How detailed should an estimate be?

Detailed enough to show what will be done, not so detailed that it stops being read. The practical threshold is six to twelve lines for an ordinary pathway: below six you are probably merging things the client would like separated, above twelve the document stops being read and the total becomes the only line anybody looks at. If a pathway genuinely needs more, group the lines by phase and give each phase one summary line.

Can the client approve the estimate from their own area?

Yes, but only if you filled in their account identifier and moved the document to the sent state. In that case the estimate appears among their documents and can be approved from there. If the field is empty the document stays internal: approval has to be obtained in person, by phone or on paper, and recorded by you through a state change. There is no automatic email delivery of any kind.

What do I do if the cost changes during the procedure?

An approved estimate should not be edited: prepare an additional document for the new part, applying the same readability rules. What matters most, though, happens earlier, and it is the sentence in the notes stating how the owner will be contacted if the plan deviates and who makes the decision. A deviation communicated as it happens is a variation; the same deviation discovered on the invoice is a dispute.

Can I take payment from the same screen?

No, online payment is not active. In the screen you can generate an invoice from an approved estimate, print it through the browser print dialog, mark it paid once the money has arrived and void it if needed. Actual collection goes through the tools you already use in the practice. Keeping the three invoice states current is still necessary, because that is what makes the outstanding balance at the top of the page trustworthy.

Clinic operations35 minLevel: IntermediateUpdated on August 3, 2026

Preparing an estimate the owner can actually read

What a veterinary estimate must contain for the client to understand it, how to write the line items and which states it goes through before invoicing.

Audience: Veterinarians
Species: All species
Scope: Italy, European Union, Valid everywhere

What you need before you start

Un accesso all'area clinica con il permesso di creare preventivi e fatture
Il piano diagnostico o terapeutico già deciso, con l'elenco delle prestazioni previste
I prezzi interni aggiornati delle prestazioni e dei materiali che intendi elencare
L'identificativo dell'account del proprietario, se vuoi che veda il preventivo dalla sua area

Disputes about a bill almost never concern the total. They concern one line the owner did not understand, a service they assumed was included, a test they thought had already been paid for. The estimate exists to bring that conversation forward, not to record it afterwards: written well, the discussion happens before the patient walks into the theatre, while there is still a choice between two paths. Written badly it does the opposite, because a signature collected on an unreadable document protects nobody and leaves the relationship worse than it was. This guide sets out what each line has to contain, how the document is completed in the estimates screen, which five states it passes through and how it becomes an invoice once approved. It also states the two operational limits of the platform, because they shape the way the estimate reaches the client.

An estimate is a clinical document, not a price list

An estimate lists what you intend to do to a specific patient, at a specific moment, for a specific reason. It is not a transcription of the price list: it is the financial translation of a clinical plan. That changes how it should be written, because every line has to trace back to a clinical decision the owner heard explained a few minutes earlier.

The quality test is simple and checkable: someone who does not work in a practice should be able to read the document on their own and understand, for every line, what will be done and what it is for. If understanding it requires a verbal explanation, the line is badly written, and the verbal explanation survives nowhere while the document survives everywhere.

Line items: from internal shorthand to a readable phrase

Every line carries a description, a quantity and a unit price, and the line total is calculated for you. The description is the only genuinely free field, so it is the only place where readability is decided. Internal abbreviations, perfect for talking between colleagues, are the fastest way to make an estimate indefensible.

Rewriting the most disputed lines
How the line is usually written	Readable version	Why the conversation changes
Preoperative tests	Blood tests before anaesthesia, sampling and results reported the same day	States what is sampled and when the answer arrives
Hospitalisation	Day admission with scheduled checks, from the morning until discharge	Makes clear the stay is not a surprise extra night
Consumables	Sterile single use materials used during the procedure	Removes the impression of a filler line
Home treatment	Medication dispensed for treatment at home, quantity for the stated period	Shows it is a supply rather than a service
Recheck	Recheck consultation ten days later, included in the pathway	Prevents a request to pay twice for the same thing
Anaesthesia	Anaesthesia with continuous monitoring of parameters throughout	Makes visible the work the owner never sees

One rule governs the quantity: it must map to a unit the reader recognises. A day of hospitalisation, one sample, one session, one pack. If the quantity is a number that only makes sense to somebody working inside, the line will need explaining every single time, and sooner or later that explanation will not be given.

