Say What You Did: One Sentence Becomes the Records, on the Right Horses
HorseBook's Quick Entry turns one typed or dictated sentence into structured vitals, medication, and care records across every horse it names, with a confirm screen before anything saves. What it does, what lands where, and where it lives on iPhone and web.
By Brian Bickell, who raises paint and quarter horses at Bickell Ranches in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
A farrier finishing seven broodmares on a Tuesday morning leaves seven facts behind, and on most places none of them get written down until evening, if at all. The person holding the lead rope has no hand free for a keyboard, and by supper the details have blurred into "the farrier came." Deworming day is worse: one tube per horse, ten horses, and one line in a notebook that says "wormed everybody."
HorseBook's Quick Entry takes the record the way the person would say it. One sentence, typed or dictated, names the horses and what happened, and HorseBook turns it into separate structured records on each horse it names. The feature shipped in August on both the iPhone app (version 1.1.14) and the web dashboard.
What One Sentence Produces
Three sentences, and what comes out of each:
- "Dewormed Libby, Codie, Annie and Daisy this morning." Four deworming records, one on each horse, dated today.
- "Codie trimmed and shod today, reset in six weeks." One farrier record on Codie, with "reset in six weeks" kept word for word in the notes.
- "Libby's off her feed and running a fever, vet's coming at four." One illness entry on Libby, with the description in the speaker's words.
A sentence can carry more than one kind of record. Vitals stated in the same breath as a medication become two entries, a vitals record and a medication record, each on the horse named.
What Lands Where
Quick Entry writes into the same tables as the forms, so nothing about the resulting record differs from one typed by hand.
- Care visits. Farrier, deworming, dental, vaccination, Coggins, chiropractic, and similar routine work become medical records. Shoe types, product names, and scheduling remarks are kept verbatim in the notes.
- Vitals. Temperature, heart rate, respiration rate, gum color and moisture, capillary refill time, gut sounds by quadrant, digital pulse, and skin tent each land in their own field.
- Medications. Drug name, dose, dose unit, route, frequency, and withdrawal days.
- Injuries and illness. What happened, what was done about it, and whether it is resolved.
Two rules hold on every sentence. Values are taken exactly as stated and never corrected, so a number that sounds wrong is shown as spoken for the person to fix. Anything without a dedicated field goes into notes in the speaker's own words rather than being dropped.
Nothing Saves Without a Look
Every sentence ends on a confirm screen. It shows each record HorseBook understood, the horse it assigned, and every field it filled, with the original sentence above. Names are matched only against the horses already in the account; when the match is unclear, the screen offers the closest names from that list and waits for a choice. A sentence never creates a horse.
The confirm screen also handles the reminder. When a horse has a care schedule that fits the record, a farrier visit for a horse on a farrier cycle, for example, the screen offers to advance that schedule's next-due date by its interval. The offer can be unticked if the visit should not count. A phrase like "due in six weeks" stays in the notes rather than setting a date on its own.
Where It Lives
On the iPhone, the row is labeled Say What You Did under the + button. Dictation comes from the keyboard's microphone: tap it, talk, and the transcript fills the box. On the web, the Quick entry card sits at the top of the dashboard and takes a typed sentence. Both run through the same reader and produce the same records.
Each sentence counts as one use of the account's monthly AI allowance, the same count the document scanner draws on, and it is included on every plan. Typing a record by hand remains unlimited.
Why It Was Built This Way
The three sentences above are close cousins of the ones a 35-horse Quarter Horse operation sent HorseBook in August, asking whether the app could take vitals, a medication, a farrier reset, and a herd deworming by voice and put each piece where it belongs. The first version answers the structured part of that request; voice on the iPhone today is the keyboard's dictation. HorseBook gets built from sentences like those, and the reply address on every email from the app reaches the person who writes the code.
Say what you did, and HorseBook puts it on the right horses. Free 14-day trial on iPhone and web.
Free to download · 14-day free trial
Frequently asked questions
Does HorseBook have voice entry for health records?
On the iPhone, yes, through the keyboard's dictation: tap the microphone, say what happened, and Quick Entry turns the transcript into records. On the web, Quick Entry takes typed sentences. There is no separate hands-free button in the app today.
Can Quick Entry create a new horse?
No. It matches horse names only against the horses already in the account, and when it cannot tell which horse was meant it asks the user to pick from their own list. A sentence never creates a horse.
Does Quick Entry update care reminders?
If a horse has a care schedule that matches the record, such as a farrier visit for a horse on a farrier cycle, the confirm screen offers to move that schedule's next-due date forward by its interval. A phrase like 'due in six weeks' is kept in the notes rather than used to set a date.
What does Quick Entry cost?
It is included on every plan, including the trial, and each sentence counts as one use of the same monthly AI allowance the document scanner uses. Typing records in by hand remains unlimited.