Switching
Switching to PetGrid
What the first week looks like, how to get your records out of the system you use now, exactly what PetGrid brings across and what it leaves behind, and how your team and your clients get in. Both imports are free, and nothing is saved until you have looked at what the file contains.
Week one
Five steps, in this order
You can do all of it yourself, at your own pace, and stop and pick up again at any point. The order matters more than the pace: the team before the visit history, and your staff before your clients.
Set up the practice
A practice admin signs in, sets the opening hours clients are offered, says which email address client replies should go to, and adds the practice's logo and colour for the owner app.
Invite your team
Invite everyone from Team, each with their role: admin, veterinarian, vet tech or front desk. Do this before importing visit history, so that past visits can be assigned to the veterinarian who saw the pet.
Bring your records across
Export your clients and pets from your old system, upload the file in Settings, Import, read what PetGrid found, and only then save. Then do the same with your visit history.
Staff sign in and try it on real work
Each person signs in and works through the checklist below. Book a few real appointments in PetGrid while the old system is still there to look things up in.
Invite your clients
When the team is comfortable, start inviting pet owners to the owner app. There is no need to invite everyone at once.
Keep your old system until you are sure. PetGrid does not need it switched off, and having it to look things up in for the first few weeks costs you nothing.
Getting your records out
Export two files from your old system
One file of clients and pets, with one row per pet and the owner repeated across rows. One file of past visits, with one row per visit. That is how practice systems export them, and it is what PetGrid reads.
Using something else? Clients and pets can come as an Excel file (.xlsx) or a CSV with any column headings: after you upload it, you match each column to a PetGrid field, and PetGrid makes the first guess. No clean export at all? Upload whatever you have in the same place and PetGrid’s AI reads it, including a PDF client list or photos of paper records. You check every row before anything is saved.
What PetGrid imports
The columns it reads
Headings do not have to match exactly. Capitals, spaces and punctuation are ignored, so “Client Email” and “client_email” are the same heading. For clients and pets you can match any heading to a field yourself, and columns you do not need are ignored, so there is no need to delete them.
| Column | Headings PetGrid recognises | What happens to it |
|---|---|---|
| Pet name (required) | Pet name, Patient name, Animal name, Pet, Patient, Animal | The one column the file cannot do without. A row with no pet name is skipped. |
| Owner first name | Owner first name, Client first name, First name, First | Each pet needs an owner: a name, an email address, or both. |
| Owner last name | Owner last name, Client last name, Last name, Last, Surname | Used with the first name. |
| Owner name, in one column | Owner name, Client name, Owner, Client | Only read when there are no first and last name columns. The last word becomes the last name. |
| Email, Owner email, Client email, Email address, Mail | How a household with several pets is recognised as one owner, and the address the owner app invitation goes to. | |
| Phone | Phone, Owner phone, Client phone, Mobile, Telephone, Cell | Optional. Used with the name to match an owner who has no email address. |
| Species | Species, Animal type, Type, Pet type | Optional. A pet without one is saved as "Not recorded" and you are told which. |
| Breed | Breed, Pet breed | Optional. |
| Sex | Sex, Gender, Pet sex | Optional. Codes such as M, F, MN and FS are understood, including whether the pet is spayed or neutered. |
| Date of birth | Date of birth, DOB, Birth date, Birthday, Pet DOB | Optional. YYYY-MM-DD is safest. When the dates in a file could be read either way, like 03/04/2020, you are asked whether it writes the month or the day first before anything is saved. |
Owners are matched by email, or by name and phone when there is no email, so a household with four pets arrives once with all four. A pet listed twice for the same owner is left out the second time. Anyone already in PetGrid is left alone. Download the clients and pets template to see the layout.
