
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See it first
You click through a working prototype before you commit to the build, and you keep it either way.
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Fixed price
You pay the price in the build plan. New ideas go into a later phase with its own fixed price. Nothing is billed by the hour.
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On time
If I miss the go-live date in your build plan because of a delay on my side, you get 3 months of Cruise free (£597). If your data, feedback or sign-off is late, the date moves by the same number of days.
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Yours to keep
Code, data and accounts are in your name from day one. Export your data or cancel a plan whenever you like, and ask for a full handover pack.
You'll talk to me
I've built software for over ten years and started ByteGears in 2020. The person on your kickoff call is the person who writes the code. Recent work includes quoting automation for a renewable-energy installer and a cask whisky auction platform with ID and anti-money-laundering checks.
Questions about a vet build
Is there such a thing as RCVS-compliant vet software?
I can't find any RCVS scheme that approves or certifies software. Its Code says what your records must be (clear, accurate, kept secure, with corrections that leave the original visible), and the controlled drugs guidance sets out what a computerised register needs. A system can be built to meet those rules, and you stay responsible for how it's used, so ask any supplier to show you how theirs meets each one.
Would a build cost less than Provet Cloud or ezyVet?
Per-vet fees make it closer than you'd expect: the subscription grows with every vet you hire, while the run plan stays the same. Put your own figures into step 3. Price isn't the whole story, though. A first release does four jobs well, and a mature product already does a dozen, so a practice happy with its system has little to gain.
When could our practice switch over?
After the 5-day First Gear you get a written go-live date. I'd aim the switch at a quiet week, with your old system kept read-only for a month as a fallback.
Can our vets use it on farm visits?
Yes. It runs in the browser on a phone or tablet. If your vets lose signal on farms, I can make the screens they use on the road (the animal's history, notes, what was dispensed) work offline and sync when they're back in range; that's priced as its own feature. There's no App Store app.
What does it cost to run after launch?
The first month's hosting is free, along with a 30-day fix guarantee. After that you choose a plan (Idle £79, Cruise £199 or Overdrive £449 a month) or host it yourself. None of them charge per vet.
Let's get the gears turning.
Send me your plan. If First Gear is the right start, I'll reply with a payment link that holds your slot. If an off-the-shelf product would serve you better, I'll name it.