Veterinary software demo questions to ask before you sign

Before the demo: set it up to show your clinic

Set the demo up so the vendor has to work through your clinic's day, not theirs. A week ahead, send three real scenarios: say, a sick visit with a prescription and a recheck, a dental with an estimate, and a new client transferring records in.

Bring a vet, a technician and someone from the front desk, because each of them will notice different things. Ask for the demo in a live account rather than slides, and ask for a trial login afterwards. Keep one scorecard with the same questions for every vendor, so you're comparing like with like.

A demo built around your scenarios tells you more in thirty minutes than a polished tour does in an hour.

Veterinary software demo questions about medical records

Your records questions should come straight from the CVO Medical Records standard. It requires updates that are dated and identifiable with earlier content preserved, an audit trail showing the original, the author and the date and time of each change, complete records sent within two business days of a request, and five years of retention. Turn each of those into something you ask them to do:

Front desk and scheduling questions

Hand these to whoever runs your front desk, because they'll care most about the answers:

• Book, move and cancel a visit. How many clicks does each take?
• How does online booking work, and can we limit it to certain visit types?
• Is there a waitlist that offers a cancelled slot to the next client?
• What do appointment and vaccine reminders look like on the client's end, and which channels go out?
• How do clients message us, and how does the team see and assign those messages?
• Does it sync with Google or Outlook calendars?

Clinical, pharmacy and billing questions

On the clinical side, ask them to issue a prescription with refills and print the label, then show how refill requests come in. Is there a controlled drugs register, and how are counts and discrepancies recorded? Have them build an estimate, get the client's signature and turn it into an invoice.

Then dig into billing. How are corrections handled once an invoice is issued: edits, or credit notes? Do drug fees show separately from service fees, on the invoice and in the record? Which card processor do they use, and does the money land in your own account? Is stock taken off automatically when you invoice or dispense?

That drug and service fee question isn't nitpicking in Ontario. The CVO's guide to its records standard says fees for drugs must be shown separately from fees for advice and services.

Security and privacy questions

Ask these because you stay responsible for client data even once it's in someone else's cloud. That's the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's position, and together with the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security's baseline controls for small organizations, its guidance points to questions like these:

1. Where is our data stored, and who at your company can access it?
2. Is access logged, and can we see the log?
3. Is two-step sign-in available, and can we require it for admins?
4. Are backups encrypted and stored separately, and how often are restores tested?
5. Can you share an independent security report?
6. How will you tell us about a breach, and how quickly?
7. At the end of the contract, how do we get our data, and how is it securely deleted?

Support, migration and cost questions

Finish with the questions about getting in, getting help and getting out. How will your current data be imported, who checks it, and how long does it take? What training comes with it, and what does support look like on a Saturday morning when the scheduler won't load?

On cost, ask which features are included and which are paid add-ons, and whether pricing is counted per clinic, per user or per vet. Get the contract length, the notice period and any fees to leave. And ask to speak with two clinics your size that switched in the last year.

Red flags: no trial, no audit trail you can see, export only as a paid service, or vague answers on where the data lives.

Asking PetGrid these questions

Please do. PetGrid's security page covers records walled off by clinic, two-step sign-in for admins, an audit trail and nightly encrypted backups, and import and export lets you download the whole clinic as one ZIP. Plans are on the pricing page. For the steps that come before the demo, read how to choose veterinary software.

Questions people ask

Read the clinic questions and answers

The short version

Good veterinary software demo questions turn a sales pitch into a test of your real day. Bring your own scenarios, make the vendor do the tasks, and score every system the same way. You'll know a lot more by the end of the hour.

If PetGrid is on your list, book a demo and send us your three hardest scenarios first.