Every client record in Lupa is the central hub for a pet owner's relationship with your practice — their contact details, pets, appointments, invoices, communications, and health plan subscriptions all live here. When a receptionist picks up the phone and pulls up a client, they see everything in one place: who the person is, what pets they have, what they owe, and what's coming up next.

💡 In short: Create a client record to register a pet owner, then use their profile as the starting point for booking appointments, raising invoices, sending communications and adding pets.

Creating a New Client

There are several ways to register a new client — pick whichever fits your workflow.

Method	How	Best for
From the Clients list	Clients (top nav) → Clients tab → Add Client (top right)	Standard new-client registration
During appointment booking	In the new appointment form, create the client and pet inline	Walk-ins booked at reception
Online booking	The client self-registers through your booking portal	New clients who book online before their first visit

Create Client form filled with realistic data — title, first name, last name, email, phone and the primary store dropdown set, with the GDPR consent and platform communications sections visible below

Step-by-step: registering a client at reception

Open Clients in the top navigation, then click the Clients tab.
Click Add Client in the top right.
Set the Title (Mr / Mrs / Miss / Ms / Dr / Prof / Company), then enter the First Name and Last Name. First name is always required; last name is required for all individual clients (any title other than Company), whether you're registering from the Clients list or during appointment booking.
Add Email, Phone, Date of Birth and Address. None are technically required, but email and phone are essential for reminders, invoices and mobile-app access.
Set the Primary Store if your practice has multiple locations.
Optionally set the Referral Company (which referring clinic sent them — see ) and How They Found Us.
Capture marketing consent in the GDPR Opt-In section, and adjust Platform Communications if needed.
Scroll to the Pets section and click the + button to add one or more pets inline — no need to save the client first.
Click Create. The client and any inline pets are saved together, and you land on the new client's profile ready to book an appointment.

⚠️ Always check for duplicates before creating a new client. Press Cmd+K (Mac) or Ctrl+K (Windows) and search by name, email or phone first. Lupa blocks creation if the email or phone already exists on another client in your organisation, so catching duplicates up front saves you having to merge them later.

The Client Form — Fields explained

Personal details

Field	Required	What it does
Title	No	Choose from Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms, Dr, Prof or Company, or type your own. Selecting Company hides the Last Name field so you can use First Name for the organisation name.
First Name	Yes	Client's first name (or the company name if Title is set to Company).
Last Name	Conditional	Required for individuals everywhere in Lupa — including when creating a client during appointment booking. Hidden when Title is Company.
Email	No	Primary email address. Used for invoices, email reminders, mobile-app login and all email communications. Must be unique across your organisation — Lupa will block the save if the address already belongs to another client, whether you're creating or editing a record.
Phone	No	Primary phone number with country-code selector. Used for SMS reminders. Must be unique across your organisation — Lupa will block the save if the number already belongs to another client, whether you're creating or editing a record.
Date of Birth	No	Optional. Must be in the past.
Address	No	Home address with autocomplete. Appears on records, mailing labels and may appear on invoices. If the address has been geocoded, clicking it on the client profile opens a map pop-up pinned to that location, with links to open the spot in Google Maps or what3words.
Separate Billing Address	No	Tick to enter a billing address that differs from the home address — common for corporate clients.

Practice details

Field	What it does
Primary Store	Which clinic location this client belongs to. Only appears for multi-site practices and defaults to your current location.
Referral Company	If this client was referred by another veterinary practice, search and select the referring clinic. The relationship is tracked for reporting. See .
How They Found Us	Marketing referral source. Choose from Google Search, Social Media, Friend/Colleague Referral, Online Advertisement, Blog/Article, Podcast, Conference/Event, Email Newsletter or Other — or type your own value.
Payment Terms	Optional payment terms applied to invoices for this client (only appears if payment terms are configured for your practice).

Marketing and platform consent

Two separate consent settings sit side by side and must not be confused.

GDPR Opt-In — marketing communications. When ticked, the Preferred Communications Channels options expand: Email, SMS and Post. Each channel can be toggled independently. If unticked, the client receives no marketing.
Platform Communications Opt-In — legitimate-interest communications. Covers operational messages such as medical updates, appointment confirmations and reminders. Defaults to opted in. Untick this only when the client has explicitly objected; doing so requires the Legitimate Interest Opt-Out permission, so the option is read-only for staff without it.