| Column | Headings PetGrid recognises | What happens to it |
|---|---|---|
| Pet name (required) | Pet name, Patient name, Animal name, Pet, Patient, Animal | Required. Matched against the pets already in PetGrid, so import clients and pets first. |
| Date (required) | Date, Visit date, Appointment date, Date of visit, Date time | Required. YYYY-MM-DD is safest, and it may carry the time too, as in 2025-03-12 14:30. |
| Time | Time, Visit time, Appointment time, Start time | Optional. 14:30 and 2:30 PM both work. A visit with no time is filed at 9:00 on its day, in your practice's time zone. |
| Owner email | Email, Owner email, Client email, Email address | Optional, and strongly recommended: it is what tells two dogs called Bailey apart. Without it, a pet name shared by two households is left out rather than guessed. |
| Owner name | Owner name, Client name, Owner, Client | Optional. Read, but the match is made on pet name and owner email. |
| Reason | Reason, Type, Visit type, Appointment type, Service | Optional. A visit without one is filed as "Visit". |
| Veterinarian | Veterinarian, Vet, Doctor, DVM, Staff, Provider, Seen by | Optional. If that person is on your PetGrid team the visit is assigned to them, so invite your team before importing history. |
| Notes | Notes, Note, Summary, Description, Comments, History | Optional. Becomes a clinical entry on the chart, marked as imported and naming the original clinician. |
Each visit is filed as a completed appointment on that pet’s chart. Running the same file twice adds nothing twice. Download the visit history template to see the layout.
Before anything is saved
- You see every owner and pet PetGrid found, and every row it could not read, with the row number and the reason.
- Nothing is written until you press save. If the preview looks wrong, fix the file and upload it again.
- Up to 2,000 rows are read per file. Split a larger export and import the parts one after another.
What PetGrid does not import
- Laboratory results, prescriptions and refill history.
- Invoice history and payments. What a client still owes does come across, as one opening balance per client.
- Inventory and price lists.
- Reminders and recalls. PetGrid works out care reminders from what is recorded in PetGrid, so they build up as you use it.
- Weight history, attachments and images. A pet's current weight comes across if your file has it, and photos of paper record cards are read for client and pet details only.
- Upcoming appointments. Every row in a visit file is filed as a completed visit, so export past visits only and book what is coming up in PetGrid.
- Staff accounts and owner logins. Your team is invited, and your clients are invited, as described below.
For every member of staff
The first-login checklist
Ten minutes each, on the first day. It is quicker to find a surprise now than in front of a client.
- Accept the invitation email and sign in with the address it was sent to.
- Check that your name is right and that you have the role you expect. If a screen you need is missing, a practice admin can change your role from Team.
- Open Schedule and look at today and this week.
- From Schedule, connect Google Calendar, or add the read-only feed to Outlook or Apple Calendar, if you want your appointments in the calendar you already use. Google Calendar syncs both ways, so a visit moved there moves in PetGrid too; the read-only feed only shows them. New appointments are still booked in PetGrid.
- Find three patients you know well and check their details and visit history against the old system.
- Book, move and cancel a test appointment, so the first real one is not the first one.
- Veterinarians and technicians: write one clinical entry on a test patient and add an addendum to it, to see how corrections work. Nothing edits an entry once it is written.
- Front desk: send one owner app invitation to someone on the team, so you know what the email looks like before a client asks.
Pet owners
How your clients get invited
Pet owners can sign up for the free PetGrid app on their own, with no clinic. They connect to your practice when they accept your invitation, and they see only their own pets.
- Invitations are sent from Clients by front desk staff or a practice admin, one person at a time: first name, last name and email address.
- The email comes from your practice's name, not from PetGrid, and replies go to your practice's reply address.
- The link works for 30 days. If it expires or goes astray, send it again from the list on the same page.
- Use the same email address you imported. When the owner accepts, PetGrid connects them to the record you already have, with their pets and history already there, rather than starting them over empty.
- Importing never emails anyone. Nobody hears from PetGrid until your team invites them.
- In the owner app they can see their pets' records, request appointments, ask for refills and message the practice. Each pet also has an AI setting the owner controls, which is on unless they opt out. While it is on, your team can use AI on that pet's record, including the plain-language visit summaries a vet approves before the owner sees them. Note drafting from the vet's own notes works either way.
Switching to PetGrid
Questions about switching? Ask Theo
Theo, PetGrid's AI assistant, helps any clinic with switching, from moving your records to what comes across. When Theo cannot answer, someone from the PetGrid team calls you back.
Or call Theo now: (365) 217-9922
Or message Theo on WhatsApp
On a computer? Scan with your phone to open WhatsApp.
Theo only calls during calling hours where you are: 9:00 to 21:30 on weekdays, 10:00 to 18:00 at weekends. Outside them, Theo calls the next weekday morning.
Stuck on an export?
Send us the file headings, not the data, and we will tell you what PetGrid will make of them.