Register a client and patient in VetSuite

A Client is a contact; a Patient is the animal linked to that contact. Registration also creates an initial authority relationship and patient state history. Check the identity and authority information before saving, because the Client link is subsequently controlled by an authority-transfer workflow.

This guide reviews the Odoo 20 source and supplied forms. It does not claim a tested registration journey or edition acceptance. Complete VetSuite setup and access first.

Before you begin

Use the Clients addon with its Taxonomy, Core, and Portal dependencies. Use a Front Desk account, or an inherited Clinician (DVM) or Practice Manager role, with permission to create or update Odoo contacts. Support has read access to patients but cannot create them through its patient permission alone.

Choose the intended company and an accessible Practice Site. When a site has Allowed Users, the operator must be listed. Have the client's details, the animal's identity, and the practice's verification of the responsible party ready. Use already configured Species, Breed, and identification schemes; the patient form does not offer creation of new catalog entries in these selections.

Create or reuse the client contact

1. Open Corvus VetSuite → Clients → Clients. Search existing contacts before creating a new one. This action initially applies Corvus Clients; remove that filter when checking whether an ordinary contact already exists.
2. Create the contact, or open the matching existing contact, and check Corvus Client. The Clients action supplies that value for new contacts. Enter the verified name and appropriate contact details.
3. On the Corvus tab, set Client Kind to Individual or Organization and review Emergency Phone. An Individual client cannot also be marked as a company; use the matching contact type and client kind.
4. Review Medical Reminders before saving. The supplied default is enabled, with SMS as the Reminder Channel and the three reminder types selected. Record the client's actual preference. For a fictional training contact, turn Medical Reminders off and use no real delivery address. These preferences are not evidence that a provider is configured or a message has been sent.
5. Save the contact, then use its Patients smart button. This opens the patient's list for that client and supplies the client when creating a patient. You can also open Corvus VetSuite → Clients → Patients directly.

Expected result: one reusable Corvus Client contact, with contact information and reminder preferences checked.

Register the patient

6. Create the patient. Enter Name, confirm Client, and choose Species. If known, select a Breed belonging to that species, Sex, and Date of Birth. Use verified information; this administrative step does not establish a clinical assessment.
7. Check Company and Practice Site. Company is shown to users with multiple-company access. The site must match the record's company and be accessible to the operator. Do not assume a default site is correct for every patient.
8. Review the Client carefully before saving. Staff registration automatically creates an Active, primary Legal Owner authority relationship for that contact and marks its verification state Verified. That is the software's initial record; it is not independent proof of legal ownership. The initial relationship also contains permission flags, including patient, clinical, appointment, and billing scopes, which need review before any separately managed customer access is used.
9. Save and note the generated Reference. The software initializes the patient state history and Active record status. Open the Authority tab or smart button to check the initial party, role, dates, and verification state. Detailed State History is visible to Clinician (DVM) and Practice Manager users.

Expected result: a numbered patient linked to the intended client, company, and site, with its initial authority recorded. Saving does not create a customer login or demonstrate portal access. The Client field becomes read-only on the saved patient; use the separately controlled Transfer Authority workflow for a later change, rather than trying to overwrite this history.

Record an identifier when available

10. Open the patient's Identification tab. For a supported identifier, add a line with Scheme and Value, then the known Issued On and Expires On dates. Use the practice's actual identifier; do not fabricate a microchip or license number merely to fill a field.
11. Save and use Set as Primary on the intended identifier if needed. The first identifier can become primary automatically, and a microchip identifier can take precedence over a non-microchip primary. Check the result rather than assuming the order is unchanged.

Expected result: an identifier attached to this patient and searchable from the patient list. Configured scheme patterns are checked on save. Duplicate checking is for the same patient, scheme, and value; it is not a guarantee of global identifier uniqueness across all patients.

The Microchip field mirrors the microchip identifier. Editing it can create or update that identifier and make it primary. Identifiers cannot be manually deleted through the normal model workflow; do not treat clearing a populated Microchip field as a safe removal procedure.

Try it with fictional records

In an authorized training environment, create fictional client Riley Morgan, leave real contact destinations blank, and turn Medical Reminders off. Register fictional patient Pip, choose an existing species, confirm the training site, and leave unknown clinical facts and identifiers empty.

Check the generated patient reference and Riley's initial primary Legal Owner relationship. Return to the client and confirm Pip appears through Patients. Search for Pip by name and reference. These are expected results from the reviewed source; the exercise has not been executed by this guide.

Troubleshooting

Problem	What to check
Existing contact does not appear under Clients	Check the Corvus Client flag and the default Corvus Clients filter before creating a duplicate.
Patient is not visible	Check company access, site Allowed Users, and the Archived search filter.
Site is rejected	Check that it belongs to the patient's company and that the user can access it.
Breed disappears after changing Species	The form clears a breed that does not belong to the selected species. Choose the correct breed again.
Individual client is rejected	Align Client Kind with the contact's individual/company classification.
Identifier fails validation	Check the scheme's format and the value. A Practice Manager manages identification schemes.
Saved Client cannot be changed directly	The patient Client projection is controlled by Transfer Authority; registration is not an ownership-correction procedure.

This guide stops at registration and identifiers. It does not qualify authority transfers, portal invitations, clinical diagnosis, lifecycle decisions, or outbound messages. Continue with appointments and consultation records.