Clients and Patients

Overview

A client and an animal used to exist only as words typed onto one script. See the same client next month and you typed everything again.

Now they can be saved as records. Clients and Patients are separate tabs in the sidebar, so you can browse and search either way round: by owner when that is what you remember, by animal when it is not. They stay linked in both directions.

Nothing is saved automatically. You are offered a record, and you decide.

Finding a client while writing a script

At the top of the Owner Information section there is a Find a client box. Type two letters of a name, a phone number or a suburb, and you get two groups of results.

Saved clients are records you have chosen to keep.

From your past scripts are people who appear in prescriptions you have already written but have never been saved. Scripter works these out from your own history, so the search is useful from your very first visit rather than staying empty until you have typed the same client twice.

Picking either one fills in the owner and patient details. Picking one from your past scripts also offers to save it as a proper record.

The same two kinds of result appear on the Clients tab, where saved records and past-script suggestions sit in one table.

What gets filled in

Details that do not change between visits come across as they are: name, contact details, species, breed, sex, microchip number.

Two fields are treated differently, because they are measurements rather than facts about the animal.

Weight is filled in from the last script that recorded one, and the date it was taken is shown underneath the field. Weight drives the dose, so a number sitting in that box with no date behind it would look like one measured this morning. Reweigh and type over it whenever the animal is in front of you.

Age is worked forward rather than copied. An animal recorded as "5y" in September last year is filled in as "6y1m" today, and the line underneath says what it was worked forward from. If you have recorded a date of birth, that is used instead, because a date of birth cannot drift.

Saving a client and patient

When you save a script for someone who is not on file, you are asked once whether to keep them. Say no and nothing is stored.

You may see one of three questions:

• Save this client and patient? Nobody like this is on file yet.
• Update their record? They are on file, but this script has different details. The question names exactly which field differs.
• You already have a... Someone with the same name is on file, but the phone number and email are both different. Scripter will not guess, so you choose whether this is the same person or a new one.

Two clients with the same name are never merged silently. A duplicate you can see and merge is a much smaller problem than one person's address quietly appearing on another person's script.

The Clients and Patients tabs

Clients lists everyone you have saved. Patients lists every animal, searchable by name, species, breed, microchip or owner.

Both are tables. Click any column heading to sort by it: by name, by location, by species, by owner, by last weight, or by when you last wrote for them. The Last script and Scripts columns are usually the ones you want, because "who have I written for recently" is not something a name-sorted list can answer.

The footer says how many records you are looking at out of the total. If you have more than the page can list at once, it says so there rather than quietly stopping.

Filters and search

The search box searches names, phone numbers, emails, suburbs and animals. Next to it are filter chips:

• Clients: All, Saved, and From past scripts.
• Patients: All, one chip per species you actually prescribe for, and Possible duplicates when there are any.

Search and filters combine. Clearing both is one button when nothing matches.

Saved records and past-script suggestions in one table

People and animals that appear in prescriptions you have written but have never been saved sit in the same table, marked Unsaved. They used to be a separate list underneath, which made two lists that looked identical.

Each unsaved row has a Save button. Saving keeps their details and links every prescription you have written for them, so the record opens with its full history rather than a single row. Saving a patient also saves its owner, because a patient always belongs to a client.

Adding a client

Add client on the Clients page creates a record from scratch. A name is all that is required; everything else can be filled in later or from the first script you write. Use it when someone rings before their first visit.

To add an animal, open the client and use Add animal on their record.

Possible duplicates

The same dog reaches your list twice when one script says "Lolly" and a later one says "Lolly Wall". The Patients table flags rows like that: same owner, same species, and one name that is the other name plus something extra.

Flagged rows carry a Merge button, and the Possible duplicates chip filters down to just them.

The flag is a suggestion, never an action. Two animals in one house called "Bella Rose" and "Bella Blue" are not flagged, and nothing is ever merged without you choosing it.

Selecting several rows

Tick the box at the start of a row to select it. A bar appears at the top of the table with what you can do to the selection. Merge needs at least two rows.

What each page shows

A client's page leads with their animals and their prescriptions, because that is usually why you opened it, with contact details below. Their phone number and email are links: tap to call, click to email.

New prescription for [name] starts a script with that client already filled in. On an animal's row, New script fills in the animal as well, so you go straight to the medication.

An animal's page shows its own prescription history, its details, and its weight. If more than one script has recorded a weight, you get the series with the range and the dates, because a trend is the useful part. Each weight keeps the date it was taken, since a weight is a measurement from a day rather than a fixed fact.

Editing, deleting and merging records

Edit on a record page opens the whole record. Here, unlike the script form, clearing a field is an instruction: leave a box empty and that detail is removed from the record.

Weight is not on the patient form on purpose. It is a measurement taken on a day and it drives the dose, so it comes from your scripts rather than being typed here.

Delete removes the record. Your prescriptions are kept by default: you lose an address book entry, never a script. Deleting the prescriptions as well is a separate, counted choice, and it asks you to type the record's name first.

Merge joins two records into one. You choose which record survives; everything on the other is moved onto it and only then is it removed. Gaps on the record you keep are filled in from the other one, so a microchip number recorded on only one of the two is not lost, and nothing already there is overwritten.

Two animals with different owners cannot be merged. Merge the owners first, and the animals become siblings you can then merge.

Editing a record never changes a script

This is worth being clear about, because it is the point of the whole design.

Every prescription keeps its own copy of the client and patient details that were on it when it was written. A prescription is a signed legal document: it records what was true, and asserted, on the day you signed it.

So if you correct a client's address in 2027, a script you wrote in 2026 still shows and still prints the 2026 address. A row in a prescription history can legitimately disagree with the record above it. That is correct, and it is deliberate.

Deleting a client record does not alter any prescription, and does not delete one unless you explicitly ask for that in the delete dialog. On the ordinary path you lose an address book entry, never a script.