How we know
A date in a box tells you nothing about where the date came from. Every record here carries its own answer to that question, on the pet's page, in the compliance report and in the spreadsheet you download.
The problem with a field
Most software stores a vaccine expiry as a single date in a single box. That box treats a date a person carefully copied from a certificate and a date somebody guessed at the counter as the same fact. When it matters — an inspection, an incident, an insurer's question — the box cannot tell you which one you have.
- The owner typed it
- The front desk typed it
- The clinic confirmed it
Three different things happened. One box. Nothing left that can tell them apart.
- 14 Aug 2027Entered by the owner
- 14 Aug 2027Typed by staff
- 14 Aug 2027Confirmed by the clinic · the clinic on the certificate
The same date three times — and the row says which is which, without being asked.
A system that cannot report uncertainty is not checking. It is accepting.
The seven ways we know
Every record sits on exactly one rung, and the rung is printed next to it in plain words. Nothing is hidden behind a green tick.
- The clinic said this does not matchWe asked the clinic named on the certificate, and they told us the record does not match theirs. This outranks everything else on the list, including a certificate on file.
- Confirmed by the clinicWe emailed the clinic printed on the certificate a one-click link, and someone there said the record matches theirs. The clinic's name and the date they answered are shown.
- Sent by the clinicnot switched on yetThe record arrived from the clinic itself rather than from the owner or the front desk.
- Read from the certificate, checked by a personnot switched on yetA photo of the certificate was read automatically, and then a person at the shop looked at the photo beside the fields and confirmed them. Both steps happened. The automatic reading step is not switched on yet, so no record sits on this rung today; the rung is listed because the ladder is the whole list, not the part that happens to be live.
- Certificate on fileThere is a photo or scan of the certificate attached to the record. Nobody has read it against the fields.
- Typed by staffSomebody at the shop typed the dates in. There is no document attached.
- Entered by the ownerThe pet's owner typed the dates in themselves, with no document attached.
Why the order is the way it is
The ladder runs from the strongest evidence to the weakest, and a clinic saying no sits at the very top — above its own yes. That is deliberate. A record the issuing clinic disputes is the single most important thing a front desk can be told, and burying it under a green status would be the worst thing this product could do.
Where you see it
The answer is never more than one screen away:
- On the pet's record, in a column headed “How we know”, one plain sentence per row.
- In the compliance report, per record, so an inspector reads it too.
- In the CSV you download, as its own column — so it survives into your own files.
- On the check-in screen, where the person at the counter is looking.
What this is not
None of this is us verifying anything. VaxCheck does not check records with a veterinarian, a registry or a government. “Confirmed by the clinic” records what a clinic told us; “verified” on a record means somebody at that shop pressed a button. A status is arithmetic on dates that were recorded. It is not a statement that a pet is vaccinated, healthy or fit to come in — that judgement is the shop's, and it always was.