Why They Are Invisible
A missed charge is a treatment given and never billed. It never enters the accounting system at all, so no report will show it. The only trace is a gap between clinical activity and income, which is exactly why joining the practice management system to the financial reporting matters.
Stock loss is similar. Expired medicines, breakages, unrecorded use and errors reduce your gross margin without appearing as an identifiable cost. Margin simply drifts.
Measuring the Gap
- Track gross margin monthly
- Medicine and consumable cost against the income they generate. A drift of one or two points is easy to dismiss and is a large annual number.
- Compare activity to income
- Procedure counts from the clinical system against the income recorded for those procedures. Differences are worth investigating individually rather than in aggregate.
- Count stock properly
- A real count, at a consistent frequency, with a written method. Rolling forward last year figure is not a stock control system.
- Report write-offs
- Expired and short-dated stock recorded as a visible number, not absorbed silently into cost of sales.
Closing Missed Charges
Most missed charges are process, not attitude. Charges added at the point of use rather than from memory afterwards, consumables recorded against the clinical record, and a routine end of day check against the appointment list.
It helps to be clear with the clinical team that this is not about pressuring clients. It is about being paid for work already done, which is what funds the wages.
Closing Stock Loss
Restrict who orders, review buying group terms annually, order to actual usage rather than habit, rotate stock so short-dated items are used, and reconcile what was bought against what was billed.
The single most effective change in most practices is making one named person accountable for stock, with the margin figure reported to them monthly.
Written by Veterinary Accountants UK editorial team. Published 3 August 2026.
Last reviewed 3 August 2026. [REVIEWER DETAILS REQUIRED BEFORE PUBLICATION]