Standard Charges and Stock Items

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.

Add
Look this up under the type of new record you want to add – e.g. Client - Add or Appointment - Add

Cash Desk
PPS 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.

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!

Code
See: Charge – Code; Diagnosis Code; Outcome Code

Commission
You can set up various commission rates for your practitioners, if they earn different levels of commission for different types of treatments or stock items. You List of Standard Charges and Stock Items in PPS can be grouped into different “types” – this entry is available on the Standard Charges and Stock Items Look up Table. You can set up different commission rates for each Practitioner / Type combination. The Practitioner Commission Rates is a Look up Table where you can set up your various rates. The Practitioner Commission Report then uses these commission rates against all charges that have been created to show the commission due in any given period. See: Practitioner Commission Report for more details.

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

Delete
Delete is the term used to remove any record or file in PPS. Most “data entry” type screens will include a Delete button on the toolbar. You can use this button to delete the currently displayed record. There are various restrictions placed on deleting records in certain parts of the system. For example you cannot delete a client record if accounts records exist for that client. The System Administrator can also decide which PPS Users are allowed to delete which type of records. This is set up as part of the User Profile for each user – see: Access Control 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.

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.

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.

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”.

Order
This term applies to the Order in which information is listed on the screen. Information in PPS is often listed in a “Grid” with rows and columns; you can often click on the column headings to change the order in which the information is displayed. There is also a Client Browse screen that includes an “order” selection to allow the client details to be displayed in a variety of orders such as Surname, etc.

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.

Print
You 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.

Receipt
See: Invoice; Accounts - Printing

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

Time
See: Activities – Time; Appointments – Time