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The following guide will take you through the steps of creating your SMS account (1), purchasing SMS credits (2), setting up your activity templates that control what your text messages will say(3), setting up your booking confirmations (4) and reminders settings (5)(6), sending mailshots (7) and finally how to change your contact preferences (8)(9) so that your clients are enabled to actively receive SMS text messages from PPS.
Note: This guide is based on PPS Version 4.0.63 and upwards - If certain features shown below are unavailable, you may need to update your PPS system to the latest version. The latest updates to the software are available as part of your PPS Support Contract.
a. To create your SMS account, you will need to navigate to the Tools menu within PPS, into 'System Set Up' and click on 'Setup SMS Message Account'. You will be presented with the screen as show below.
b. Your Boom SMS Account ID will be pre-entered (this is based on your PPS account number). You will need to type in a password, and just below this area you will need to fill in as much contact details as you can regarding your company contact details as these will be used to create your Boom SMS account.
c. Your 'SMS Message ID' is the name of the SMS Sender - In other words, when a client receives a text message from you, instead of it appearing as "07800123456" it will appear as "My Practice" so that your clients know who has sent the text message.
d. You can choose to send your SMS message via E-mail (which will use your MS Outlook account on the PC you are using) or Via 'Direct Posting' which basically means as long as you have an active internet connection, the text message will send instantly (this is the preferred method, especially if you are planning to send out mail shots to your clients.) You can optionally tick to receive your sent messages status sent via the e-mail address you have provided as well.
e. Once you have filled in all your details, you are ready to go by clicking on the Click here to Create your Account button.
a. To purchase text message credits for your Boom SMS account within PPS, you can navigate to your PPS Menu > Tools > System Set Up > Setup SMS Message Account.
b. In this screen, click on the Buy Credits Now! button. Next to the button, you may also have a counter displaying how many text messages you have left if you have previously purchased SMS Text Messages.
c. You will be taken to the following screen from within the PPS website.
d. Simply click on the green 'Add' symbol/button, and then click on checkout to proceed (when buying a bundle of 1000, you will need to nominate a quantity) You can also purchase SMS bundles from the rushcliff.com website directly - Just login to the website and in the top right click on 'My PPS'. From here, click on 'Purchase' from the green sub-menu which will take you to the same screen as above.
e. Once purchased, you will be ready to use your SMS text messages straight away.
a. Firstly you will need to go to your PPS Menu > Tools > Activity templates (letters, emails etc).
b. On the list of activity templates click the Add button.
c. Move onto the SMS tab and add the name of your SMS template firstly at the top of the screen and also select your category. The category is an important selection so make sure that you choose the correct one. In this instance we will choose " Appointment Reminder". 
d. The above example is what you can be sent to the client, which involves the use of merge fields to automatically pickup details, for instance the time and date of the client's next appointment, and which practitioner the client is seeing. Once completed, click on the Save button. a. To setup your SMS Booking Confirmations, go to your PPS Menu > Tools > Options > Appointment Diary Options, then click on to the ‘Reminders’ tab.
b. You will firstly need to tick the box with the title 'Use Booking Confirmations' and then choose the pre-configured Booking Confirmation template that you have previously setup.
c. Finally, on the 'How to Process' section, you can decide whether you wish to have your confirmations set to 'Prompted' or 'Automatic.
Note: 'Prompted' will prompt you if you wish to send a client a booking confirmation after booking you have booked client into the appointment diary, 'Automatic' will send the SMS automatically once the client has been booked in.
a. To setup your SMS Appointment Reminders, go to your PPS Menu > Tools > Options > Appointment Diary Options, then click on to the ‘Reminders’ tab.
b. You will need to tick the box entitled 'Use Appointment Reminders' to enable reminders. You can then schedule when to send a reminder depending on when the appointments has been made in the future and also how many days before the appointment you want to send them the actual reminder. See the above screenshot as an example.
c. You then have the option to choose whether you wish to move the day that the reminder is due based on if the reminder falls on at the weekend, and also if you wish the appointment reminder to become due at the start of the clinics working day, or at the time of the future appointment time. e.g. 11am exactly if the clients appointment in the future is booked in for 11am.
d. Then select the SMS appointment reminder template that you have previously created from the 'Activity Templates' area.
e. Finally you are asked which of your PPS system users wish to be prompted (The default is 'Anyone') and if the process is going to be set to prompted or automatic.
