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Charges can be created from several different areas within PPS dependant on what you are currently doing.You can create a charge on completion of a consultation or appointment.You can create a charge at anytime, provided you have selected a client, by clicking Create a Charge on the task bar or clicking Cash Desk or pressing F11 to run Cash Desk.
Once you have created the charge you can decide leave it to invoice at a later date, invoice it now or record a payment against it that will automatically create the invoice in the background.
- Once you have completed a consultation you have the option to create a charge in section 2 of the Consultation Completed screen.
If no default charge code exists select one, then make sure that the correct invoicee is selected.
You then have a choice of what you want to do with the charge.
- Create Charge, Invoice Later
Use this option when you want to create a charge but do not want to create an invoice or record a payment. For example: if this is a charge to an insurance company then you may want to create the charges and at the end of the month use Invoice Processing to automatically create and print out the invoices for you.
The left hand button will disappear from the screen and a message is displayed confirming the charge you have created.
Invoice Now, Pay Later.
Use this option when you want to create a charge and give/send an invoice for payment if the payment is not being made at the same time.
You will be asked if you want to print the invoice. Click Yes to display the Print Invoices screen where you have further print options.(See Printing an Invoice/Receipt.)
The two left hand buttons will disappear from the screen and a message is displayed confirming the charge and invoice you have created.
Pay Now.
Use this option if the person you are creating the charge for wishes to pay at the same time. Clicking Pay Now will reveal a list of payment methods, select one by clicking on it.
You will then be asked whether you wish to print a receipt. Click Yes to display the Print Invoices screen where you have further print options. (See Printing an Invoice/Receipt.)
All three buttons to the left of Cash Desk will disappear and a message is displayed confirming that the charge and invoice has been created and a payment recorded.
Cash Desk.
Use this option if you wish to add further charges. For example: if the client purchased any stock items. (See Cash Desk for further details.)
- Once you have completed an appointment you have the option to create a charge in section 2 of the Appointment Completed screen.
As the methods for creating the charge are the same as the Consultation Completed screen please refer to Creating a charge from the Consultation screen (section 2) for further details.
- Click Create a Charge. The Client Charge window is displayed.
If you have already selected a client previously from another screen (the Appointments Dairy, Client Details etc.) then their details will be displayed. If there is no client or you wish to change the client click Search to use the Client Search screen. (See Selecting/Searching for a Client record.)
- The Practitioner and Date are already entered but you can change these.
- Select the charge by typing in the code or clicking the Code <Down Arrow>. (You can also use the description field in the same way.) All the other details of the charge will then be shown. If necessary you can change the description, quantity, price and tax code.
- You will then need to decide who the charge is for. For example: the client has insurance therefore the charge could go directly to the insurance company (3rd party).
Click either the Client or Third Party radio button. Selecting the third party will reveal several new fields allowing you to select the third party. For example: the client may have more than one third party contact including their doctor, consultant, insurance company etc.
When selecting the third party, a list of third parties currently associated with the client will be displayed. Either select one in the list or click Select Another Third-Party to display the Contact List screen to find one that isn’t currently associated with the client. Once selected you will have the option of attaching the new third-party to the client’s details. (If the client has no third-party contacts currently associated with them then the Contact List will be displayed.)
If the third-party contact is not in the list then you can create a new one by clicking <New> in the Contact List screen.
- If you wish to create the invoice at a later stage then click OK to save the charge otherwise click OK – Go to Invoice / Payment. (See Creating an Invoice.)
- (See Cash Desk.)
- Once you have completed a consultation you have the option to create a charge in section 2 of the Consultation Completed screen.
If no default charge code exists select one, then make sure that the correct invoicee is selected.
You then have a choice of what you want to do with the charge.
