How to Automate Angelpaw

Knowing exactly which pet is where is the whole job

Angelpaw is tracking software for pet crematories and aquamation facilities, and for the veterinary clinics that send pets to them. Every pet in the building carries a tag: RFID, a QR code, a wristband. It is scanned at stations as it moves, and each scan records the time, the station and the person who made it.

That record is the reason the software exists. Families ask whether they are getting their own pet back, and clinics are asked the same question by the families who trusted them. A chain of custody that can be shown, rather than described, is the answer.

Around it sits an ordinary working business. Clinics place orders, often straight out of their practice management system. Drivers collect on handhelds and hand over against a signature. Urns, paw print kits and keepsakes have to be in stock before they are needed. Somebody invoices the clinics at the end of the month.

Around every scan sits a page of paperwork

The scanning is the part that works. The office is where the day goes.

A certificate has to be filled in for each completed service, saved where your filing expects it and named the way the rest of the folder is named. A clinic group wants its numbers for the month, split by location, in the layout it asked for last year. Somebody counts urns and paw print kits against next week's bookings and writes a purchase order. Somebody sets what went out on the vans against what was actually invoiced. A clinic rings to ask about one pet, and somebody looks it up and rings back.

All of it is small and all of it has to be right, so it falls to whoever is most careful. In a busy week that person does very little else.

Angelpaw

Certificates ready for a signature Filled from the completed record, saved where your filing expects them and named to match, so the only step left is somebody signing.

Keepsakes ordered before they run out Urn and paw print stock read against the week's booked services, with the purchase order drafted for the supplier while there is still time.

Each clinic's month, already built Volume broken down by location in the layout the practice asks for, ready on the first rather than assembled on a Sunday evening.

The scans prove custody inside the building and the van

Angelpaw does the tracking thoroughly, and it is worth being clear how much is covered before adding anything to it. Ultra high frequency RFID means tags can be read without line of sight, through fixed overhead antennas, proximity readers and handheld scanners, so a pet checks into and out of a station without anybody typing. Every scan stamps the time, the station and the user. Drivers work from handhelds and take a digital signature at handover. The vet portal gives a clinic sight of its own orders across locations, with reporting, audits and messaging back to the crematory. Orders can come in through a clinic's practice management system, and invoicing runs out to QuickBooks or NetSuite.

All of that describes a pet moving through your facility and your vans.

The rest of the work sits in other windows. The keepsake supplier's ordering site. The accounting package, once the invoice has left. The report a clinic group wants in its own format, in a shared drive. The certificate template. None of those know that a service finished at half past three, and none of them fill themselves in.

The certificate, the stock count and the route write themselves

Start from the fact that the system already knows when a service was completed, and the afternoon looks different.

A certificate can be filled from that record, saved to the right folder under the right name, and left for a signature. A clinic group's monthly volume can be built per location in the layout they ask for and be waiting on the first, instead of assembled on a Sunday. Urn and keepsake counts can be read against the week's booked services, with a purchase order drafted for the supplier before a line runs out rather than after.

The vans gain too. The morning's collections can be grouped into sensible runs across the clinics, so a driver leaves with a route rather than a list. New clinic orders can be logged as they arrive, so nothing sits unacknowledged while the office is busy. What went out can be set against what was invoiced, so a month closes without anybody reconstructing it from memory.

One thing stays deliberately outside all of that. What gets said to a family is not paperwork and it is not a scheduling problem. The details behind it can be gathered and laid out; the words themselves belong to a person.

The family hears from someone, not from a schedule

That last line is the one worth holding, and holding it costs nothing.

WebRun works the office side. It signs into Angelpaw, your suppliers' sites, your drive and your accounting in a real browser, under your own logins, on a schedule, with a written list of what it may touch. It fills the certificate, builds the clinic report, drafts the purchase order and lays out the route. Anything that reaches a pet's family or a clinic is prepared and left for somebody to read and send.

The cards below are the office jobs around a pet's record that already run this way.