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People have pets, I have a couple of fish and a rabbit. Keeping control of all of the information including medical bills, costs and other bits of information can be a hassle. Although you could use a spreadsheet or word document to keep control of everything having a dedicated app can take away a lot of the hassle and make keeping controls of your pet records more fun. This is where Clarus comes in. Its the one stop shop for keeping control of your pets records and its a dream to use.

Come Here Boy

This app is all about keeping your pet’s information. Is designed to be used for a variety of pets. In the image below I am going to use the default data (I don’t have any expensive pets yet), however you can customise and change the settings as much as you want. When you first load the app you are presented with the screen shot below. The app is split up into a variety of sections, Overview, Contacts, Photos, Insurance, Veterinary, Medication and Expensive, as well as this there is also a Templates section.

The overview section of the app contains a lot of information. It allows you to set a photo of your dog (which can be dragged from Finder or iPhoto), gives you information on the age of your dog, the Chip ID and various physical features. The Up & Coming section of the overview window is based on the medication section and allows you to be reminded of when treatments need to take place.

The contacts section, as you may have guessed, allows you to add a variety of contacts. These could be yourself, your vets’, your insurance providers. Although you may not need to add your own contact details (which are pulled from Address Book), they are used within other parts of the app. This app build on quite a lot of details from other sections, so for full functionality its best to add as much information as possible.

The photos section, rather simple, is used to add pictures of your pet. This can be used for various post templates etc. You don’t need to add hundreds, although it usually a very good idea to add one for the default. The photos section has a variety of functions which allows you to adjust the image size and layouts, which is quite a nice feature.

Insurance is probably quite important feature to many pet owners. The insurance section is full of small little feature to numerous to name. This section allows you to add insurance policy, attach PDF’s add claims. It clear to see how much you are spending and receiving from your insurance provider.

Since this app is used to record what has happened to your pet, you can use it to log vet visits. The veterinary section is a running log. It is clearly labled with dates, costs, notes and any medication. Its useful to work out when your pet last went to see the vet.

I mentioned in the overview section about the Up & Coming section, in the medication you add what medication you have given, the dosage and the frequency of the dosage. Its a great way of being reminded of when you need to give your pet his next shot. This app also works with iCal to make sure you don’t forget which I think is a nice touch.

The final section, which you use frequently, is the expenses section. You will no doubt be away that pets cost money. The expenses section is designed to log all of the costs involved, which is very handy. The only think it doesn’t have which I would like to see in a future version, is the ability to auto add insurance costs each month. This feature doesn’t seem to be available.

On a day to day, week to week basis you will use the features mentioned above. There is one last section which is really useful, but you will find is not as used as much. This is the templates section. This is used to auto create templates of you details. This includes expenses, facts, history’s and up and coming medications. It can also be used for creating a missing poster. I mentioned you should put a of details into each section, simply because the templates will bring all of this information together.

This application is brilliant. It includes a lot of different features, one which I haven’t mentioned is the help that is run when you first start the app. It gives you lots of different bits of information and tells you how the app works. The help guide is very useful for jumping straight into the app. When I use this app I feel that the developers have added all of the little bits that you need. They clearly have thought of something (no matter how small) and added it in. As a result it is a brilliantly designed app.

If you have a pet, download this app and try it out. It may make your life a lot easier. It can support as many pets as you have, each one is saved in a .clarus file. Its priced at £15, which is the perfect price point.

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