Modifying a Charge

Accounts
The PPS Accounts system includes facilities for you to bill your clients, or third parties, record payments received, and manage all invoices that are overdue for payment. In addition, PPS also offers an additional module called PPS Expense that can be used to record details of practice expenditure. The Accounts system in PPS is not designed to be a full accounts system with ledgers, balance sheets, etc. but it can be used to supply revenue and expenditure information directly to another accounts system by way of exporting the information through reports. PPS Accounts billing is structured into three areas: Charges, Invoices and Payments. Firstly Charges must be created, then an invoice produced, then a payment recorded. A Charge, or charges simply become “line items” on an invoice, and a payment recorded is “allocated” to the invoice. PPS is flexible enough to accommodate all requirements for practice billing including third-party billing, split billing (between client and third party), recording several payments against one invoice, or recording one payment against several invoices. There are various points throughout PPS that enable charges to be quickly created and “paid off” in one step. This single step still produces the correct Charge, Invoice and Payment records.

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. --br-- 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. --br-- 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!

Create
See: Add; Charge – Create

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.

Log
See: Client Log.

Modify
This is the term used throughout PPS to “change” any of your existing records. PPS has buttons on many screens with a <Modify> prompt. Clicking this button will normally take you onto a further screen that allows you to modify the selected details. For more information about modifying various types of record in PPS, see the “modify” entry under the various section of this help guide, for example Invoices – Modify, Appointments – Modify, etc.

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.

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.

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.