Veterinary Associate Capacity & Revenue Impact Calculator

Associate Hiring Impact Calculator

Hiring an associate affects far more than workload. It determines how many pets your practice can see and how much revenue you can realistically generate. When hiring is delayed and the schedule stays full, the practice quietly reaches a ceiling - not because demand isn’t there, but because doctor capacity isn’t.

This calculator shows the impact of that timing.
By entering a few basic numbers from your practice, you can estimate how much potential revenue your clinic cannot currently reach without additional doctor availability.

The goal is simple:
To help you understand the financial and operational impact of adding a veterinarian when your schedule is consistently full.

Fill in the fields below or leave the default values as a starting point. The calculation updates automatically.

How to Use the Calculator

Average Transaction Charge (ATC)

This is the average amount a doctor generates per appointment.
You can find it by running a doctor production or doctor sales report in your practice management system. Use the doctor-only average, not the hospital-wide average. The default value of $225 was chosen because it’s close to the national average.  If you don’t know your number, leaving it at $225 is perfectly fine.

Clinical Hours Per Week

This is the average number of hours the associate will be available to see patients each week. It’s based on a standard 40-hour work week, but it doesn’t matter how those hours are distributed - weekdays, weekends, four days, five days. Simply enter the weekly clinical hours you expect the doctor to work.

Appointment Length (Minutes)

Enter the length of your standard appointment, typically 20-30 minutes in most general practices. You do not need to adjust this for rechecks, new-client slots, or other special visit types. Those variations balance out across a doctor’s schedule, so using your routine appointment length is the correct approach.

Working Weeks Per Year

This is the number of weeks the doctor will actually be seeing patients throughout the year. Most practices use 48–50 weeks to account for holidays, PTO, and natural scheduling gaps.

If you offer more than two weeks of PTO, adjust this number to match your policy. If unsure, leaving the default at 50 weeks is a safe and realistic estimate.

Fill Rate (%)

Fill rate reflects how full the associate’s schedule will realistically be over time. It doesn’t need to be exact - it’s simply an estimate of how often appointment slots will be filled.

Most practices use 80 to 90 percent:

You are not trying to hit a perfect number - just a reasonable estimate of consistent demand.