Turnover of a new single vet practice (Pre-covid)

RE: Turnover of a new single vet practice (Pre-covid)

grumpyoldman — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 19:24:14 GMT

Depends where you are and the level of commitment . Our last new Surgery 2017 did 220 year 1 260 year 2 and was getting to 360 year 3 . Then the Covid business threw a spanner in the works but its back on track now. you can do a lot better if you throw a lot of money at advertising but in my experience it does attract certain type of client that you may not actually want.

RE: Turnover of a new single vet practice (Pre-covid)

Paul Terzer — Sat, 10 Oct 2020 20:15:41 GMT

Thank you all for your words of wisdom. :)

RE: Turnover of a new single vet practice (Pre-covid)

Jill Butterworth — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 08:02:24 GMT

Hello! It's difficult to predict, but if you are writing a business plan you can draw from some approximations. They used to say you need about 1500 clients registered per vet to be viable, for a regular practice. Another way to look at it is the 'chimney pots' method used by pubs (ie population density) as it was quite relevant to the veterinary profession, as often people simply go to the nearest vet, but with car travel and internet reviews, that's less cut and dried. The population figures and percentage of pet owners can also help you analyse your potential. If you are a niche market, like exotics, you could hope to draw from a wider area. Your passion and optimism are important in your networking to recruit clients, staff, lenders, premises, dealings with the council, etc etc From the moment you have the thought of being your own boss you are developing your 'Goodwill' skills, which go a long way in getting what you want, by selling yourself, when you can't throw money at a problem. The key to being profitable is controlling costs right from the start.

RE: Turnover of a new single vet practice (Pre-covid)

David Mills — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 11:33:42 GMT

More detail required really, size, premises, type of work offered, capacity, location, pricing structure (drugs vs procedures), local demographics etc etc.

Other than that, as per above two posts for ballpark.

RE: Turnover of a new single vet practice (Pre-covid)

Gillian Mostyn — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 20:54:10 GMT

I assume you're looking for forecast figures for a business plan for a new start up? It's a difficult one to assess as there are so many variables. If you pick the right visible location and local demographic the story will be very different to getting a building with no main road frontage etc. And obviously you're very unlikely to make a profit initially- it's just a case of minimising costs so you keep the debts from climbing too high! £250k turnover per vet is something to aim for, but is very unlikely to be realistic initially.

I really can't remember the figures we used for the forecast, and they will have changed now anyway, but ultimately it really is just a good guess. Look at what staff you will have, what capacity you have for consultations and ops, and what you expect your ATV to be. (These numbers are relatively freely available if you look into veterinary business management). Then be realistic in how long you expect it to build to being fully booked. I think we forecast going into profit in year 3 but actually got there in year 2. (We had one memorable day after about 6 months where we took £3.48 ... I sold a worming tablet!!!!). However, Ian (my husband) remembers clearly that in the first year of our start up in 2004 we took £124k turnover but lost £12k. You'd have to do the maths for the inflation.

Sorry I can't be more specific .... Maybe someone else who did this more recently can be.

RE: Turnover of a new single vet practice (Pre-covid)

Michael Woodhouse — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 18:44:03 GMT

Two figures that are often said - 1000 active small animal clients per vet or 4-5X turnover for salary. If you want £50,000 a year that's £200-250,000 turnover.