Your Veterinary Practice Year-End Checklist: 10 Ways to Start Strong in 2026

I hate New Year’s resolutions. There. I said it.

They are often vague, guilt-inducing promises we make because the calendar flipped, not because anything meaningful changed inside our practices. There is a reason the second Friday of January is known as Quitters Day. In veterinary medicine, once the schedule fills, emergencies start, and reality sets in, those resolutions also tend to quietly disappear.

But thoughtful, data-informed, practice-wide reflection is different. Real goal setting, grounded in what worked this year and what did not, is where the true power of year-end planning lives.

We all know the end of the year always arrives faster than expected. One minute you are navigating the summer wellness season, and the next you are balancing holiday PTO requests, ordering dog-safe ice melt, and updating your voicemail for holiday hours. Beneath the chaos, though, this moment offers one of the most valuable opportunities a veterinary practice has.

Turning year-end review into year-ahead readiness

Year-end is not just about closing out numbers. It is about understanding your story. How your hospital performed, where your team struggled or shined, what workflows held you back, and what systems need to evolve to support a healthier, smoother, more sustainable new year.

Planning ahead reduces end-of-year stress and sets the tone for the year to come. Use this checklist as a practical guide to position your practice for success.

1. Set specific goals, not vague resolutions

Skip vague goals like “be more efficient” or “reduce stress.” Instead, set specific, measurable targets such as:

• Reducing appointment wait times
• Improving same-day chart completion
• Increasing tech support per doctor
• Improving preventive care compliance
• Launching or optimizing wellness plans
• Increasing forward-booking rates

Strong goals support three pillars: better patient care, better team wellbeing, and better financial stability.

2. Plan office closures, holiday hours, and PTO early

Clear communication prevents frustration for both clients and staff. Update your hospital’s schedule in advance to prevent overbooking, block provider availability as needed, and ensure voicemail and social media reflect current hours, availability, and after-hours recommendations.

Make sure clients know about:

• Office closures or limited holiday hours
• Medication refill deadlines
• Boarding or appointment availability

Make sure staff also know about the above as well as:

• Deadlines for requesting time off
• Protocols for requesting time off (First come, first serve? Can the same person take off around every holiday?)
• Does your team receive holiday pay?
• Communicate any changes in pay dates due to bank closures
• What happens if employees have unused PTO at the end of the year?

Proactive planning saves time, stress, and awkward conversations later. And if you’re not closing for the holidays – we see you, and we thank you! Thank you for showing up, keeping doors open, and caring for patients when others are celebrating. Your commitment to your teams, clients, and communities does not go unnoticed! 

3. Review your financial performance without the stress spiral

When planning for the future, you first need a clear, honest view of where you have been.

Start with questions like:

• Did revenue grow, shrink, or stay flat?
• What were the biggest drivers of revenue?
• Did pricing keep up with rising costs?
• Did expenses creep up quietly over the year?

Check with your accountant and local regulations regarding these commonly used reports:

• Gross revenue by month
• Production by doctor
• Top services by revenue
• Inventory cost trends and profitability
• Average client transaction (ACT)
• New client numbers and retention
• Discounts by month
• Sales tax collected
• Accounts receivable and credits
• Missed or cancelled appointments
• Top clients and referral sources

You are not looking for perfection. You are looking for patterns. Those patterns inform smarter decisions around staffing, scheduling, pricing, and inventory for the year ahead.

4. Evaluate team workload and wellbeing

Production numbers alone never tell the full story. Year-end is the ideal time to step back and assess how your team actually experienced the year.

Ask yourself:

• Who consistently carried more than their fair share?
• Where did bottlenecks slow the day?
• Did each doctor have adequate support staff?
• Which roles need reinforcement before spring?
• Did anyone do too much for too long?
• Have you created a safe way for your team to share honest feedback, such as an anonymous survey or document, so concerns can surface without fear of repercussions?

Burnout does not reset on January 1. If anything, it compounds. Use this time to redistribute responsibilities, plan staffing adjustments, and build a model that supports the level of care you want to deliver in the new year.

If your hospital wants to take this a step further, consider pursuing CLEAR Blueprint accreditation through Not One More Vet (NOMV). CLEAR is a structured, evidence-based program designed to help veterinary practices assess culture, psychological safety, workload, communication, and support systems. It provides a framework for identifying risk factors for burnout and compassion fatigue while offering concrete steps to create a healthier, more sustainable work environment.

Whether or not you pursue formal accreditation, the act of intentionally evaluating team wellbeing sends a powerful message. It tells your team that their experience matters, not just their productivity.

5. Audit your pricing

Inflation impacts veterinary medicine heavily. Medication costs, lab fees, supplies, equipment, and payroll tend to rise steadily year over year. If your prices have not been adjusted in the last 12 months, you may already be behind. Most practices require a 3 to 7 percent annual adjustment just to keep pace, and some industry reports suggest costs may have increased even more than that.

Year-end is the ideal time to review and recalibrate pricing across key areas, including:

• Exam fees

  • Do you charge differently based on length or complexity of exam?
  • Do you have a range of exam types including: Wellness, Sick, Urgent, Emergency, and Tech Visits?

