Choosing vaccination tracking software: nine questions to ask

1. Does it store the document, or just a date?

Why it matters. A date in a field is a claim; the certificate is what supports it, and the day anyone asks how you knew, the certificate is what they want to see. Paper kept in a shared folder, or nowhere, is evidence separated from its record.

What to look for. Open one pet. Is the certificate attached to the vaccine line it was read from, and can you open it from there? If the answer is a filing cabinet or a photos app, the software is a calendar.

2. Who types the date: your staff, the owner, or a machine, and who checks it?

Why it matters. Whoever types is where the typos come from and whose time it costs. Staff typing costs front-desk minutes per client; owner typing brings mistakes you did not make; extraction means a model read a photo and scored its own confidence. None is wrong, as long as a person compares the result with the document before it counts.

What to look for. A visible distinction between entered and checked, and a step where somebody at the shop looks at the certificate. If extracted dates go straight to green, ask what happens to a clean forgery photographed well.

3. Who gets the reminder, and does it go out when there is no booking?

Why it matters. A reminder to your staff produces a phone call for your staff to make; a reminder to the owner produces a vet appointment. And a reminder that only fires against an upcoming booking never reaches the regular who has not booked yet, which is exactly the dog that arrives lapsed.

What to look for. Reminders sent to the owner, by email or text, on the record's expiry date and not on the calendar, with a way for the owner to send the new certificate back from the message itself.

4. Can it tell you what was on file on a past date?

Why it matters. Every audit question is about a moment in the past: what did you have for this dog on the day of the bite. A system that shows only the current state loses that answer the moment the owner brings the new certificate in.

What to look for. A report or view that takes a date and reproduces the file as it stood then, including what has since been superseded. Try it with a date last year before you sign.

5. Does it record who verified a record, and when?

Why it matters. A tick with no name and no time is a decoration. If two staff members disagree about whether a certificate was ever looked at, the record should settle it.

What to look for. A log you can read, written by the system rather than by the person it is about, showing who marked the record checked, at what time, and what they changed.

6. Does it handle titers and medical exemptions as what they are?

Why it matters. A titer is a blood result on a date, not a dose; an exemption letter is a veterinarian's statement, not a vaccination. A system with only a vaccine field forces both into a fake vaccination with a made-up expiry, and next year's report says a dog was vaccinated when it was not.

What to look for. A way to mark a record as a titer so it reads that way everywhere, and somewhere to file the exemption letter against the pet so your own written rule can be applied to it. See the titer guide for what that rule should say.

7. Can records follow the pet to another business?

Why it matters. The same certificate is photographed at the groomer, typed at the daycare and forgotten at the kennel. Owners resent being asked three times, and the third copy is the one with the wrong date.

What to look for. A way for the owner to see their own pet's records and share them with another shop, and for you to receive records already on file elsewhere, with their provenance intact.

8. What happens to your data if you leave?

Why it matters. The records are yours, and the retention rules you are subject to do not end when a subscription does. A system you cannot get your data out of is one you cannot leave, or audit without its cooperation.

What to look for. A full export to a spreadsheet, of every record and its document, available on every plan, without asking support. Run it during the trial and read the file.

9. What languages do your customers read?

Why it matters. The person filling in the intake form is the owner, and in many cities a meaningful share of owners read Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese or Korean more comfortably than English. A form they cannot read is a form your staff fill in for them, which puts you back at question two.

What to look for. The owner-facing pages, reminders and upload links in the languages your customers actually speak, chosen by the owner, and the shop's own view in yours. VaxCheck does not do this — see our own answers below.

What VaxCheck answers

Since we asked you to put these to us too: the certificate is filed against the line it was read from; owners type their own records from a QR code on your counter and attach the photo, and your staff check once and tick, which is logged with who and when; owners get reminders by email at 30 days, 7 days and expiry, tied to the record and not to any booking, because we are not a booking system; the compliance report reproduces any past date; titers are flagged as titers; owners can see their pets’ records and share them with another shop; every record exports to a CSV on every plan, though certificates open one at a time from their records rather than in bulk. On question nine we do not meet our own advice: VaxCheck is published in English only. It carried five languages until September 2026 and they were withdrawn rather than left to drift out of date, so a shop whose owners mostly read Spanish or Vietnamese should weigh that against the rest of this list. A medical exemption is a document you file and a rule you set — we never mark a pet compliant, for an exempt dog or any other.