⚠️ Always ask, never assume. Don't pre-tick GDPR marketing options without the client's verbal consent. Platform Communications defaults to opted in because it covers essential operational messages — but treat any change as a deliberate decision, not a default.

Tags, billing hold and notes

Tags — multi-select labels from your configured tag list (configured in Settings → Tags). Examples: "VIP", "Corporate", "Puppy Pack". Tags appear on the profile and can be used to filter the clients list and target campaigns.
Billing Hold — when ticked, prevents new appointments and invoices being created for this client. Requires the Billing Hold permission. A red banner appears on the profile while it's active. Use for disputed balances or accounts pending purchase orders.
Internal Client Notes — rich-text notes visible only to your team, never shown to the client. Use for context like payment arrangements or behaviour reminders.
Avatar — upload a photo of the client. Appears on the profile, in search results and on appointment records.

Secondary parent and alternative contacts

For partners, emergency contacts and authorised pickup persons:

Open the Secondary Parent Details or Alternative Contacts section (the wording depends on whether your practice has Alternative Contacts enabled).
Add a contact with First Name (required), Last Name, Email, Phone and Relationship Type (e.g. "Partner", "Emergency Contact").
Add as many alternative contacts as needed — each can have its own email so it can be CC'd on communications.

Adding pets inline

The Pets section at the bottom of the form lets you register one or more pets together with the client. For each pet you can fill in Name, Species, Breed, Sex, Neutered, Date of Birth, Colour, Microchip, Insurer and Policy Number. Click Create at the bottom of the form and the client and pets are saved in a single step. See for the full set of pet fields.

The Client Profile

After saving, the client's profile becomes the central place to manage everything about that person.

Header at a glance

The header shows the essentials without scrolling:

Profile picture and full name (with title and ID).
Balance label — green for credit, red for debt, blue for zero.
Status badges — health plan enrolment, referral clinic link, mobile-app user (phone icon), billing-hold warning (red).
Contact info — phone and email, both click-to-copy.
Tags — coloured labels for quick identification.

Quick actions

The action bar at the top of the profile contains:

Action	What it does
Edit Client (pencil)	Opens the edit form with all fields pre-filled. This is also where you find Archive and Merge.
Tasks	Create or view tasks for this client.
Communications dropdown	Send an Email, SMS or start a Call with AI.
Create dropdown	Create an Appointment, Estimate/Invoice, Credit Note, Insurance Claim, Insurance Pre-Auth, or a Pet, or print a Client Label or Address Label. Appointment and Invoice are disabled while Billing Hold is active.
Start Subscription (health plans only)	Enrol the client in a health plan (only visible if Health Plans is enabled for your practice).

Profile sections

The body of the profile is divided into scrollable sections. On desktop a sticky navigation bar lets you jump between them; on mobile use the Jump To dropdown.

Section	What it shows
Client Details	All personal information, address, marketing preferences, alternative contacts, internal notes and health-plan history. If an address has been geocoded, clicking it opens a map pop-up so you can see exactly where the client is located and jump straight to Google Maps or what3words.
Pets	Mini-cards for the client's pets. You can search by name, toggle deceased and archived animals on or off, and — if the client has more than five pets — filter by species using the All species list. Click View All to see every pet (including deceased and archived).
Subscriptions	Health-plan enrolments and allowance usage (visible if Health Plans is enabled).
Payment Methods	Saved cards and payment links (visible if Lupa Pay is enabled).
Transactions	Complete financial history — invoices, payments, credit notes, refunds. Filterable by type, status and date.
Appointments	All appointments for this client, past and future, across all locations.
Claims	Insurance claims linked to this client's pets.
Communications	Searchable history of all emails, SMS and chat sent to or from this client.

Editing, Archiving and Merging

All three actions live on the Edit Client page, not on the profile.

Edit a client

Open the client's profile and click Edit Client (pencil icon, top right).
Update any fields.
Click Save in the bottom-right action bar. Only changed fields are sent to the server, so editing is fast even for clients with a lot of detail. A toast — "Client updated" — confirms the save and you return to the profile.

Archive a client

Archiving hides a client from the default list without deleting any data. Use it for clients who have left your practice.

From the client's profile, click Edit Client.
In the bottom-left of the floating action bar, click Archive.
Confirm in the dialog.

⚠️ Archiving a client also archives every pet they own. That's intentional — when a client leaves, their pets leave with them — but it means the action affects more than just the client record. Unarchiving the client does not automatically unarchive their pets; you'll need to unarchive each pet individually from .

