Two yards a mile apart, visited on different days
A livery yard rings to book vaccinations for three horses on Tuesday. The next day a yard a mile away rings for a lameness work-up, and the only slot is Thursday. On Thursday the same vet drives back out, past the first yard, for the second job. Meanwhile, a dental and a pre-purchase exam are booked on the other side of the patch on the same day.
The vet spends a large part of the day in the car. Visit fees are charged per yard, but at a busy livery yard, three owners are sharing a visit, and splitting the fee fairly is a job for the office afterwards.
Why equine diaries sprawl
Bookings are taken one by one, in the order owners ring. The person taking the call can see the diary but not the map. Grouping visits by area needs someone to think about geography on every call, which is hard during a busy morning on the phones.
Yards are also the real unit of work, not horses or owners. A yard can have several owners, each with their own account, each with their own horses. Most practice management systems are built around the owner, which makes yard-level planning awkward.
Emergencies make it worse. A colic call blows the plan apart, and replanning the rest of the day is done in the car, by phone.
What a sprawling diary costs
| Issue | Effect |
|---|---|
| Unplanned routes | Hours of driving that could be spent on visits |
| Visits to nearby yards on different days | Duplicated mileage and time |
| Visit fee splitting | Office time and disputes between owners |
| Rebooking after emergencies | Owners called one by one to move appointments |
| Vet fatigue | Long days with less clinical work done |
A yard-based diary with routing
- Yard records holding location, access notes, and the owners and horses kept there.
- Area-aware booking. When an owner calls, the booking screen shows which days a vet is already in that area, so the receptionist can offer those first.
- Online booking for routine work such as vaccinations and dentals, letting yard managers book several horses at once and choose from area days.
- Daily route suggestions based on the day's visits, using a mapping service, which the vet can reorder.
- Emergency replanning. When an urgent call is added, the tool shows which visits are affected and sends owners a message to rearrange, in wording you approve.
- Visit fee splitting by your rules, such as equally between owners seen at the yard that day, posted to each owner's account.
Where your practice management system handles part of this well, we connect to it and build only the missing pieces.
Days with more horses and less road
Visits cluster by area, so the vet sees more horses in a day and drives less. Yard managers book routine work for several horses in one go. Visit fees are split automatically and fairly. When an emergency comes in, the knock-on changes are handled in minutes rather than a morning of phone calls.
The office also gets a clearer picture of which areas and yards generate the most work, which helps with planning area days in future.
Is your equine diary like this?
- Visits are booked in the order owners ring
- Vets visit neighbouring yards on different days
- Visit fees at shared yards are split by hand
- Emergencies lead to a morning of rescheduling calls
- Your practice management system does not handle yards well