Add
Look this up under the type of new record you want to add – e.g. Client - Add or Appointment - Add Appointment
An Appointment is an entry in the Appointments Diary for a client. When you set up your diary, you are setting up the free appointment slots. You then book Appointments into these free slots. Each Appointment can be marked with a status, represented by a colour, to show that the client has arrived for their appointment (green), is currently being seen by the practitioner (orange) or the appointment is completed (purple). You can also mark an appointment as DNA (did not attend) and select a reason why the client has not attended – these are marked in red. When booking an appointment on the diary, this is normally done by highlight a free slot then selecting to add the new appointment. When doing this, the appointment details such as date, time, duration, diary user, treatment room, etc. are already known and you do not have to enter them. Cash DeskPPS Cash Desk is a “point-of-sale” type screen that can be used to quickly create charges, invoices and payments all in one step. You can access the Cash Desk screen directly from anywhere in PPS either from the PPS Menu: Accounts – Cash Desk, or by using the F11 key on the keyboard. When the screen displays, make sure that the client and practitioner are selected. If you launch Cash Desk by clicking on an appointment in the diary first, then these details will be shown already. The Cash Desk screen shows chargeable items (consultation fees or stock items) in the top right corner of the screen – There six “quick buttons” that show the first six items in your list. To access more items, use the <More> button. You can either click on one these buttons to select this charge item, or enter the charge code directly into the “Enter Code” field. When you have added as many charges as you want, then use the <Payment> button. The Six buttons in the top right now show your first six most common payment methods – use the <More> button to see further payment methods. Select the required payment method and confirm the payment amount. When you are done, you simply click the <Save> button, and select if you want to print and invoice/receipt. You can set up which charge code items appear in the list, and which payment methods appear in the list. To do this select from the PPS Menu: Tools – Look Up Tables, and select either the “List of Standard Charges and Stock Items” or “Payment Methods” table from the Accounts Tables section. Both of these have a “Cash Desk Order” entry that determines what order this item appears in the six quick buttons on the Cash Desk screen. You can also apply Discounts and use Vouchers on cash desk, and even use it to bill third parties, even after the client has paid a portion of the bill already. Change
See: Cash Desk; Modify Charge
A charge is the first step for PPS billing. You have to create a charge before you can raise an invoice – a charge is a “line item” on an invoice. Charges can be either for various types of treatment, or for stock/sundry items you may sell. PPS has a “list of standard charges” that you set up yourself giving you quick access to your charges via a code, or description. There are several ways in PPS that you can create a charge, you can also skip very quickly from creating a charge to recording a payment and PPS creates the invoice for you as you go.
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You can create a charge in the following ways (which way you regularly use will depend upon the way that you prefer to use PPS): 1) from the PPS Menu: Accounts – Create a Charge; 2) from the PPS Taskbar click on Create a Charge (if you have the diary open then highlighting an appointment first will create the charge related to that appointment); 3) from the PPS Menu: Accounts – Charges List, and click the New button; 4) from the diary, highlight an appointment, right-click on the appointment and select the Client Charge option from the pop-up menu; 5) when completing a consultation record, the “consultation complete” screen allows you to create the charge; 6) when completing an appointment the “appointment complete” screen allows you to create the charge; 7) Cash Desk can be used to create charges. The first four options above will show the Client Charge screen. This allows you to select / enter all the appropriate charge details and save the charge, or go on to create an invoice for the charge. An invoice can contain more than one charge so you do not always want to create the invoice each time.
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Whenever creating a charge, you have the option to select who will be invoiced for the charge, this includes the Client, and any one of the Third-Part Contacts associated with the client. This is how to bill an insurance company directly, for example. If the client does not have a third party contact associated with them, then you can select one while creating the charge, and select to always associate this third-part with the client. This will update the third-party contact details for you on the Main Client Details screen. Client
Client records are the hub of your PPS database. PPS refers to these records as “Clients” rather than “Patients” because PPS is used across a variety of business and clinical disciplines, some of whom use the term “client” and others use “patient”. A client record can have either minimal details entered, such as first name and surname, or can be a comprehensive range of details including full address/contact details, alternative addresses, DOB, sex, “known as”, full profile details including “source of introduction”, occupation (plus a range of entries you can set up yourself). In addition you can associate a variety of third-parties to clients such as doctors, insurance companies, etc. The more comprehensive the details you store for each client, the greater the opportunities to use these details in your reports and mail-merge operation. For example, by recording the “source of introduction” for each client (such as yellow pages, local advert, recommendation, etc.) you can run almost any report in PPS to show a breakdown by “source of introduction”, for example “practice revenue” by “source of introduction” will show where you earn the most money from – thus where you should concentrate most on your advertising! Code
See: Charge – Code; Diagnosis Code; Outcome Code Company
Company is the “company name” element of a Third Party contact (as opposed to contact name). Third-party Contacts are individuals or organisations that can be associated with clients, for example Insurance Companies. You are able to set up your profile of third-party contacts yourself using the option from the PPS Menu: Tools – Options, and selecting the Client Contacts tab. Each type of contact (there are 9 in total) can be referred to via contact name, and Company name. An example is a Law Firm, where Contact Name would be an individual lawyer or solicitor, and the company would be the law firm. Consultation
PPS uses the term “consultation” to define each time you see a client, whether or not it is an initial session, or a follow up one. PPS has a clinical notes system that allows you to record Consultation notes each time you see a client, and these are all part of a Treatment Episode. If you see a client once, and their treatment is completed in one consultation, then the Treatment Episode will only have one consultation. If, alternatively, you see a client six times before the treatment for the presenting problem is complete, then the “one” treatment episode will have “six” consultations. To access the clinical notes system in PPS, either select from the PPS Menu: Client – Consultation, or click Consultation on the PPS Task bar. You can select an appointment, or client record first if required to give immediate access to the consultation screen for that client. Create