Completing the estimate in ten steps

Open a new estimate from its own tab
The screen separates estimates from invoices into two tabs. Always work from the estimates tab: the invoice comes later, and it comes from an approved estimate rather than instead of one.
Fill in the animal and owner names
The animal's name is what makes the document recognisable at a glance, both for you and for the client. The owner's name serves the heading and later searching.
Link the patient identifier if you have one
The patient identifier is optional and links the document to the clinical file. Filling it takes seconds and turns a pile of loose documents into something you can retrieve per patient.
Enter the owner's account identifier
This is the field that lets the client see the estimate in their own area and approve it from there. Without it the document stays internal and approval will have to be recorded by you after obtaining it in person or by phone.
Add the lines one at a time
For each line write a description, a quantity and a unit price. The line total is calculated automatically. Add the lines in the order in which things will happen, not in order of price: a document that follows the chronology of the pathway reads like a narrative and gets disputed far less.
Set currency and tax rate
Currency comes from the selector and the tax rate is entered as a percentage, with zero for exempt items. Net amount, tax and total appear separately: this is the part the client looks at first and it has to add up without any mental arithmetic.
Give the document an expiry
The validity field stops a six month old estimate being presented as current. A short validity is not commercial pressure: it is an honest statement, because prices and clinical circumstances both change.
Write the notes and the exclusions
State what is not included, what happens if the picture changes during the procedure and which costs might be added. A sentence about how the owner will be contacted if the plan deviates is worth more than any generic clause.
Reread the document as if you did not work in a practice
Before changing the state, read the descriptions one by one and ask whether an outsider would understand what they are buying. This is the two minute check that removes most later arguments.
Move the estimate into the sent state
While it stays a draft the document is yours alone. Moving it to sent makes it visible to a linked client and puts it into the awaiting decision state, which is where it should sit while they think about it.

The five states and who moves them

An estimate passes through five states, and each answers a precise question. Knowing them avoids the most common mistake, which is leaving documents in draft that the client believes they have received and that in practice never reached them.

The five states of an estimate
State	What it means	What to do in this state
Draft	Work in progress, not visible to the client	Complete the lines and reread them
Sent	Awaiting the owner's decision	Set a reply deadline and follow up when it passes
Approved	The client has accepted the document	Schedule the work and collect informed consent
Rejected	The client did not accept	Record the reason and offer an alternative pathway if one exists
Invoiced	The estimate has produced an invoice	No edits: changes belong on a new document

The conversation before the signature

The estimate does not replace the conversation, it makes it short. With the document in front of you a few minutes are enough, provided they follow a fixed order. The order below works because it starts from the clinical reason and ends at the total, rather than the other way round.

Summarise in one sentence the patient's problem and the aim of the proposed pathway, without listing anything yet.
Walk through the lines in the order they appear and tie each one to a clinical decision you have already explained.
State explicitly what is not included and in which circumstances something would need adding.
Explain how the owner will be contacted if a deviation becomes necessary during the procedure, and who will make that decision.
Show the net amount, the tax and the total, and check the client can read the three separate lines.
Ask whether any line is unclear, and wait for the answer instead of treating silence as agreement.
Only then move to informed consent, which is a distinct document with distinct content.

From approved estimate to invoice

An approved estimate can generate the matching invoice, which is created with its own number and carries the lines of the source document. From then on the estimate reads as invoiced and should not be edited: if something changes, the change belongs on a new document, so the history stays reconstructable.

Generate the invoice only after the work has been done or dispensed, not at the moment of approval: a document issued too early has to be corrected later.
Check that the lines match what was actually done: if the pathway changed, the invoice has to describe the real pathway and not the planned one.
Invoices carry three states, issued, paid and void: keeping them current is what makes the outstanding balance shown at the top of the screen trustworthy.
Printing happens from the open document through the browser print dialog, so you can produce paper or a file according to your own system settings.
Online payment is not available: money is collected with your usual tools and the screen only records the outcome.
The unpaid invoice counter is there for the weekly review: if it grows month after month, the problem lies in when you ask for payment, not in the document.

A five minute weekly look at the four tiles across the top, pending estimates, approved estimates, unpaid invoices and outstanding balance, tells you almost everything worth knowing. Pending estimates that age indicate a missing reply deadline; approved estimates that never become invoices indicate work done and never billed.

Frequently asked questions

How detailed should an estimate be?: Detailed enough to show what will be done, not so detailed that it stops being read. The practical threshold is six to twelve lines for an ordinary pathway: below six you are probably merging things the client would like separated, above twelve the document stops being read and the total becomes the only line anybody looks at. If a pathway genuinely needs more, group the lines by phase and give each phase one summary line.
Can the client approve the estimate from their own area?: Yes, but only if you filled in their account identifier and moved the document to the sent state. In that case the estimate appears among their documents and can be approved from there. If the field is empty the document stays internal: approval has to be obtained in person, by phone or on paper, and recorded by you through a state change. There is no automatic email delivery of any kind.
What do I do if the cost changes during the procedure?: An approved estimate should not be edited: prepare an additional document for the new part, applying the same readability rules. What matters most, though, happens earlier, and it is the sentence in the notes stating how the owner will be contacted if the plan deviates and who makes the decision. A deviation communicated as it happens is a variation; the same deviation discovered on the invoice is a dispute.
Can I take payment from the same screen?: No, online payment is not active. In the screen you can generate an invoice from an approved estimate, print it through the browser print dialog, mark it paid once the money has arrived and void it if needed. Actual collection goes through the tools you already use in the practice. Keeping the three invoice states current is still necessary, because that is what makes the outstanding balance at the top of the page trustworthy.

What to do next

Write every line so that someone outside the practice can work out on their own what it covers, order the lines the way events will unfold, and use the notes to state what is not included and how you will make contact if the plan deviates. Move the document to sent instead of leaving it in draft, keep the estimate and the consent form separate, and generate the invoice only once the work has been done. Once a week look at the four tiles across the top of the screen.