• Pharmacy markups and dispensing fees

  • For prescriptions, do you have one higher fee to account for the time it takes to count and check medications as well as a lesser fee for whole-box prescriptions?
  • Do you update your inventory costs in real time throughout the year? Unlike reference labs and other major vendors in vet med, drug prices can change day to day. 
  • Do you cover your hidden costs and include fees for tech appointments, venipuncture, OSHA compliance, hazardous waste fees?
  • Does your hospital apply appropriate injectable and controlled drug charges? Your pricing strategy should reflect the additional training, certifications, handling requirements, and security risks involved. 

• Lab pricing

  • Do you have a standardized markup strategy for both reference and in-house laboratory services? Some practices choose a tiered pricing approach to better align margins with cost structure. For example:

    • Reference lab items with a clinic cost under $100: 300 percent markup
    • Reference lab items with a clinic cost between $100 and $200: 150 percent markup
    • Reference lab items with a clinic cost over $200: 50 to 100 percent markup

• Surgery and dental fees

  • What does “doctor time” truly cost? Most small animal GP practices undervalue doctor time when pricing surgery and dental procedures. A realistic benchmark may be around $8-$12 per minute - pending experience, location, and other factors.

• Technician and nursing services

  • What does “tech time” truly cost? The same with doctor time above, realistic benchmarks for tech time may be around $3-5 per minute - again pending experience, location and other factors. 

Small adjustments now can prevent significant financial strain later and allow you to base pricing on data-driven facts, not on feelings or because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” 

6. Clean up medical records and workflows

Starting a new year with unfinished business makes everything harder.

Use year-end to:

• Close open invoices
• Complete lingering charts
• Review overdue reminders
• Update templates
• Clean up inventory records
• Identify workflows that felt chaotic

Think of this as clearing operational clutter so your practice starts the new year focused, not already behind.

7. Strengthen your technology

January is one of the cleanest moments to refine systems and workflows. Use this time to evaluate whether your technology is truly supporting your team or quietly slowing them down:

• Practice management software: Are you in the cloud or tethered to legacy server systems and paper records?

• Client communication tools: Do you have a consistent, reliable way to deliver important, and often legally required, information to clients?

• Documentation processes: Is your medical record built from shorthand notes, or are you capturing the full clinical picture with modern tools such as AI-assisted transcription?

• Diagnostic upgrades: Is it time to invest in updated imaging or lab equipment and finally leave that x-ray dipping system forever?

• Automation opportunities: What repetitive, time-draining tasks could be streamlined or automated? 

  • Reminders - SMS and email
  • Appointment notifications
  • Direct booking
  • Pre-exam forms  
  • PE Templates 
  • Treatment notes
  • Prescription instructions
  • Integrated labs
  • Bundles
  • Shortcut keys
  • Chart Summarization (link to SAI article)

Technology should not create extra steps or distractions. The right systems, such as Shepherd’s veterinary software, fade into the background, allowing your team to focus on patients, clients, and each other. With Shepherd, there is no button to push, no midnight close-out, and no server-based stress. Just clear data, flexible workflows, and the ability to start January focused on medicine instead of cleanup.

8. Review HR compliance, policies, and team documentation

If you do not work with a dedicated HR partner, year-end is the best time to slow down and make sure your people systems are protecting your team and your practice.

Many veterinary hospitals operate with outdated or informal HR documentation, patched together as the practice grew. While that may work day to day, it leaves practices vulnerable when questions, conflicts, or compliance issues arise.

Use year-end to review and update:

• Your employee handbook, if you have one
• PTO, sick time, and holiday policies
• Overtime and scheduling expectations
• Job descriptions and role clarity for every position
• Onboarding and training protocols
• Performance review and feedback processes
• Safety, injury, and incident reporting procedures

If your practice does not currently have an employee handbook, this is the moment to create one. A clear, up-to-date handbook sets expectations, reduces confusion, and provides consistency across your team. 

Job descriptions are also important to revisit. Roles evolve over time, and outdated descriptions can contribute to frustration, burnout, and misaligned expectations. Make sure each role reflects what your team is actually doing, not what the position looked like years ago.

Even if you do not have formal HR support, you do not need to do this alone. Many practices work with HR consultants, legal templates specific to veterinary medicine, or industry-specific HR platforms to ensure policies are compliant with local and federal regulations. 

9. Prepare for inventory counts 

If you perform end-of-year inventory counts, make sure you:

• Assign ownership
• Review count procedures
• Confirm lot and expiration tracking
• Clean up outdated or inactive items
• Designate specific “off” times to accomplish these tasks so you’re not trying to treat animals while counting the Baytril. 

This is also an ideal time to implement bulk pricing updates, so your team is not manually adjusting fees one item at a time in January.

10. Don’t forget the most important step: Celebrate your team

Year-end should not be all analysis.

Before planning the future, pause to acknowledge the people who carried your practice through the last 12 months. A catered meal, a bonus, a handwritten note, or public recognition goes a long way. 

A supported team walks into the new year with more energy, trust, and purpose.