5 helpful tips for your veterinary clinic's growth.

1. Get a business credit card designed for your office.

Credit cards designed with small businesses in mind can be very beneficial for your clinic when it comes to improving your cash flow. Additionally, they allow you to manage and track your spending while offering purchase protection, travel insurance and other valuable perks. Many cards have rewards and cash back options, which create discounts on future business expenses and travel.

From a security standpoint, credit cards are much safer for business purchases than petty cash, and they allow you to assign cards and spending limits to employees. Credit cards can also be easily replaced if they are lost or stolen, unlike cash.

Small business credit cards are specifically tailored to fit the spending trends and needs of veterinary offices. They are a simple way to improve your expense tracking and scale your business for future growth. If you’re still using your personal credit cards or petty cash for office purchases, it’s time to upgrade.

2. Engage with customers online.

The best way to gain and retain customers is to meet them where they are: online. The internet was already a popular place to shop and research local businesses, but the global pandemic has accelerated this trend. Veterinary offices that maintain a consistent online presence have a better chance of gaining new customers through social media and referrals. Looking for a few ideas?

• Adopt fun ways to celebrate your furry patients and their owners.

• Share training tips or animal health knowledge with your followers.

• Offer discounts on products or run donation drives for local animal shelters.

• Make sure to offer referral bonuses and make it easy for new customers to find, research and refer you online.

3. Invest in your business relationships.

As a veterinary office, you need your vendors as much as you need your patients. Think of all of your business associates as business partners. Each vendor is critical to the success of an area of your business, so maintaining positive relationships is key.

For example, some vendors may be willing to offer you discounts on the supplies you need. In return, they may ask for earlier payment or bulk ordering. Businesses do well when they work together and creating a symbiotic relationship with your vendors sets everyone up for success.

Along with that, your banker or financial advisor should keep you up to date on helpful financial solutions, the latest fraud trends and future considerations for your office’s growth. Make sure your merchant services provider, banker and any other financial providers are helping you manage your veterinary office’s money effectively so you can focus on your animal patients.

4. Upgrade your payment acceptance technology.

As a medical office, you should make it as easy as possible to get paid. If you haven’t updated your merchant services technology lately, now is the time.

A lot has happened in the last few years – chip readers for credit cards are now mandatory, contactless payments are the new norm and online shopping is more popular than ever before. If you don’t have a way to accept payments quickly and digitally, you could find yourself losing out on income, or even worse, paying exorbitant fees.

Some payment acceptance platforms, like Clover, pack everything you need into one sleek terminal and offer extra solutions to help you manage other areas of your business. Clover can help you track your incoming and outgoing inventory, review your staff’s time cards and even improve your marketing capabilities.

5. Find a financial provider that focuses on fraud.

Fraud is a killer for small businesses. Fraud can happen internally, externally and in many different formats. Keep your veterinary office protected by engaging with good financial providers that show you how to mitigate fraud¹.

Anyone that accepts card payments is required to be PCI compliant. If not, you could be on the hook to reimburse banks, customers and other entities if your payment data is ever compromised. Credit card fraud happens every day, so you and your staff need to know what to look for and how to avoid it.

A true financial partner will help you defend against these and many other threats. Commerce Bank makes fraud prevention a priority for all of our customers, and we’ll even help train your staff on the latest fraud techniques and attempts.

Learn more.

We understand the challenges you face as you grow your veterinary practice. From increasing capital investments through business loans to finding new ways to compete, our experience and financial solutions can help support the quality care you provide.

Call us at 866-365-9346 or learn more about the customized financial solutions we can offer you and your practice.