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Activities
Activities in PPS are a way of keeping a record of contacts, telephone calls, letters, etc. that you have with your Clients or Third-Party contacts. Activities can all have a specific PPS User, and Practitioner assigned to them, and can be scheduled for completion in the future or immediately. Activities appear in the Client Log for each client, as well as on the Activities List and the Task List. A System of colours is used to denote activities that are: Due – Green; Not yet due – Orange; Completed – Purple and Overdue (task list only) – Red. See Also: Activities – Activity Types

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.

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!

Data
Data is a general term that refers to all your records. In computer terms, data is any piece of information that you can change, so this includes your normal records (client records, billing, appointments, etc.) and other information such as letter layouts, invoice templates and so on. PPS allows you to “back up” your data, which means to make a second copy of all your data. See: Back Up; Database for more details.

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.

Grid
See: Client – Browse

Include
This is a term used in the PPS Reports Wizard – on step 3 of the selections for your report. On most reports you can select to “include” a selection of details on the printed report. You can un-tick any items that you do not want to include. The “Include” options only apply when the report is printed or previewed – if you are exporting the report to a file or mail merge, then the “include” options do not apply.

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.

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.

Reminders
See: Activities; Appointment - Reminders

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.

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).

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

Tools Menu
Options on the Tools menu are listed alphabetically in this reference guide under each Section e.g. Look Up Tables.