Privacy policy

Satchel is practice-management software for mobile and house-call veterinary practices, operated by Schmidt Innovation LLC (“Satchel,” “we,” “us”). This policy covers the Satchel websites (satchel.vet and its subdomains), the Satchel application, the client portal, and practice websites we host for veterinary practices.

Two kinds of people interact with Satchel, and this policy addresses both: practices (veterinarians and their staff, who are our customers) and clients (pet owners served by those practices).

When your veterinarian uses Satchel, the information in your and your pet’s records (contact details, patient history, visit notes, invoices, messages) belongs to and is controlled by your veterinary practice, not by Satchel. We process that information on the practice’s behalf, to run the software they use. Questions about your records, corrections, or deletion requests should go to your practice first; we support them in honoring those requests.

We do not sell client or patient information, and we do not use it for advertising. Ever.

• Account information: name, email address, and login credentials for practice staff; contact details clients share with their practice.
• Practice and patient records: the clinical and business records practices create in Satchel: visit notes, vaccination records, prescriptions, invoices, appointments, uploaded photos and documents.
• Messages: text messages and emails sent and received through Satchel between a practice and its clients, including delivery status.
• Payment records: invoice and payment history. Card payments are processed by Stripe; card numbers never touch Satchel’s servers.
• Technical basics: log data such as IP address, browser type, and pages requested, used for security and to keep the service running. We do not run third-party advertising or analytics trackers.

• To provide the service: charting, scheduling, invoicing, reminders, messaging, and the client portal.
• To send communications a practice has set up: appointment reminders, vaccine due notices, payment links, and replies to your messages.
• To secure the service: authentication, fraud and abuse prevention, and audit logging of record changes.
• To comply with law, including veterinary record-retention requirements.

We use information only to operate and improve Satchel, never to build advertising profiles.

Practices use Satchel to text their clients: appointment reminders and confirmations, vaccine and refill reminders, payment links, pre-visit forms, arrival updates, and replies to messages you send. You receive these messages only if you have given your phone number to your veterinary practice and agreed to be contacted by text.

• Opting out: reply STOP to any message to stop receiving texts from that practice. Reply START to opt back in. Reply HELP for help, or contact your practice directly.
• Message frequency varies with your appointments and your pet's care. Message and data rates may apply.
• Phone numbers and SMS opt-in consent are never shared with or sold to third parties for their own marketing or any other purpose. Numbers are shared only with our SMS carrier partners (such as Twilio) solely to deliver the messages described here.

We share information only with the service providers needed to run Satchel, each bound to use it solely to provide their service to us:

• Neon (database hosting) and Vercel (application and file hosting), where Satchel’s data lives.
• Stripe for payment processing. Your payment card details go directly to Stripe and are governed by Stripe’s privacy policy.
• Twilio for text-message delivery.
• Resend for email delivery.

Beyond that, we disclose information only when a practice directs us to, when required by law or valid legal process, or to protect the rights and safety of Satchel, our customers, or others. We do not sell personal information to anyone.

All traffic to Satchel is encrypted in transit (HTTPS), and data is encrypted at rest by our hosting providers. Staff accounts use hashed passwords with brute-force lockout; clients sign in with one-time codes rather than passwords. Pet photos and message attachments are stored privately and served only to authenticated users of the owning practice. Every practice’s data is isolated from every other’s, and that isolation is verified by automated tests on every change to the software. No system is perfectly secure, but we treat medical records with the seriousness they deserve.

Veterinary medical records are subject to state record-retention laws, so records are kept as long as the practice’s legal obligations require. Deleted records are archived rather than destroyed while those obligations last. When a practice leaves Satchel, it can export everything it owns, and we delete its data on request once retention obligations are met.

Satchel is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

If we make material changes, we will update the date above and, for significant changes, notify practices directly. Continued use of Satchel after a change means the updated policy applies.

Questions about privacy? Email hello@satchel.vet. If your question is about your pet’s records, your veterinary practice is the fastest path to an answer.