A mail merge is a way of contacting multiple clients with a preset template via Email, SMS or Letter.
Before you start the process of a mail merge the first step is to configure your Client preferences.
From your main PPS screen go to Tools > options > general system options > set up client preferences.
On this screen you need to pay particular attention to the marketing & mail shots section, from here you need to select the format you would like to send your mail merge.
- You can set PPS to send the mail merge as an Email, Letter, SMS or Telephone contact. In the below example we have set the preferences to send firstly by Email, Telephone, SMS & Letter.
- Once you are happy with your default settings to update the changes you need to click Apply, Update Now! and then OK.
You have now configured PPS to decide the best way to contact your clients each time you create a mail merge.
We now need to set up your mail merge template, this will contain all the information you wish to send to your clients.
- Go to Tools > Activity templates (letters, emails etc).
- On the list of activity templates click Add.
- Add the name of your template and make sure the category is set to Marketing/mail shot by using the blue drop down box. Add your subject title.
- The above example is based on a letter template setup.
The next step is to decide if you are creating your template in PPS format or in Microsoft Word. If you are using Microsoft Word then skip to step e.
To set up your template via PPS you do the following: In the (letters Using PPS) section you can add your template details. A useful tool at this stage is the Merge field option. If the click on the Merge field button you are able to insert individual merge fields. When you have chosen your merge field you then click in the letter text box and your merge field appears. Once you are happy with your letter content finish by clicking OK.
- Creating a template in Microsoft Word. You now need to open Microsoft Word and start to set up the format of your template. You can add the merge fields from PPS into your word document; this is done by clicking on the merge field button and selecting your merge field. You then revert to your Word document and press ‘ctrl v’ on your keyboard; this will insert the merge field. Once you are happy with you Word template save it. You then go back into PPS and click on Select Existing Document. You then need to locate your newly created word document and click OK. Your word template will appear in the word document field. Finish by clicking OK.
All the report wizards work in a similar way so the steps described below are based on the following example: Produce a list of patients, whose client status are active, are associated with the practitioner Alan Davies, who have not had an appointment in the last six months.
- From your main PPS screen go to Reports > PPS reports & Mail merge.
- Highlight the Client List report and click Open. You can 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.
- Select the Practitioner Alan Davies. Select Last Ever Occurrence Only radio button. (As we are just interested in the last time a client had their appointment). Click the date range tab to go to the next section.
- Select None – Enter Dates. If there is a date in the Date from field, highlight the date and press Delete. Enter a date equivalent to six months ago into the Date To field. (This will restrict the number of clients to only the ones that last attended up to six months ago). Click on the Criteria tab where you can optionally type a heading for the report.
- To limit the patients to just the active ones, using the blue drop down box select Client Status. Then if not already displayed, using the blue drop down box, select 'Active'. Click Finish to run the report and open the Report Output screen. PPS will prompt you if no matches are found, i.e. the report is empty.
- On the report output screen click Mail Merge. This shows the mail merge output screen.
- On the mail merge output screen click Marketing & Mail Shots.
- You will then be informed how many clients have been found. Click OK.
- On the Marketing & Mail shots screen select your mail shot or choose to create a new one.
Click Continue.
- If this is the first mail merge you have done for this particular selection then you need to select Add/combine with clients already included in the mail shot.
If you have already got to this stage previously and you do not wish to double up your client selection then you need to select Replace clients already included with new selection. Finish by clicking Ok.
- 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 Letters, E-mails, and SMS.
- For this example we will send our mail shot via letter. Click Letters. You will then be prompted that you are about to produce ‘x’ number of letters. If you are happy with this amount then you click OK.
- You are now prompted to select your printer. Once selected click Print.
Add
Look this up under the type of new record you want to add – e.g. Client - Add or Appointment - Add 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. 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 Criteria
See: Report Wizard - Criteria 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. 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 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. 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. 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. Merge Field
A Merge Field is used when preparing Standard PPS Letters, or sending a one-off letter to a client or third-party. There are a variety of Merge Fields to choose from including Name, Address, Date, Practitioner, etc. When a merge field is included in a standard letter (or you insert a merge field into a one-off letter) then the merge field entry is replaced with the “real” value for the selected client. Merge Fields are shown with the field name enclosed in double chevrons thus: <<SURNAME>>. When the letter is printed, this value is replaced with the actual client’s surname. You can insert Merge Fields when you are setting up standard PPS letters – see: Standard Letters for more details. Microsoft Word
Microsoft® Word is a Word Processing application. It is supplied as part of Microsoft® Office. PPS can use Word to produce individual letters to clients or third-parties. This can be done by setting up a PPS Standard Letter which is a “Word Document”. This standard letter can then be used when sending a letter to a client or third-party. See also: Standard Letters; Letters. 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”. 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. Report Output
See: Reports – Report Output 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. Revert
Some screens in PPS use a <Revert> button on the tool bar. This means that if you have made any changes to the details on this screen you can use the <Revert> button to cancel those changes and reset the screen back to the previously saved version of that record. 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 Status
See: Client Status Time
See: Activities – Time; Appointments – Time Word
See: Microsoft® Word
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