10 Brilliant Ways to Optimize Your Veterinary Practice’s Payment System

Though the primary role of a veterinary practice is taking care of the animals they serve, it’s also important to acknowledge that running a clinic is a business. There are numerous costs involved with keeping your clinic well-stocked, making things comfortable for pet owners, and staffing your office. Ensuring that your payment processing is optimized leads to better management of these costs and the type of revenue that brings improvements and expansion.

Like many facets of doing business in the 21st century, payment processing has developed new facets to simplify things for business owners and their employees. These developments may be relatively simple, but plenty of businesses aren’t taking advantage of this technology.

Veterinary clinics that want to make payment processing easier and generate more profits should strongly consider optimizing their payment processing. Switching to a modern payment processing system isn’t as daunting as it may sound. In fact, it’s meant to help your employees and customers feel more secure with making and collecting payments.

So, how can you optimize your veterinary practice’s payment processing? The goal of this blog post is to demonstrate some ways to quickly update your system for optimal payment processing. We will discuss ten interrelated methods for making sure your veterinary clinic is handling payments in a way that’s convenient, safe, and profitable.

1. Switch to a flat rate

Many payment processing systems cause veterinarians and their staff headaches due to their complex fee structure. The cost of processing a payment can depend on a number of factors, including card brands, types, and payment methods. These variables create confusion and unforeseen expenses that can get your practice’s finances out of whack.

Switching to a flat rate for payment processing and transactions saves you and your team from stressing about unexpected charges. When there’s a single rate for each payment that’s processed, your clinic can make more clear plans for its future. After a few months of processing with a flat rate, you’ll have a good idea of how much you can expect to regularly spend on processing fees.

2. Pay fees for individual transactions

As we just mentioned, offices have historically paid for processing fees in one lump sum. These lump sum payments can cause sudden shocks to revenue at the end of the month if your clinic isn’t watching closely. Converting to a system where your veterinary practices pays for each transaction prevents you from falling into this situation.

Keep a pulse on your payment processing costs by adopting a payment system that charges you a flat rate for individual transactions. This seemingly minor adjustment can make sure you’re up to date with the cash flow in your practice. When your staff charges pet owners for services, they’ll know exactly how much you’re paying for processing.

3. Find a system that creates reports

Traditional payment processing systems let you know about charges in a monthly statement that can be confusing. Because complicated processing fees are difficult to keep track of, it’s hard to know if the numbers on your monthly statement match the payments actually processed by your clinic. Finding a payment system that makes reports readily accessible and easy to read can transform your practice’s finances.

With the right software, an optimized payment system puts analytical features at your fingertips. It enables you to run reports at any time and grasp the status and effectiveness of your payment processing. These reports should be reader-friendly if they’re organized in a well-organized interface.

4. Offer 24/7 payment processing

Conventional payment processing requires the presence of both an employee and customer. And what’s wrong with that? Well, having limitations on the time and place of your payment processing restricts your ability to collect payments. A system that gives pet owners the opportunity to pay anytime and anywhere means more chances to earn revenue.

Veterinary clinics with optimal payment processing are now offering their clients payment options around the clock. This type of payment processing comes in the form of text payment options. After receiving a text link to a payment site, pet owners can make their payments from the parking lot or the comfort of their own home.

5. Improve your payment interface

Even if your veterinary clinic already has an interface for payment processing, it might be clunky or outdated. Old interfaces make navigation slow and laborious, leading to employee burnout and unexpected fees. A user-friendly interface mitigates this potential by allowing your veterinary clinic’s team to check on payments quickly and easily.

Think of the websites, social media pages, and apps that you prefer. They keep you on their pages and platforms by offering a simple interface for getting the information and interaction you need. If your clinic can request, process, and review payments with just a few clicks, both staff and pet owners will be happier about processing their payments.

6. Give pet owners options

Consumers are more likely to frequent businesses that offer a wide variety of payment options. Almost every veterinary practice accepts traditional options, like cash, checks, and cards. However, ensuring that your clinic offers digital payments can make your payment processing more dynamic.

Dynamic payment options should include both mobile wallets and text payment options, which often are preferred by younger clients. Mobile wallets are provided by companies like Google, Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft. Text payments, as previously described, are simple requests that include a link to an online payments page.

7. Avoid contracts

Some payment processing requires your veterinary clinic to sign a contract. These contracts can be difficult to get out of early if your practice decides to change its payment system. A payment system that doesn’t ask you to sign a contract makes your clinic more flexible and ready to adapt to fluctuations in its scope or the movement of market forces.

In addition to being contract-free, the right payment processing system lets your office protect the privacy of its clients. Compliance is key to healthy, long-term payment processing. You’ll also want to choose a payment processing system powered by a trusted and secure company.

8. Use a single payment system

Veterinary practices can be spread thin if they’re relying on different payment systems for different forms of processing. Having multiple systems creates the confusion that leads to unexpected fees and stress about payment processing. Technological advances make it possible to take care of all your payment processing in one place.

So, the ideal payment processing system should let your office continue to collect cash, checks, and all major credit card brands. It should also allow you to collect payments with digital options, like mobile wallets and text payments. This array of payment options can be best utilized when it’s housed in a single payment system.

9. Personalize the payment experience

Successful veterinarians have a strong rapport with each pet and pet owner they serve. Collecting payments the wrong way can risk harming these carefully developed relationships. To prevent your payment processing from becoming impersonal, find small ways to remind your clients of their unique relationship with your clinic.

Try to create an invoice and payment page that includes clear billing information and your clinic’s name, along with your logo for visual effect. The right payment system will let you personalize text payment messages with convenient templates. These simple adjustments can optimize your payment system by reminding customers of their loyalty to your practice.

10. Collect payments with Weave

Weave is the complete business toolbox for veterinary clinics. It offers you VoIP phones, two-way text messaging, and a scheduling tool. It also provides veterinarians with software for gathering analytics, keeping customer profiles, sending emails, collecting online reviews, and chatting with your team.

Weave Payments is the tool that our team has designed to help veterinary practices optimize their payment systems. Unlike other systems, it charges you a flat rate for each payment. In addition, Payments lets you effortlessly run reports that give insight into payment trends.

Your clinic can now process payments around the clock thanks to our Text to Pay feature. Thanks to our simple interface, your staff is able to send out payment requests by text that can be processed anytime. Along with text payments, Weave Payments lets pet owners pay with cash, checks, cards, and mobile wallets.

Weave can be used to support HIPAA compliant communications and is powered by Stripe, one of the largest and most secure payment companies. Our text templates allow you to personalize the payment experience. To discover more about our easy-to-use payment system, watch a free demo.