How Heritage Vet Connected ezyVet to Their Terminals and Cut Processing Fees

Heritage Veterinary Care had no reason to think they were overpaying. They already had good pricing with a regional processor, which is to say they'd done the homework most practices never get around to. However, their front desk typed every payment into two systems: once into ezyVet and once into a Clover terminal sitting next to it.

Cherry connected the two. With the Cherry connector, the amount goes straight from the ezyVet invoice to the terminal. Brianne Smith, who has worked at the practice for almost 15 years, says checkout typos have completely stopped. With Cherry, Heritage Vet saved thousands on card processing, while removing steps in their checkout process.

Then something they weren't expecting: a client could start a Cherry payment plan right at the counter, using the Cherry terminal. The family facing an estimate they hadn't planned for had an option in front of them, instead of a decision to take home and sleep on.

It took only days for Heritage Vet to fully move all their transactions to Cherry payment processing, and Brianne has since emailed neighboring clinics to tell them about it.

Heritage Veterinary Care is a locally owned, full-service small animal hospital in Hopedale, Ohio (50 miles west of Pittsburgh). They see dogs, cats and other animals, and draw clients from across the Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania tri-state area.

Alongside wellness care, dentistry and spay and neuter surgery, they offer endoscopy, cold laser therapy, allergy testing and dermatology, acupuncture, and airway surgery for brachycephalic breeds. Heritage Vet gets a lot of routine, small-ticket visits, and a regular trickle of estimates big enough that the client has to stop and think about how to pay.

Heritage Vet is a high-volume veterinary practice. 50+ card transactions a day means the small stuff at the front desk adds up fast, and the "small stuff" here was double entry.

The practice uses ezyVet as their practice software, and previously had a standalone Clover terminal for card payments. Nothing connected the two systems. Every payment was entered in ezyVet, then keyed in again by hand on the device, with all the room for error that this setup implies.

[Before switching to Cherry], we would have to enter the payment in ezyVet and then key it in separately on the Clover device.

— Brianne Smith, Practice Manager, Heritage Veterinary Care

Every refund was a small project. The Clover portal was notoriously slow, with no text or email to pay capabilities.

Now, Cherry's ezyVet connector sends the invoice amount straight to the terminal with just one click.

The amount just sends straight to the device and there's literally no errors anymore in typing or anything like that. That's the best and biggest difference.

— Brianne Smith, Practice Manager, Heritage Veterinary Care

Refunds went from a search to a click. On the day we spoke, Brianne had refunded a client by looking up the visit date in the Cherry portal and hitting refund once. They've also loved unlocking the ability to text clients to pay.

We've been using the heck out of text to pay. We always wanted to be able to do that, and now we can.

— Brianne Smith, Practice Manager, Heritage Veterinary Care

Heritage was already on a very good deal with their old processor, but Cherry was still able to reduce their markup by 17%, saving them thousands of dollars a year.

Before card processing, every payment plan at Heritage began the same way: the client applied online, usually ahead of the appointment. That works when the family already knows what's coming, but not all vet costs are planned.

Adding the ability to checkout with a payment plan on the terminal changed where a plan could start. It added a place where the conversation could happen, at the counter, in the moment the client is deciding.

Heritage still prefers to get clients approved in the back before they ever reach the front desk, and nothing about processing forced them to change that. The terminal caught the ones that didn't happen that way.

I feel like people use it pretty often and it's easy. We don't have any issues. We love being able to offer it.

— Brianne Smith, Practice Manager, Heritage Veterinary Care

This is the part Brianne was most impressed with, because switching anything in a clinic usually takes months.

It was the quickest and easiest switch over of anything I've ever done here, and I've worked here for almost 15 years. I hate switching, because it's always a process no matter what we switch. I think I had the devices within two days and we were set up and using them.

— Brianne Smith, Practice Manager, Heritage Veterinary Care

Anytime we've had any type of issue, it's gotten resolved quickly. I have no complaints at all.

— Brianne Smith, Practice Manager, Heritage Veterinary Care

When asked why she switched processors, Brianne didn't lead with the rate.

We had already been doing the Cherry payment plans and the customer service is really good. Everyone is extremely helpful. So when we heard about the payment processing, I had been wanting to find something else anyway. And then it ended up being a little less expensive than what we were using also. Just perks all around.

— Brianne Smith, Practice Manager, Heritage Veterinary Care