See: Add; Charge – Create Details
This is a generic term used to describe the information stored in any particular part of PPS. For example Main Client Details is the information you enter to this screen. In addition, there are several “notes” type fields that allow you to enter further “free text” details against a record – these are also sometimes referred to as Details. Find
See: Search Invoice
An Invoice in PPS is an official bill that can be issued for payment by a client. In accounting terms an “Invoice” and “Receipt” is the same thing – a receipt is a printed copy of a “paid” invoice. The invoice has an invoice number and a date for tax purposes. PPS keeps a “ledger” of all invoices, and allows you to print an aged debtors report. An Invoice is formed from individual “line items” which in PPS are called Charges, so an invoice can only be raised after charges have been created. An invoice is “paid off” by recording a Payment and allocating the payment to the invoice. PPS is very flexible in terms of allowing either one charge, or an unlimited number of charges to appear on the invoice; also to allow either one payment to pay off one invoice, or one payment to pay off more than one invoice, or several payments to pay off one invoice. There are several ways to raise an invoice in PPS, some of these are fairly transparent in term of creating the charge, raising the invoice and recording the payment all in one step. Whichever method is used, PPS will always create proper Charge, Invoice and Payment records. List
List is the term used to describe information that either appears on the screen or on a report in rows and columns. The term List is also used in PPS as a list of items such as menu, or list of entries such as a look up table. See also: List style diary. Options
PPS has a screen on the PPS Tools menu called Options. This screen can be used to set up a wide variety of system settings that affect the way that PPS works. You can make your changes to these areas and press the OK or Apply button to save your changes. The Options screen has four tabs along the top: General, Custom Client Fields, Set Up Client Contacts, and Clinical Notes. See the entries under each of these sections for more details, for example Options – General. Payment
A Payment in PPS is recorded when money is received from clients or third-parties. A payment must be allocated to an invoice – either immediately or in the future. If a payment is received in advance (a pre-payment) for consultations or treatment that has not yet been carried out, then the payment can be allocated to the invoice in the future when the invoice is raised. Payments are either recorded using a specific PPS screen to “record a payment”, or are automatically recorded when an invoice or charge is raised and “marked as paid”. If payments are received from third-parties, then these are recorded on the third-parties own accounts screen where the invoices to the third party will appear. If payments are received from clients, the these are recorded on the client’s own accounts screen. PPS
PPS is the acronym for “Private Practice Software”. Practitioner
A practitioner in PPS is a system user. To add a practitioner to PPS, you need to add a new system user, and indicate that they are a practitioner as part of their user details. When a user is a practitioner, they appear on the list of practitioners to select to allocate to most PPS records. PPS allocates a practitioner to most types of records so that you can see which practitioner is responsible for that record, also you can break down most report in PPS by practitioner. PrintYou can print various types of information in PPS including client details, clinical notes, Invoices, letters, and a wide variety of reports. All printing in PPS is done using your standard Windows printer driver for your selected printer. Many screens in PPS have a <Print> button that is used to print details for that part of the system. See also: Reports – Report Output. Printing
See: Print Quantity
When creating a charges record, or using PPS Cash Desk, you can enter a quantity with your charge details. Use this if you need to create a charge for more than one of the same item. The Quantity entry appears on the “Create a Charge” screen. On PPS Cash desk you can use the <Quantity>button for any charge item. To use a quantity of more than one, first enter the quantity, then press the quantity button, then enter the charge code. Other parts of PPS that create charges such as the Appointment Complete screen or the Consultation Complete screen always use a quantity of 1. this cannot be changed on these screens. Receipt
See: Invoice; Accounts - Printing Save
PPS Uses a <Save> button on many screens. This will save the updates that you have made to this screen and store them permanently in your database. One some screens the <Save> button will also close the screen. Search
You can search for various records in PPS: Clients, Appointments, Third-Party contacts etc. Some screens include a <Search> button on the toolbar. The main PPS Client Search screen includes options to search on a variety of fields: for example Surname. This screen can be accessed from the Search Button on any of the client screens (main details, log, browse) or by clicking “Search” on the PPS Task Bar. The Search screen allows you to enter all or part of a value into a selected field, then when you press Enter a list of results that match what you have typed in is displayed. The most common information to search on is Surname. In the Surname field on the search screen, it is possible to enter all or part of the surname followed by a space, then all or part of the client’s First Name. This way you can narrow down your search results – useful with popular surnames. For example, you can search for Joe Smith simply by entering SMI J in the Surname field and pressing enter. All clients whose surname starts with SMI and whose First Name starts with J will be listed.
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You can search for existing Client Appointments or Free Appointment Slots using the <Search> button on the Appointments Diary – see: Appointments Diary – Search for more details. Select
A term used when you choose something on the screen. Some PPS screens have a <Select> button, this normally means that you pick an option, or entry in a list, then click the <Select> button. This will “select” your chosen entry and proceed to the next screen, or return to the previous screen with your chosen entry selected. Task Bar
The PPS Task Bar is a tool bar that is positioned down the left hand side of the main PPS screen. It contains a calendar that can be used to navigate the Diary and the Daily List, and has quick access to various parts of PPS via Icons, headings and Prompts that can be clicked with the mouse. If your screen resolution is too small, then the icons are removed and just the Headings and prompts remain. You can switch the task bar on and off by selecting from the PPS menu: View – Task Bar. Time
See: Activities – Time; Appointments – Time
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