Accountants for Independent Veterinary Practices
Independent practices compete with groups that have buying power, central finance teams and analysts watching every ratio. The clinical case for independence is strong. The financial case has to be built deliberately.
That means knowing your drug margin to the month, knowing what each vet generates, pricing on evidence rather than on what feels reasonable, and having someone to test decisions with before you make them.
Where Independent Practices Lose Money Quietly
- Fees that have drifted below cost
- Prices raised by a round percentage each year, while wage inflation, medicine costs and laboratory fees moved at different rates. After three or four years, some services are being delivered below cost and nobody has looked.
- Missed charges
- Consumables used and not billed, procedures recorded clinically and never charged. In a busy practice this is a persistent leak that shows up as an unexplained gap between activity and income.
- Stock and buying terms
- Buying group terms not reviewed, short-dated stock written off, and no reconciliation between what was bought and what was billed.
- Rota shape
- Cover built around who is available rather than around demand, with locum cost filling the gaps at a premium.
What We Put in Place
A reporting rhythm you will actually use, benchmarking so you know which numbers are genuinely out of line, and an annual fee review built on cost and market position rather than a blanket percentage.
Then the longer term questions: whether the structure still fits, what the practice would be worth, and what would need to change before that mattered.
Competing With a Group Without Becoming One
Corporate groups have three structural advantages: buying power on medicines, central functions spread across many sites, and capital to invest. An independent practice will not out-buy them and does not need to. What it can do is know its own numbers better than a regional manager knows theirs.
That means pricing built from your actual cost rather than from what feels reasonable, a fee review every year rather than every third year, medicine margin watched monthly, and a clear view of which services make money and which are being delivered as a favour.
The other advantage independents hold is decision speed. A practice that can see a margin problem in month two and act in month three has an edge over one waiting for a quarterly review at head office. That advantage only exists if the reporting exists.
What Happens When a Group Approaches You
Most independent owners get an approach eventually. The approach itself tells you a buyer is interested, and nothing at all about what the practice is worth. Before engaging, get your own valuation, sign nothing exclusive, and be clear whether you actually want to sell or are simply curious.
If you do not want to sell, the exercise is still worth doing once. Knowing your number, and knowing which factors are holding it down, changes what you do over the following few years whether or not a sale ever happens.
Frequently Asked Questions
We are a single site practice with about £900,000 of turnover. Are we too small for this?
Can you help us decide whether to stay independent?
Request a Practice Performance Review
Send us two years of accounts and we will show you where your practice sits against the sector and what the gaps are worth in profit.