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PPS can be used in an EPOS (Electronic Point-Of-Sale) environment. While PPS is not a dedicated cash register and stock control system, it does include simple stock levels management and can be used to serve your clients in a “shop-style” at your front desk.
As well as stock levels PPS now has the ability to manage ‘Stock Batches’. This is useful for keeping track of stock items that are known as perishable goods with expiry dates, such as medicines and vaccines for example.
Before using Stock Batches you will need to first add your stock item(s) to PPS using our Standard Charges and Stock Items guide. Once your items have been added you can now add new stock in batches for easier management of stock levels and expiry dates.
Select Tools > Look-up Tables > Accounts Tables > Stock Batches
The main Stock Batches screen will let you view all the current batches in PPS. You are able to add, modify and delete batches of stock from this screen.
At the bottom of the Stock Batch List screen there are 3 options available:
· New – Add new stock batches to PPS
· Modify – Modify existing stock batches
· Delete – Deleting existing stock batches
By clicking on the new button the “Add New Stock batch Record” box is displayed. From this box you can add all the details for the stock batch record.
Item Code
This is the unique code you setup for this particular stock item when you added it to the system. If you are unsure about the full code just type the first few letters/numbers and press Enter on the keyboard. This will bring up the search window where you can select the correct item.
Description
A brief description of the stock item should be included here. If the item already has one setup in the standard charges and stock items this will get filled in automatically when you select and existing item.
Supplier
Used to indicate where this batch of stock was brought from. You can add new suppliers by clicking the drop down arrow to bring down the current list and clicking new.
Date Added
This will automatically put in today’s address, but should you need to change this you can do by clicking the drop down arrow.
Batch No
This box is where you would registered the batch number for this stock item
Quantity
This is where you indicate how many of this item will be added to stock from the current batch. On the right hand side it will display the current stock levels for this item.
Expiry Date
If your stock item has an expiry date you can input it here so you can keep a close eye on what expires. You can run stock reports to show what stock you have and the expiry dates.
Notes
Used to record any additional information for this batch of stock.
You can keep track of your current stock levels and expiry dates by running the built in reports within PPS.
Go to Reports > Reports and Mail Merge > Accounts
From here there are three reports available to get information about your current stock. These are:
· Stock Levels Report - Used to display the current quantities of stock
· Stock Batch Details Report – Used to display information of new stock batches added to PPS
· Stock Movement Report – Used to display stock movement (sales and new batches)
This concludes the PPS Help Guide 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 Address
See: Client - Address Change
See: Cash Desk; Modify Code
See: Charge – Code; Diagnosis Code; Outcome Code 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. 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. Known As
When recording your client details, you can select for each client the name that the client is known by to you. This can be useful if the name that you use to refer to the client is different from how you would address the client in letter (you can also specify the “salutation” to use when writing to the client). If you have entered the Known As details, then when the client’s details are displayed on most other screens in PPS such as the Clinical Notes and Accounts screens then the “known As” is displayed in parenthesis next to the proper client name thus: Jean Ainsworth (Jeanie). 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. 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. Notes
See: Client - Default Notes Entry 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”. 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. 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. Search
You can search for various records in PPS: Clients, Appointments, Third-Party contacts etc. Some screens include a <Search> button on the toolbar. The main PPS Client Search screen includes options to search on a variety of fields: for example Surname. This screen can be accessed from the Search Button on any of the client screens (main details, log, browse) or by clicking “Search” on the PPS Task Bar. The Search screen allows you to enter all or part of a value into a selected field, then when you press Enter a list of results that match what you have typed in is displayed. The most common information to search on is Surname. In the Surname field on the search screen, it is possible to enter all or part of the surname followed by a space, then all or part of the client’s First Name. This way you can narrow down your search results – useful with popular surnames. For example, you can search for Joe Smith simply by entering SMI J in the Surname field and pressing enter. All clients whose surname starts with SMI and whose First Name starts with J will be listed.
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You can search for existing Client Appointments or Free Appointment Slots using the <Search> button on the Appointments Diary – see: Appointments Diary – Search for more details. 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. Stock Control
PPS Includes a simple form of stock control. You can select that any of your list of standard charges is a stock item, and enter a stock amount, minimum quantity, re-order quantity and supplier. Each time a charge is created for a stock item, the stock is reduced by the quantity created with the charge. PPS does not automatically alert you when stock levels are low - you can however run a stock levels report to give an indication of current stock levels. The report can be produced just for those stock items that are now at or below minimum level. To set up stock items, see: Standard Charges and Stock Items. To run the Stock Levels Report, see: Stock Levels Report. Stock Levels Report
This report allows you to produce a list of your stock items. You can select to run the report only for those stock items that are “below or at” the minimum stock level, or those items which are above minimum level. You can also select to break down the results of the report by a selection of fields such as supplier. To run the stock levels report, select from the PPS Menu: Reports – PPS Reports and Mail Merge, and select “Stock Levels Report” from the “Accounts” reports selection. Suppliers
PPS Expense is an additional PPS Module that allows you to record details of practice expenditure. As part of these records, you can also set up your list of suppliers. Suppliers are also optionally used when setting up your standard Stock Items. To set up your list of suppliers, you can either enter a new supplier as you are entering a new expense record for a supplier you have not used before, or you can set up suppliers by selecting from the PPS Menu: Tools – Look up Tables, and selecting “Supplier” from the Accounts Tables section.
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