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Two transactions, missed charges, and a fix

Wednesday, Aug 12, 2026 by Lauren Jones, VMD
2 Min Read
Two transactions, missed charges, and a fix

Erin DeTurck, VMD, owns Monument Veterinary Clinic. Her software was slow, the workflows were convoluted, and both were costing her clinic time it didn’t have.

She didn’t find Shepherd through an ad. She found it through reviews from other practices, and that was enough to get her to look.

The exam room

The first thing that changed was where the medical record lives.

Because Shepherd runs in the cloud, Dr. DeTurck’s team carries tablets into the exam room and completes records during the visit instead of after it.

“The client and I can go through medical records for a patient together. I have it right there in front of me in the moment,” she says.

That is a different kind of appointment. The client sees the history alongside you, the record is done when the visit is done, and nothing waits for a computer you have to walk back to.

Checkout

Invoicing was the bottleneck, and it was the expensive kind.

“With our old software, we had to do two separate transactions and had a lot of missed charges and mistakes,” Dr. DeTurck says. “Shepherd Pay gets clients out the door and helps me do my job better.”

Two systems mean two chances to mistype and one guarantee that they’ll disagree. Shepherd Pay removes the separate terminal and the manual re-entry. One click charges the client and updates the record together.

Practices using Shepherd capture 98% of charges.

The handoffs between

Dropped balls in a clinic are rarely one person’s fault. They happen in the space between roles.

Shepherd’s tags and notifications attach to the medical record itself, so a message about a patient travels with that patient.

“Shepherd has allowed us to work better as a team, as we can communicate through the system about what patients need and what we’re sending them home with,” Dr. DeTurck says.

Getting out the door

“Shepherd allows me to get out of the office earlier, so I can go back to the things that I love and enjoy, like my family and pets,” she says.

That is the accumulation of the three sections above. Records finished in the room. Checkout that doesn’t need a second pass. Handoffs that don’t need a hallway conversation. None of it is dramatic on its own.

That’s the point of Second Nature Software™. It was built by a practicing veterinarian, the roadmap is set by what practitioners tell us breaks during a real shift, and there’s a Director of Veterinary Medicine on staff to keep that judgment inside the building.

Dr. DeTurck put it more plainly. “Shepherd really understands how a veterinary clinic runs. As my business grows, so will the practice management system.”

Her recommendation to anyone still deciding: “For anyone considering a new practice management platform, Shepherd made it easy, and we love it. We choose Shepherd.”

See it on your own cases

We’ll walk through your appointment types, your checkout, and your records rather than a demo account.

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