How Manchester Cat Clinic Keeps Growth Personal with Provet

"As a cloud-based PIMS, Provet is user friendly and very customizable." – Dr Ellie Lee, Director, Manchester Cat Clinic

Manchester Cat Clinic is an independent, family-run, feline-only veterinary practice in Manchester that has run its day-to-day operations on Provet, the all-in-one veterinary PIMS, since it opened in May 2023. In the years since, the practice has grown fast while keeping visits calm and care personal. Much of that comes down to keeping admin light: from client messaging to payments, the everyday tools connect through Provet, so a 21-strong team spends less time moving information between systems and more time with cats.

Founded by Dan and Ellie Lee, the clinic took over and fully renovated the oldest veterinary surgery in Manchester before opening as a practice built around one idea: cats, and the people who love them. For Ellie Lee, a veterinarian and the clinic's director, the affinity runs deep: "My first word was actually cat when I was a baby." Three years in, it has been named Best Vets in Greater Manchester and Best Cat-Only Vets in the UK for the third year running, sits among the Top 25 UK practices at the BestUKVets Awards, and holds all three Real Living Wage accreditations.

What Manchester Cat Clinic set out to build

Manchester Cat Clinic opened in May 2023 with a focused idea: a veterinary practice built entirely around cats. Dan and Ellie Lee took over the oldest veterinary surgery in Manchester, renovated it in full, and reopened it as an independent, family-run, cat-only clinic. As Ellie Lee puts it: "We felt that working with just cats, we'd be able to have an environment that's much calmer and quieter, provide a really high quality service, and make a working environment that we'd really enjoy."

That focus struck a chord. Demand grew quickly enough that the clinic recently introduced a catchment area for new registrations, so existing and local clients can keep getting appointments without stretching the standard of care. Launching and scaling a new independent practice at that pace puts real weight on the systems behind it: the front desk, client communication, microchip and insurance admin, accounting, and payments all have to hold together without adding hours of manual work.

Why Manchester Cat Clinic runs on Provet

Provet has built veterinary software and nothing else since 2005, and today 55,000 veterinary professionals across 45 countries rely on it, including independent practices like Manchester Cat Clinic. For this clinic, Provet has been in place since day one. Rather than open on one system and migrate later, the team launched on Provet in May 2023, with the setup ready months ahead of opening, so they started on the software they intended to grow with, not a stopgap.

For a small team, the value is in tools that talk to each other. Provet is an independent, open platform with more than 150 integrations and 100% data ownership, so the clinic could connect the specific tools it wanted rather than run the practice across separate systems that don't talk to each other. That preference shows in one telling detail: when the team chose accounting software, they went with Xero specifically because it syncs with Provet. As Ellie Lee puts it: "As a cloud-based PIMS, Provet is user friendly and very customizable."

What changed day to day

The clearest gains show up at the front desk, in client communication, and in payments.

New clients are looked after automatically from the first contact. A welcome email goes out with no manual send, an automated terms and conditions email follows for the client to review and sign, and new patients receive automatic reminders. Because that terms and conditions email is automatic rather than sent by hand, it saves the front desk around ten seconds each time – small on its own, but it adds up across a busy, growing client list.

Client conversations stay in context. Through a Digital Practice integration, the team messages clients over WhatsApp and Facebook, and every conversation stays attached to the right client and cat in Provet. As Ellie Lee puts it: "When someone sends us a WhatsApp, we know exactly who they are and which cat they're talking about." That matters for a client base that includes cat owners from overseas, including Hong Kong, who often prefer messaging to calling when English is not their first language.

VetEnvoy handles the fiddly admin. Microchip registration and insurance claims go the same way, helped by clients insured with providers such as Petplan that connect through VetEnvoy. "Registering microchips is really quick and easy," Ellie Lee says. "I just hit a button and it's done, and that's saved us loads of time."

On payments, Provet Pay brings checkout into the same system as the record. Clients can settle up however suits them – a text link on their phone, a saved card on file, or at the front desk – and every transaction reconciles against the record automatically, with no separate entry.

For Manchester Cat Clinic, that reconciliation is what takes the guesswork out of end-of-day banking: the team credits it for near-zero errors, "because they're all connected," as Ellie Lee describes it. Emailed payment links let the team take payment from clients who are not in the building. "If we've got someone who isn't in the building, or if they're upset and we want to let them have a bit of a breather rather than take payment there and then, it's really helpful to be able to send them an online link," Ellie Lee says. Card-on-file has changed the everyday handling of insurance excesses: for the clinic's many older cats on percentage-excess policies, the team can message the client, confirm the excess, and take it from the card on file in one step, with no phoning for card details. Health-plan payments run as an automatic monthly recurring charge.

For the veterinarians, that means less admin friction around each consult and calmer client interactions. For whoever runs the practice, it means a lighter front desk, cleaner banking, fewer manual payment steps, and predictable plan revenue.

Growth hasn't changed what the clinic is. "We're still the same independent, family-run clinic we were on day one," says Ellie Lee. "The difference is that thousands more people have trusted us with their cat's care, allowing us to grow our team and continually improve the service we offer." Provet connects the clinic's tools, reconciles its payments, and keeps the operational side steady as it grows, so the team's focus can stay where it set out to be: on building something personal, and sustainable, for the long term. 

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FAQs

Does Provet integrate with client-messaging tools like WhatsApp?

Yes. Manchester Cat Clinic uses a Digital Practice integration to message clients over WhatsApp and Facebook, with each conversation tied to the right client and patient in Provet.

Can Provet reconcile card payments automatically?

Yes. With Provet Pay, the clinic's card payments reconcile against the record, which it credits for near-zero end-of-day banking errors.

Does Provet work for an independent, single-site practice?

Manchester Cat Clinic is an independent, family-run, feline-only practice of 21 people, and has run its operations on Provet since opening in May 2023.

Does Provet connect to accounting software?

‍Yes. The clinic uses the Xero integration, and chose Xero specifically because it syncs with Provet.

Can Provet handle insurance excesses and recurring plan payments?

Card-on-file lets the team take insurance excesses without phoning for card details, and health-plan payments run as an automatic monthly charge.