Frequently Asked Questions

Published on the website, no sales call required:

• Solo (1 vet, 5 staff): $99/month
• Practice (up to 3 vets, 15 staff): $179/month
• Group (up to 10 vets, 50 staff): $249/month

That's the real number. No per-provider fees, no add-on charges, no surprise line items.

No. The plan price covers all the vets and staff included in your tier. If you hire a second associate, your bill stays the same.

Most competitors charge $50-$200/month per additional veterinarian on top of the base subscription. Over a year, that adds $600-$2,400 to your cost for every vet who logs in.

Everything is included at every tier: AI SOAP notes, client communication (texting, reminders), online booking, payment processing, scheduling, medical records, reporting, and discharge summaries. The only variable cost is standard payment processing transaction fees (Stripe rates), which apply regardless of what software you use.

Compare that to a typical setup at other vendors: PMS ($300-$600/mo) + Weave or PetDesk ($300-$500/mo) + online booking ($50-$150/mo) + payment add-on ($50-$150/mo). That $400/mo PMS becomes $1,000-$1,750/mo when you stack the tools needed to run a modern practice. (See The True Cost of Veterinary Software for the full breakdown.)

No. Month-to-month. Cancel anytime. No auto-renewal clauses, no early termination fees.

We've read too many stories from practice owners stuck paying for 9 more months of software they realized wasn't right by month 3. We'd rather earn your business every month than lock you in with a contract.

For a 2-vet practice, here's the total monthly cost when you include everything needed to run the practice:

Setup	Estimated Monthly Total
Enterprise PMS + Weave + add-ons	$1,000-$1,750
Mid-range PMS + communication tools	$600-$1,000
PawChart Practice (all-in-one)	$179

Over three years, the difference between an enterprise stack and PawChart is roughly $45,000-$50,000. That's a vet tech's annual salary. (See our full comparison guide for details.)

Independent veterinary practices with 1-5 veterinarians. Small animal, general practice. The clinics that enterprise software vendors overlook because they'd rather chase 20-location hospital groups.

If you're a solo vet running your first practice, or a 3-vet clinic that's tired of paying enterprise prices for features you don't use, you're who we built this for. If you're a 50-vet specialty hospital, we're not the right fit today and we'd rather be upfront about that.

It means you don't need to buy 4-6 separate tools to run your practice. PawChart handles:

• Medical records and SOAP notes (with AI)
• Scheduling and online booking
• Client communication (two-way texting, automated reminders)
• Billing and invoicing (Stripe-powered)
• Discharge summaries (auto-generated from SOAP data)
• Reporting and analytics

Most PMS platforms handle records and scheduling. Everything else requires add-ons from other vendors, each with their own subscription, login, and support team.

Not yet. Lab integrations are on our roadmap but not available at launch. If you're heavily invested in IDEXX analyzers and need tight lab-to-record integration today, ezyVet (which IDEXX owns) is the stronger choice for that specific need.

We're being honest about where we're new rather than overselling capabilities we haven't built yet.

Our target is productive in 2-3 days for core workflows, comfortable in 1-2 weeks. That matters because vet tech turnover averages 2-3 years. Every time someone leaves and a new hire starts, a system that takes two weeks to learn costs you 4-6 weeks of reduced productivity per year. A system that takes 2-3 days cuts that significantly.

We handle data migration as part of onboarding at no extra cost. The typical process:

1. Week 1-2: We export and map your data (patient records, client info, history)
2. Week 3-4: You verify sample records in PawChart and flag anything that looks wrong
3. Week 5-6: Full migration, parallel testing (run both systems for a week)
4. Go-live: We recommend a Thursday or Friday, never a Monday (lower appointment volume means more room for the learning curve)

We also recommend reducing your schedule by 20-30% during go-live week. It costs some revenue upfront, but every practice owner who didn't do it says the same thing: "I wish we had." (For more detail, see How to Switch Veterinary Software Without Losing Your Mind.)

Yes, and you should. Keep your old system accessible for at least 90 days after go-live. It's your emergency brake. You'll need to look up historical records that didn't migrate cleanly, and your staff will want to double-check things while they build confidence in the new system.

It might. Migrations are the hardest part of switching any software, and we're not going to pretend they're painless. What we can promise: a dedicated migration contact (not a knowledge base link), a validation process before go-live, and the ability to roll back if something breaks.