Note: 'Prompted' will prompt you if you wish to send a client a booking confirmation after booking you have booked client into the appointment diary, 'Automatic' will send the SMS automatically once the client has been booked in.
a. To setup your SMS Follow Up Appointment Reminders, go to your PPS Menu > Tools > Options > Appointment Diary Options, then click on to the ‘Reminders’ tab.
b. From here you will just need to tick the box entitled 'Use Follow-up Reminders', select who will be prompted in the same fashion as Appointment Reminders, and how you wish to process the reminder.
Note: Appointment follow up reminders are setup using both the 'Activity templates' area of PPS and the Look Up Tables 'Appointments' Section.
a. Reports from within PPS provide the ability to send SMS mailshots from a variety of details recorded from within the system. In this instance, we are going through the scenario of contacting clients that have been recorded on the system, but have never actually had any appointments booked, charges raised, or consultations recorded.
b. From your main PPS screen go to Reports > PPS reports & Mail merge. Click on the 'Client' tab.
c. Highlight the 'Client registered but with no Appts, Charges, or Consultns' report and then click Open. You can then navigate between the different sections of the report wizard by clicking the tab sections at the top of the screen or clicking Back or Next.
d. Select the date range first firstly - in this instance we are looking for clients that have been added into the system within the past year.
e. Click on the Criteria tab - In here we are solely after clients that have a mobile number that we can send an SMS message to. If you choose the field as "Telephone - Mobile" and the condition to "Not Blank", this will ignore any client that does not have a mobile phone number inputted into the mobile phone number field in the Client Details screen.
f. Once done, click on Finish. Then click on the Mail Merge button.
g. In this screen, you will need to click on one line per client if it is not already selected, choose if you wish to not exclude "Deceased" or clients marked as "Excluded" from the mail shot process, and then click on the Marketing & Mail Shots button.
h. This screen will tell you how many clients are going to be included in the mail shot. Click OK.
i. As this is a new mail shot, you will need to give your mailshot a name as shown above, and select the system user who will be responsible for the mailshot. Once done, click on Continue.
j. On the 'Process your Mail Shot' screen you will see the list of clients you have selected and will then have the choice to send you mail shot via your chosen mail shot type - in this case the SMS button will be highlighted - Double check the list of clients you have and then click on the SMS button.
k. You will then be prompted that you are about to produce ‘x’ number of SMS messages and that a record of each SMS will be saved to the clients log for historical purposes. If you are happy with this amount then you click OK .
l. If you are using merge fields in your message, you have the option to not send the mail shot message to that specific client. Click Yes or No depending on your choice.
m. You are now ready to send your SMS messages. Click on Send. Your mailshot is now complete.
The client preferences in PPS are designed to control the preferred method of contacting a client through confirmations, reminders and mail shots that you can send out via SMS. Here is a brief rundown on what the 4 client contact options are:
Booking Confirmations
These are sent to the client immediately after booking the appointment via SMS.
Appointment Reminders
These are scheduled reminders that are sent 'x' amount many days before the patient’s appointment upcoming appointment via SMS. You can configure how many days before the appointment you wish to remind the patient.
Appointment Follow-up Reminders
These can be scheduled several weeks or months after the appointment as a reminder for your client to book another appointment via SMS.
Marketing and Mail shots
Used to determine how you want to contact clients from the mail shots you wish to use - for this example guide it will be via SMS.
Note: This guide will take you through mass editing all of your clients contact preferences to suit your general requirements; however individual clients can have their preferred contact methods edited at any time within the client details screen for a more personalised basis.
a. The following global update method is used to change the preferences for all clients in the database in one go. Firstly you will need to go to your PPS Menu > Tools > Options > General System Options.
b. From here you will need to select the ‘Set Up Client Preferences’ tab on the top right. You will then see the screen as shown in the picture below
c. In here you will have 4 rows for your various contact methods that PPS offers that have 8 columns overall.
d. The first 4 columns are for the "Auto-Select" methods of contacting clients, which is designed to work in the way of firstly trying to contact a client via e-mail, and then via letter for instance. (So when sending an appointment reminder, the system will try and send an e-mail, but if that client does not have an email address in client details, it will then try and print out a letter to be sent to the client if they have their address entered in PPS).
e. The second 4 columns are for selecting the appropriate boxes for the "And / Or Always switch on" method, which equates to a simple ‘yes contact this client via this method’ if ticked. There are no preferred contact methods here. The example here being if a client can be contact via Letter and E-mail, the system will ask you how to you wish to contact the client.
f. Once you’ve selected you preferred method of contact, click on Apply at the bottom of the screen, and once you do this the Update Now! button will be selectable, so click on this where you will then be greeted by 2 pop up messages, both confirming that you wish to action this change to all your client. Click on OK on both once you are sure you wish to update all your client records.
