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The layout designer section of PPS controls how your invoices, statement of accounts, letters, labels and estimates appear. This guide will show you how to make a quick change to the letterhead address and all the way through to totally customising your invoice layouts.
Note: Although this guide refers to the “ Invoice layout” designer screen, the layout designer in other areas sections of PPS work exactly the same so as an example, you would insert an image into the statement of account layout exactly as you would for the invoice layout.
Note: Before continuing, it’s worth noting that solely with invoice layouts, you will have 2 standard layouts that cannot be altered. In the first instance, you will need to click on one of the standard invoice layouts and then click “ Copy” button to give you he option to give the new invoice layout and name and then click on the “ Save copy as” button – once made you can then customise this newly created invoice layout.
- The invoice layout designer can be found in the PPS Menu > Tools > Layout Designer. You then must specify which layout you wish to edit, and then click on the Modify button.
- When opening up your invoice layout, you will notice in the header section of the invoice there are 5 lines of text each with a smaller font on each line, all entitled “letterhd”.
- These 5 lines pick up the address you may have already entered into your “Set Up Letterhead” screen.. This can be found from the PPS Menu > Tools > System Setup > Setup PPS Letterhead. This can be left as it is, or it can be highlighted and deleted to make room for your custom header which may contain customised images and/or text.
- The headers and footers sections can be seen on the top and bottom of the layout, these are the ideal places to modify, so you do not disturb the body of the layout and content of the standard invoice template too much until you’re fully aware of the text and image process explained below in sections 2 and 3.
- The headers and footers sections located at the top and bottom of the layout are ideal areas to modify. Other sections within the invoice layout can be more sensitive as they contain fields with values that may only work within that “section”.
- When a layout in the ‘Report Designer’ area is opened up you will notice the ‘Report Control’ box hovering over your layout. This gives you quick access to the most common features for editing. The ‘Label A’ button has highlighted in the image below is used to insert and edit text.
- An example of text being entered into the footer of a layout is show below.
- By clicking the ‘Label A’ button and then clicking where you would like to start typing will allow you to enter the text as shown by the example. The Return key (Enter) will allow you enter a new line of text. Once you have your text inserted, you can then format the font to your own liking by going to your PPS Menu > Format > Font.
- If you then want to then surround your text with a black border, you can do this by simply selecting the Rectangle or Rounded Rectangle buttons and then clicking and holding on the layout, dragging to the desired size, then releasing the mouse button. An example of this is shown below.
- If you have a company logo in image format (typically .JPEG, .BMP, .GIF, .TIFF, .PNG formats) and wish to include this to appear on your invoices and other correspondence then you can navigate to the 'Report Control' box within your custom layout as show below.
- From here select the “OLE” image button and then on your layout, click the area that you roughly wish the image to appear.
- Then Report Picture box will now open up. From here you will need to click on the ... button next to the File box selected, and locate your image file from your computer.
- Once selected you will then need to select how the image will be laid out from the 3 options it provides. “Scale picture, retain shape” is the most commonly used setting and often produces the best result. Once this has been selected, click the OK button on the top right of the "Report Picture" screen.
- The image of your choice should now appear in the location you have selected. You can then resize the image by clicking on it and then dragging the borders to the appropriate size which should ensure the correct image shape. You can also click and drag the picture to the exact location you want it to appear if needed.
- A useful option is also to send the image to the back of the document, so if there is any text in the way, you can choose to show that on top of the image. If you click on your image to select it, and then go from the PPS Menu > Format > Send to Back. (Or simply click on the image and press Ctrl-J).
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. Address
See: Client - Address Change
See: Cash Desk; Modify 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. Copy
When entering text into any field, you can highlight the text and use the standard Windows™ “Copy” option to place the text on the Windows clipboard. You can then paste the text back into any similar field. See also: Appointment – Copy. Images
See: Charts; Document Library. 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. 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. Labels
Labels in PPS are Address labels that you can print and use on envelopes if you do not use window envelopes. Labels are an activity type. When you prepare a label, it can either be printed now or later. PPS Prints to either a dedicated label printer such as the DYMO LabelWriter™ or standard A4 label sheet layout which is 2 across by 8 down. The Avery™ label code for this style of label sheet is L7162. PPS has a label print spool that can be used to print a whole A4 sheet of labels at once, by accumulating individual labels gradually until a whole page is full. Alternatively you can also print a single label on an A4 sheet in any position, so you can run a single A4 sheet through your printer several times printing one or two labels in selected positions each time. To prepare a single label to print now or later, select from the PPS Menu: Activities – Prepare a Label. You can also print many labels at once by selecting “Labels” as the output from a PPS Report. To do this, select from the PPS Menu: Reports – PPS Reports & Mail Merge, then select a suitable report that will produce a list of client names and addresses to prepare labels for such as Client Lists. Run the report through the Report Wizard, and in the report output options select Main Merge. Then on the Mail Merge output screen select Labels. You can also print appointment details on a label when booking a new appointment. 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 Location
A Location in PPS is a physical clinic location. Older versions of PPS referred to treatment rooms as locations. Now Treatment Rooms are an additional field of information. You can set up locations to use in your PPS Appointments Diary. You can set up your diary for diary users/practitioners to be scheduled to work either in specific treatment rooms and/or locations on various days during the week. You do not have to use “Location” if you only work from one location. To set up locations, select from the PPS Menu: Tools – Look Up Tables, and select Location from the Appointments Diary Tables section. Here you can set up your various locations, and nominate a colour to each location to make each location clearly identifiable in the 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”. 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. PPS
PPS is the acronym for “Private Practice Software”. Rectangle
See: Charts - Annotations Room
See: Treatment Room 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 Statement of Account
See: Accounts – Statement of Account
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