Contacts explained
Why every person and business — clients, barns, trainers, suppliers — lives in one address book.
A contact is anyone or any business your practice deals with. Instead of keeping separate lists for clients, suppliers, and so on, decavet uses one address book and labels each entry by what it is. This means you only enter someone once, and you can search everyone in one place.
Categories: what a contact is
Every contact has a category that says how you relate to them:
- Client — someone you treat animals for and bill.
- Location — a barn, farm, stable, or show ground you visit.
- Professional — a referring vet, farrier, trainer, or other professional.
- Supplier — a company you buy from.
- Pharmacy — a pharmacy you send prescriptions to.
- Syndicate — a group that jointly owns a horse (see Syndicate ownership).
A contact can be an individual (a person) or a business (a company or organization). The same farm might be a Location and the place you bill — decavet handles that without duplicate entries.
Households: one record for a couple or family
People rarely come alone. A horse might be owned by a married couple, or managed day-to-day by a family member. Rather than create two contacts who share the same address and bills, decavet lets one contact hold additional names — a spouse, partner, family member, friend, or staff member. They all share the one contact, one address, and one ledger. See Households.
Contact methods: phones and emails
A contact's ways of reaching them — email, mobile, phone, fax, WhatsApp — are kept as a list of contact methods, not a single phone/email box. That means a client can have a personal mobile and a barn line, or two emails, and you can mark which ones are okay to use for billing, marketing, or text messages. See Contact methods & opt-ins.
Billing preferences
For Client contacts, decavet keeps a few billing settings on their record: a discount profile (a recurring discount that applies automatically), a preferred payment method, and a tax-exempt flag with a reason. These carry through to their invoices automatically.
Why it's done this way
Because everyone lives in one address book, a single contact can play several roles over time without you re-entering them, search and reporting cover everyone at once, and the people stay cleanly separated from the animals they're connected to.