Note: Depending on the number of clients you have on your system, this update could either take seconds or minutes, so as a precaution make sure that you have 5/10 minutes spare on PPS as the system will be unavailable in this time on the PC that you are on.
g. If you wish to update only a few clients manually, you can simply go to your client details screen and scroll down to your Preference section and tick the appropriate boxes here. Action
See: Personal Action Add
Look this up under the type of new record you want to add – e.g. Client - Add or Appointment - Add Address
See: Client - Address 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. Change
See: Cash Desk; Modify 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! Columns
See: Appointments Diary - Columns 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. Complete
The term “Complete” is used in PPS for both Appointments and Consultations. You can select to Complete an Appointment – where is it marked in Purple, and you can then raise the charge, book another appointment, etc., and you can Complete a Consultation – where you can decide if the Treatment Episode is completed, or how many more consultations are required, you can raise the charge, produce a Discharge Letter etc. The term “Complete” is also used for Treatment Episodes that have an “End Date” entered – see: Completed Episodes. Create
See: Add; Charge – Create Criteria
See: Report Wizard - Criteria Database
The PPS Database can be stored in a separate location on your computer/network from the main PPS application files. This would apply to a PPS installation on a network where the PPS Application files are installed onto each computer, and the database is located centrally on the network. There is the option to change the database location as part of the initial installation of PPS, and there is also a separate “database only” installation available if the database is to be installed onto a computer such as a server where PPS will not be used on that computer – servers often reside in a “back office” and are not used as a desktop computer. 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. Diary
See: Appointments Diary EMail
E-Mails in PPS are part of the PPS Activities system. You can send E-Mails directly from within PPS. This is dependant upon your computer being configured to use Microsoft® Outlook or Outlook Express to send e-mails. To send an e-mail, either select from the PPS Menu: Activities – Send an E-Mail, or click on Send an E-Mail on the PPS Task Bar. You can also select the <New> button from the Activities List. The Send an E-Mail screen allows you to select either a client (the client you are currently working with is automatically selected) or a third party. You can type in the subject and body of the e-mail message, and you can attach a document to the e-mail. Like all PPS Activity records, the e-mail can be scheduled to send later if required by setting the due date/time.
See also: Client – E-Mail Address Important
You can flag information as “important” while recording your clinical notes. For more details see: Consultation – Important information. Letters
Letters are an activity type in PPS. You can select at any time to send a letter to either a client or a third-party. You can send a letter either by selecting from the PPS Menu: Activities – Send a Letter, or by selecting “Send a Letter” from the PPS Task Bar. In addition you can also select to send a letter as part of your clinical notes recording. When you send a letter, you have the choice of either selecting a standard letter from your list of standard PPS letters (see: Standard Letters), or by simply typing your letter using the PPS letter editor before printing and sending. Letters can either be sent now or scheduled to be sent in the future. If you are using Microsoft® Word to print your letters, then your list of standard letters (which can include very simple templates that simply have the client’s address/salutation details at the top) will include letters that you have set up in Word. If you are sending a letter as part of a Mail Merge output from a PPS Report, then this will be a PPS letter. To do a mail merge using a Word letter, you will have to produce a “File” output from the PPS mail merge output screen, and do the mail merge separately and completely in Word. Line
See: Charts - Annotations 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. Look Up Tables
Look up Tables are used in PPS to control the entries that are allowed in certain fields. This means that you can restrict what values are input to just those that you want recorded. For example, when adding a new appointment, the “Appointment Type” look up table can contain entries such as “Initial Assessment”, “New Patient” or “Hydrotherapy”. This helps when running reports as you can select to break down the results of your report by the look up table entry thus minimising the number of different entries (especially slight variations of spellings!).
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Some Look Up tables will store additional default values. For example the “Appointment Type” table can optionally have a Charge Codes associated with each entry. When the selected entry is used for an appointment, the charge code will be automatically selected for you when you create the charge for the appointment.
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Look Up Tables are set up and maintained using the PPS Menu: Tools – Look Up Tables.
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You can control which of your PPS users has access to setting up and maintaining Look Up Tables as part of the PPS Access Control system.
