How everything connects
One barn call, followed from the first phone call to a paid invoice — and every object it touches.
The fastest way to understand decavet is to follow one real call from start to finish. Watch which objects appear and how they link together — that chain is the whole app.
The call
It's Monday. Dana Miller phones: her gelding Thunder is favoring a front leg. You agree to come out Wednesday morning, and you'll see two other horses at the same barn while you're there.
Who and what: contacts and patients
First, the people and animals.
- Dana is a contact — your single address book holds everyone, and Dana is labeled a Client because you bill her.
- Miller Farm is also a contact, labeled a Location, with its address and gate notes.
- Thunder is a patient — an animal record. Thunder is connected to Dana as his owner. The other two horses are patients too, connected to their own owners.
One contact can own many patients; one patient can have several connected people (owner, trainer, farrier, a referring vet). decavet keeps the animal and the people separate, then links them.
The trip: an appointment
Wednesday's call is an appointment — a single trip to one place at one time. The appointment records when, where (Miller Farm), and who's going (you, the provider).
The work: visits
You're seeing three horses on this one trip, so the appointment holds three visits — one per animal. Thunder's visit is a Lameness Exam; the others might be a Wellness Exam and a Vaccination.
This is the key idea: the appointment is the trip; each visit is the work for one animal. A visit is what becomes a medical record and what gets billed.
What you did: services rendered
On Thunder's visit you record what you actually did — a lameness exam, a flexion test, maybe a dose of medication. Each line is a service rendered. Your service catalog is the menu these come from (it fills in the name, price, and any note templates), but you can always adjust the price or add a one-off.
Each service carries two kinds of notes: internal notes for your records, and client notes that can appear on the invoice. Together, your services rendered are Thunder's medical record for this visit — there's no separate "notes" file to keep.
The bill: charges and invoices
When the visit is done, the work needs to be billed:
- decavet gathers the billable lines into charges — a holding area where you can review, discount, and decide who pays.
- You turn charges into an invoice — the actual document Dana receives. The invoice freezes the lines, adds tax, applies any discount, and totals it up.
- If three horses had three different owners, you could split into multiple invoices. Because all three horses here are Dana's, it's one invoice.
The money: payments
When Dana pays, you record a payment (cash, card, check, e-transfer). The payment is applied to the invoice, which drops the balance. A payment can cover several invoices, and one invoice can be paid by several payments over time — decavet tracks the links.
The whole chain
Contact (Dana) ──owns──► Patient (Thunder)
│ │
│ appears on
▼ ▼
Appointment (Wed, Miller Farm) ──contains──► Visit (Lameness Exam)
│
records
▼
Services rendered
│
gathered into
▼
Charges ──► Invoice ◄──applied── Payment
Every part of decavet is somewhere on this chain. When you're not sure where to do something, ask: which link am I on?