IDEXX vs Antech: Cleaning Up Your Outside-Lab Line Items
Outside-lab send-outs sprawl into dozens of cryptic line codes. Here's how to group them the AAHA way, by your reference lab, so your catalog (and your lab revenue) finally make sense.
Scroll far enough through your product and service list and you'll hit it: a sprawling wall of send-out codes. A separate line for every panel, every individual analyte, every reflex test, often with names only the lab's interface understands. "CBC/Chem reflex," "T4 add-on," "UA w/ culture," twenty more just like them. It's one of the messiest corners of any veterinary catalog, and it's almost always the same culprit: your outside reference lab.
The good news is that it's also one of the easiest messes to clean up, because nearly all of those lines really belong to a single category. You just have to decide whose lab they are.
Why outside-lab lines multiply
Every test you send out gets its own billable line so the charge can pass through to the client. Add a new panel, your lab adds a code. Over a few years, that's hundreds of entries, and because they were created piecemeal, they're named inconsistently and scattered all over your catalog. None of it is wrong, exactly. It's just never been organized.
For inventory and financial clarity, almost all of it collapses into one bucket.
The fix: group by your reference lab
Pick your reference lab (IDEXX, Antech, Zoetis, or whoever you send to) and group every one of those send-out lines under a single "Outside Reference Lab" category. That maps directly to the Laboratory revenue center in the AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts, the public best-practice framework we walk through in the main categorization guide.
IDEXX or Antech: same bucket, different naming
The two big reference labs name their panels differently, so their line items look unlike each other in your PIMS. For categorization, that doesn't matter. An IDEXX send-out and an Antech send-out both belong in the same Outside Reference Lab category. Decide your lab, group the codes, move on.
Send-outs are not inventory, and that matters
Here's the part that trips people up. Outside-lab send-outs are a pass-through service, not stock you hold. You don't reorder a "T4 add-on." So they should not land in your inventory math. Counting them as trackable would pollute your reorder points and overstate what's on your shelves.
What is inventory is your in-house lab: the reagents, slides, cartridges, and consumables your own analyzers burn through. Those have a real cost, they run out, and they belong in your stocking analysis. The in-house-vs-outside split is its own important distinction, worth its own read on what AAHA benchmarking actually wants from your lab revenue.
The one-line rule
Outside reference lab = one grouped category, not inventory. In-house lab supplies = trackable inventory. Get that split right and both your catalog and your lab economics get a lot clearer.
Doing it without an afternoon of clicking
You can group send-outs by hand: filter your catalog for the lab's codes and tag them all at once. For a big practice that's still a chunk of time. We're building this into StockSolve's free Setup Assistant. Pick your reference lab from a dropdown, and it collapses the whole sprawl of send-out codes into one tidy Outside Reference Lab line in a single click, then hands you a quick review so you stay in control. Your raw export and any prices stay in your browser, and only the category labels are saved.
It's a small thing that makes a big difference. One decision turns the ugliest part of your catalog into a clean, AAHA-aligned line, and it's exactly the kind of tedious busywork we'd rather handle for you.
If you want to see how clean categorization flows into real inventory and financial numbers, run a free baseline audit and watch StockSolve work on your own data.
StockSolve is an independent software provider and is not affiliated with AAHA, VHMA, IDEXX, Antech, Zoetis, or any laboratory, manufacturer, or veterinary organization. Brand names are referenced descriptively for guidance only. The AAHA/VMG Chart of Accounts is a public industry standard.
Written by
Neil Leinen
CVPM, Multi-Site Director of Operations
Neil Leinen is a Certified Veterinary Practice Manager who spent two decades on the practice floor before building StockSolve. He writes about the practical math behind running a calmer, more profitable inventory.
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