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Also see the entry under the name of each Look Up Table e.g. Occupation Mail Merge
A mail merge is when you want to send a standard letter to several of, or all your clients in one go. You can produce a Mail Merge in PPS using PPS Reports. Most PPS reports have Mail Merge as one of the output options. As an example, you can use the Client List Report to produce a mail merge. This means that instead of printing your list of clients, the same list is used as the names/addresses list to merge with a standard letter to send to each client included on the report. This gives you great flexibility for producing mail merges, as it means that you can manipulate the selections and criteria for your report first to produce a very precise list of clients to be included in the mail merge. For example, you can select to write to clients you have recorded as having a certain pre-existing condition such as diabetes, or all Female clients within a certain age range and so on, giving you great opportunities to send fairly specific targeted mailings to chosen groups of your clients. You can also use the mail merge feature to send bulk e-mails to your clients using the same mail merge options. To produce a mail merge, select from the PPS Menu: Reports – PPS Reports & Mail Merge, then select a report to run that will give you the results you need for your mail merge, for example Client List report. Use the report wizard to make any specific selections for your report, for example “clients who you last saw more than six months ago” can be selected using “Last occurrence” on step 1, and a date range of “From” date=blank and “To” date = the date as of six months ago. When you have finished your selections, click <Finish>, then on the Report Output screen click <Mail Merge>. Then on the Mail Merge output screen you have the option to either select Letters & E-Mail where you can use the PPS Letter editor to send a standard PPS letter to your clients included in the report, or select to produce a File which you can use with another mail merge program such as Microsoft Word. Alternatively, you can use Labels to prepare a mailing label for each client in your list also. Move
See: Appointment - Move Open
Some screens in PPS have an “Open” button on the toolbar, this is very similar to the Modify button as it will “open” the selected record for “modification”. 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. Patient
See: Client 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. 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. Reminders
See: Activities; Appointment - Reminders Report WizardThe PPS Report Wizard guides you through your selections for all PPS reports. The report wizard screen can be accessed from any of the reports available on the PPS reports selection screen – from the PPS Menu: Reports – PPS Reports & Mail Merge. Select any report from any section and click <Open> - this shows the Report Wizard screen. The screen has five “tabs” along the top – these are the “five steps” of selections that you can make. Not all reports show all five steps, when one of the steps is not applicable it will be low-lighted – the screen will show step n of 4 instead n of 5. The five steps are: Select, Date range, Include, Breakdown, and Criteria – see: entries in this reference guide for each of these selections for more details, for example: Report Wizard – Date Range. When you have finished your selections in the report wizard, you can use the <Finish> button to proceed to the report output screen, or use the <Add to Favourites> button to add this report, including all your report wizard selections to your Favourites list. Reports
PPS includes many different reports that you can run that present information accumulated from various parts of the system. There are two main reports options: Summaries and Statistics, and PPS Reports and Mail Merge. In addition to these two main options, there is a variety of other print-outs that you can produce from PPS that are not included in the category of reports. These include: Printing the Diary, Client Details, Medical History and Clinical Notes. You can access the PPS reports options from the PPS Menu: Reports. For more details about the Statistics & Summaries type reports, see: Statistics & Summaries. When you select the PPS Reports & Mail Merge option, a reports selection screen appears – this screen is divided into the various categories of reports that you can run. Most reports (certainly client-based reports) can also be used for mail merge purposes. Select a report from any of the categories and use either the Run option (see: Reports – Run) or the Open option (see: reports – Open). When you select Open, you will be guided through the Report Wizard (see: Report Wizard) to allow you to make your specific selections for the report before choosing a report output option (see: Reports – Report Output). See also: various entries in this reference guide under Reports for further details. For details of individual reports, see: the entry under the report name, for example Charges Report or Aged Debtors Report. 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. Set Up
See: Medical History – Setting Up; PPS – Setting Up; Custom Form – Maintenance; Users – Setting Up; Letterhead – Set Up SMS Message
PPS has the option to send an SMS message (or schedule one to be sent) as part of the PPS Activities system. SMS Messages are sent either by directly posting the message to an internet web site, or by sending a specially formatted e-mail to a preconfigured e-mail account; the provider of this e-mail account simply converts your e-mail message into an SMS message and sends it to the required recipient’s mobile phone. This facility requires that you have an account with a third-party SMS messaging provider – this option is available on the Tools menu in PPS. There is a small charge per message sent (the charge is similar or less than sending an SMS from your phone). Status
See: Client Status Time
See: Activities – Time; Appointments – Time Tools Menu
Options on the Tools menu are listed alphabetically in this reference guide under each Section e.g. Look Up Tables. Weekend
See: Reminders
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