The most common migration problems across the industry are broken promises about timeline and support. We've read the community horror stories from Pulse, ezyVet, and others. Those stories informed how we built our onboarding process.

The core records (patient demographics, client info, visit history, medications) transfer. Attachments, images, and scanned documents sometimes need extra handling depending on your current system's export format. We'll tell you upfront what will and won't come over cleanly before you commit.

Cloud software stops working. That's a fact, not a sales pitch.

Here's the context that matters: business-grade internet delivers 99.5-99.9% uptime. Most outages are 10-30 minute blips, not full-day events. A cellular failover connection ($50-$100/mo for the plan, ~$300 one-time for the router) kicks in automatically and covers most disruptions.

Compare that to server-based downtime: when your server's hard drive dies, you're waiting days for a replacement, not minutes for your ISP. Cloud disruptions are frequent but short. Server failures are rare but catastrophic. (More on this in Cloud vs. Server-Based Veterinary Software.)

For most small practices, cloud-based software is more secure than what you're running on your own server. Not because cloud is inherently safer, but because you're outsourcing security to a team that does it full-time instead of managing it between appointments.

PawChart uses encryption at rest and in transit, automated backups across geographically distributed data centers, and SOC 2-aligned security practices.

The honest question to ask yourself: is your current server behind an enterprise-grade firewall with up-to-date patches, or is it in a closet behind a consumer router with a password that hasn't changed in three years? For most practices we've talked to, it's the second one.

You do. Export anytime, in standard formats, at no charge. We don't license your data. We don't share it with third parties.

This matters because not every vendor operates this way. One major vendor now requires practices to grant "permanent, transferable rights" to their PIMS data, including identifiable invoice-level information like client names, pet names, and fees charged, just to receive standard rebates. When those practices leave, the vendor keeps the data.

Read your terms carefully with any vendor. With PawChart: your data is yours, full stop.

No. PawChart runs in a web browser. Chromebooks, iPads, refurbished laptops, your phone. If a workstation dies, grab any device, open a browser, log in. Done.

The only exception: some clinical hardware (digital radiography, certain lab analyzers) still requires Windows. You'll likely need one or two full computers for those integrations regardless of what PMS you use.

Two options, your choice:

Voice: Start a recording during the exam. Talk to the owner and narrate your findings normally. The AI transcribes, then structures everything into SOAP format.

Text: Type your shorthand after the appointment ("3yo lab, V/D 2 days, T 103.5, HR 120, abd tense"). The AI expands it into a complete, formatted SOAP note.

Either way, the AI generates a draft. You review, edit, and sign. Every time. The AI is your typist, not your clinician. (For a deeper look, see AI SOAP Notes for Veterinarians: What They Are and Why They Matter.)

Honest estimate based on research and community feedback:

• Spending 90-120 min/day charting: expect to save 30-45 minutes
• Spending 60 min/day: expect to save 15-25 minutes
• Already fast: smaller gains

30-45 minutes/day = 130-195 hours/year. That's the difference between leaving at 6:15 PM and leaving at 7:00 PM. Not magic. But real.

The first week will actually be slower while you learn the tool. Plan for that.

Yes. Always review before signing.

Routine wellness exams and straightforward sick visits: the AI handles these reliably. Complex multi-system cases (geriatric cat with renal disease, hyperthyroidism, and a cardiac murmur): expect to edit the Assessment and Plan sections significantly.

Audio quality also matters for voice-based input. Noisy exam rooms degrade transcription. A lapel mic helps. So does narrating findings explicitly rather than relying on conversational context.

If any vendor tells you their AI SOAP notes are "100% accurate" or "never need editing," find a different vendor.

Standalone AI scribes ($40-$100/mo) generate SOAP notes that you copy-paste into your existing PMS. They work with any system, but they don't know your patient's history.

PawChart's AI is integrated into the medical record. It knows the patient's prior visits, current medications, allergies, and vaccination history. A follow-up appointment starts with context, not from scratch. The note saves directly to the record. No copy-paste. And it can auto-generate the invoice and discharge summary from the same documentation.

If you're happy with your current PMS and just want faster charting, a standalone scribe is the lower-risk choice. If you're already considering a PMS switch, integrated AI gives you more value.

Yes. Solo, Practice, and Group. No AI paywall, no premium tier required.

Several competitors lock AI features behind their highest pricing tiers. If you're comparing headline prices, check which tier actually includes the AI before you assume you're getting it.