Guides

Should We Publish Fees? The Equine Practice Answer

The direct answer for equine vets and farriers: publish the visit fee, routine procedures and how callouts are charged. Yard managers budget on it.

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The short answer

Yes. Publish the visit fee, the common routine procedures, and how emergency callouts are charged. Yard managers budget on those numbers and owners choose on them, and a practice that will not state a visit fee loses to the one that will before either of you has spoken.

The three objections, answered

"Every job is different." Most of them are not. A flu and tetanus booster on a healthy horse, a routine dental, a trim, a set of front shoes: these are repeatable and you already know what they cost. Publish those and band the rest with a reason beside the band. A band with an explanation reads as honest. "Price on request" reads as a phone trap.

"Competitors will undercut us." They already know your prices. Every yard manager in the county discusses them, and any competitor who wants your fee list can ring and ask as an owner. The only person your silence keeps in the dark is the client.

"We will look expensive." You look expensive when a number arrives with no explanation. You look reasonable when the page says what the visit fee covers, why the zone fee exists, and that it is lower on your route day. Context is what makes a price acceptable, and a page can carry context that an invoice cannot.

What to publish, in order

The visit fee. By area or distance band, with the route-day rate if it differs, and a clear line on what it covers: the journey and the time on the yard, not the procedures.

Routine work. Vaccinations, dentals, routine bloods, passport work, a set of shoes, a trim, remedial work. Fee or band, with a note. Say whether tax is included, and whether medicines, consumables and sedation are included or added. Sedation is the most common surprise on an equine invoice, so give it its own line.

Emergency and out-of-hours charging. The callout fee or its band, when out of hours starts, whether weekends and holidays differ, whether non-registered horses are seen and at what cost, and how payment is taken at the time. This is the block sites skip and the one that causes the worst conversations.

Yard terms. How a shared visit fee is split across horses seen in one call, whether the yard is invoiced as one account, and the payment terms. This is what makes a yard manager forward your link rather than ring three practices.

What not to publish

Do not put a single "from" number with no visit fee, which tells nobody anything. Do not publish fees only as a downloadable PDF, because nobody opens one on a phone in a stable. Do not let the site and your practice software disagree; write the page from ServiceM8, Jobber, Provet Cloud or ezyVet rather than the other way round. And do not compare yourself on price to a named competitor.

Regulator expectations around honest client communication and fair advertising differ by country. The RCVS Code in the UK, and state veterinary boards with AVMA guidance in the US, all speak to clear communication with clients about costs. Take that as orientation rather than legal advice, and have an adviser check your terms and cancellation wording.

The work that goes with saying yes

Publishing fees only helps if the page stays right. Build each fee as an editable record rather than typing a table into a page, so the practice manager can change a number in January without booking a developer. A stale price is worse than no price, because it is a promise you then have to break at the invoice.

Then put a booking button beside the fees, because an owner who has just accepted your number is at the exact moment of deciding.

Where this sits

Stated visit fees, routine procedures and honest callout charging are one of the six things we build into an equine vet and farrier website, and editable price records run through our pet business websites generally. Our packages are on pricing. A yard manager cannot budget on a number you will not say, so they budget with someone who will say it.

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