To restore an archived client, find them by enabling the Archived filter in the clients list, click Edit Client, and click Unarchive.

Merge two duplicate clients

If you discover two records for the same person, merge them so all history consolidates onto one record.

Open the duplicate client (the one you want to archive) and click Edit Client.
In the bottom-right of the action bar, click Merge Client.
In the dialog, search for and select the target client — the one you want to keep.
Confirm. All pets, invoices, payments, appointments, claims, communications and tags move to the target client. The source client's email is cleared, balance is reset to zero, and the record is automatically archived.

⚠️ Merging is one-way. Once you confirm the merge, the source client is archived and its data is consolidated onto the target. Double-check the search result before you click — there's no undo. The merge is run in a transaction, so either everything moves or nothing does — there's no half-merged state.

Common Scenarios

Registering a corporate client

Set the Title to Company. The Last Name field hides automatically and First Name becomes the company name.
Tick Separate Billing Address and enter the billing details.
Tag the record (e.g. "Corporate") to filter it later.
If invoices need to accumulate before being sent in bulk, ask an administrator to grant the Billing Hold permission and tick Billing Hold.
Click Create. Add individual contacts as alternative contacts so each can be CC'd on emails.

Registering a referred client

In the client form, set the Referral Company to the referring clinic.
If the referring clinic doesn't exist yet in Lupa, create it first under Clients → Clinics tab → Add Clinic (see ).
Save. The referral relationship is now tracked for reporting.

Tips

✅ Best practices from practices running Lupa:

Add pets inline during client creation — one form, one save.
Always collect email and phone at registration. Without them, the client misses out on reminders, invoices and the mobile app.
Use the Internal Client Notes field for relationship context ("Anxious about cost — discuss pricing upfront") so every team member provides consistent service.
Tag consistently across the team — tags become powerful when everyone uses the same labels.
Always run a Cmd+K search before creating a new client. Prevention is cheaper than a merge.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
Can't save an alternative contact	First Name is required for every alternative contact. If you try to save without entering one, an inline warning appears and the contact is not added. Enter a first name and try again.
"Client already exists" error on save	The email or phone matches another client in your organisation. This check runs both when creating a new client and when editing an existing one. Use Cmd+K to find the record that already holds that email or phone, then decide whether to merge the duplicates or use a different contact detail.
Can't find the Billing Hold option	It's gated by the Billing Hold permission. Ask an administrator to grant it.
Channel preferences (Email/SMS/Post) don't appear	The GDPR Opt-In checkbox needs to be ticked first — the channel options expand below it.
Platform Communications toggle is read-only	Changing it requires the Legitimate Interest Opt-Out permission. Ask an administrator to grant it.
Tags list is empty	Tags must be configured first. Go to Settings → Tags and create tags for your practice.
Can't book an appointment for a client	The client may be on Billing Hold. Open Edit Client and untick Billing Hold before booking.
Can't see Last Name on a record	The client's title is set to Company, which hides Last Name. Change the title if it should be an individual. Note that Last Name is required for all individual clients — including when creating a client during appointment booking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can two clients share the same email address?

No — each email must be unique across all clients in your organisation. If two people share an email (a couple, for example), register one as the primary client and add the other as an alternative contact with their own email.

Can I store a company or organisation name instead of a person's name?

Yes — set the Title to Company. The Last Name field hides and you can use the First Name field for the company name. Add individual people as alternative contacts so each has their own email and phone.

What happens to a client's data when I archive them?

Nothing is deleted. All their pets, appointments, invoices and communications are preserved. The client and their pets are hidden from the default lists. Toggle the Archived filter to find them again, then click Unarchive from the edit page to restore the client.

Can I import clients in bulk?

Bulk client import happens during data migration when your practice first joins Lupa. There's no self-service bulk import — contact Lupa support if you need to import a batch.

What's the difference between GDPR Opt-In and Platform Communications?

GDPR Opt-In controls marketing communications — campaigns, promotions, newsletters. The client must explicitly consent. Platform Communications covers operational messages that serve a legitimate business interest — appointment confirmations, reminders, medical updates. It defaults to opted in and changing it requires a specific permission.

Why is Last Name hidden on the form?

You've set the Title to Company. Companies don't have a last name, so the field is hidden and First Name is used for the organisation name. Change the title to Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms/Dr/Prof to show Last Name again.

Managing Clients