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PPS can be easily used in an EPOS (Electronic Point-Of-Sale) environment. While PPS is not a full-blown cash register and stock control system, it does include simple stock levels management, and can be used to serve your clients in “shop-style” at your front desk. The key to this in PPS is to use the PPS screen called Cash Desk. In addition, you can incorporate all the hardware you need for your EPOS system such as touch screen, bar code scanner, receipt printer and till drawer.
This help guide looks at the various aspects of setting up PPS and choosing and purchasing the right hardware to work with PPS to enable you to use PPS in a “point-of-sale” environment.
You will need to set up your standard charges and stock items so that they can be used with cash desk.This may involve assigning bar codes and stock levels in PPS for the items you sell.
From the PPS Menu, use Tools – Look-up Tables, and from the Look-up tables screen select: Standard Charges and Stock Items. This shows your current list of charges and stock items.
This list needs to include everything you are likely to sell, and should also have all bar codes from products ready scanned so that they can be used with Cash Desk.
To add a new item, click the Add button, or select an existing item and click Modify .
When adding or modifying a standard charge, you can assign an existing bar code to an item by using the“Code” field. Assigning the bar code is easy: from the standard charge screen:
Click into the code field, fire your bar code scanner at the bar code on the product, and this will enter the bar code number into the code field.
Cash Desk can access your standard charges and stock items in three ways: 1) by typing (or looking up)in the code that you have assigned to the item, 2) by scanning the bar code on the product you are selling, 3) by using the “Quick Buttons” on the Cash Desk screen. The quick buttons are ideal for items that you regularly charge for but do not have a bar code, e.g. your treatment fees.
The benefit of using the cash desk quick buttons is that they can also be used with a touch screen monitor (you will often see EPOS systems using a touch screen monitor in bars, restaurants, shops etc.)
To assign a cash desk quick button, from the PPS menu go to Tools – Look-up Tables, and from the Look-up tables screen select: Standard Charges and Stock Items. This shows your current list of charges and stock items.
Find the item in your list that you would like to assign the cash desk quick button to, and click Modify .This shows the detail screen for the standard charge item.
You can then assign a cash desk quick button to the item. There is no limit to the number of buttons you assign, and you have to assign them numerically as required, from 1 upwards. On the cash desk screen the buttons appear in order, showing 6 at a time. You simply use the More button to access items 7-12and so on.
Note: You can set up your payment methods in exactly the same way, so that when you press the Payment button on cash desk, your favourite payment methods appear on the quick buttons. Go to Tools – Look-up Tables, select the Payment Methods table and assign your cash desk quick buttons as required.
In PPS Terms, you can use a bar code scanner in conjunction with PPS Cash Desk if you are selling stock items over the counter – much like any EPOS shop system. You could also use the scanner to quickly access other standard treatment fees by having your own bar code labels printed to an A4 sheet for example.
When you purchase a bar code scanner it will come with (or you will have the option of purchasing) extra software used to produce bar code labels that you can use on your own products. Most products,however, come with bar code labels already. Where this is the case you simply use the existing bar code as your “Code” in the PPS Standard Charges & Stock Items table. To apply the code, simply modify your standard stock item in PPS, go to the Code field and then scan the bar code label using the scanner to read the code. Then when you use PPS Cash Desk instead of entering a code you simply scan the item and this reads the code.
This means that for standard stock items that already have a bar code on the pack, you don’t need any extra software. If you want to print your own bar code labels for other charges – let’s say you wanted anA4 sheet printed with bar codes for all your treatment charges - then you will need to purchase bar code creating software to do this.
Take a look at www.waspbarcode.co.uk – we have purchased the WCS3900 model which is pretty cheap but has a fairly small scanning distance (about 3cm max). This did not come with any software, so I have simply used it with my “standard charges and stock items” list to scan and store bar codes already printed on existing products.This works well with cash desk. Wasp also sells bar code creating software.
There is a helpful tutorial via wasp TV that explains what ranges of scanners are available via the following link:
http://www.waspbarcode.co.uk/wasptv/choose_a_wasp_scanner.asp
There is a variety of receipt printers and till drawers that will work well with PPS. The key to selecting the correct one is based upon two things: 1) the receipt printer should have a “Windows”-style printer driver,and 2) the till drawer should connect directly to the printer and NOT to the PC.
 
We have tested PPS with the Epson TM-88iv receipt printer and a standard “budget” till drawer that uses an RJ-11 connector to connect directly to the receipt printer.
Both of the above are available online from www.tills4change.co.uk as well as a number of other of suppliers.
In PPS version 4.0.53 onwards, there is an option available to specify a dedicated receipt printer and specific “invoice/receipt” layout to work with cash desk. To set this up from the PPS menu go to: Tools –Options – General System Options, and select the Accounts tab. 
Select the Receipt Printer and Invoice/Receipt Layout and click OK . The invoice/receipt layout is a standard one that we have supplied called “Receiptprinter”. This may need to be modified to suit your exact requirements, and also to operate you’re till drawer correctly. This can be done from the PPS menu:Tools- Layout Designers – Invoice layouts. We do have other standard receipt layouts available for various paper sizes and till drawer combinations, so please contact our support desk if you need further assistance with this.
Once the printer and layout are selected, then Cash Desk will automatically print a receipt when you complete the Cash Desk screen.
There are a variety of standard PC monitors available that operate as a touch screen.There are also more specialist (and more expensive) monitors available designed for EPOS use. These operate exactly like a normal PC monitor, but have the advantage of also being “touch-sensitive”, so you can use your finger to point, or touch the screen exactly like using a mouse. Check out this link for an example of a monitor design for use specifically in an EPOS environment: http://www.tills4change.co.uk/ded_15lcd.htm
For other examples, a Google search on “touch screen monitor” will yield plenty of results.
You do not have to do anything specific to set up PPS to operate a touch screen, as the screen simply connects to your PC with normal screen and USB style connections. You then just use your finger on the screen as a mouse pointer!
Note: PPS also has plenty of other benefits by using a touch screen, especially in recording your clinical notes and competing custom forms. PPS has quick buttons that can be set up for use with a touch screen to quickly and automatically enter text and phrases into your clinical notes in a structured way to match your patient examination and treatment! Some of our competitors sell these features as an add-on – with PPS it comes as standard!
Now that we have everything set up, we are ready to use Cash Desk as our EPOS system!
If you use the PPS Appointments Diary, you can simply highlight your client appointment, and use the F11key to bring up Cash Desk. This will have the correct client and practitioner selected.
Note: If you regularly sell items to individuals not on your database as “cash sales”, then we recommend that you setup a new client in PPS called “Cash Sales” ( first name = Cash, surname = Sales is ideal!). You can then simply search for your client via a surname of Sales when someone walks in simply to purchase something.
You are then ready to either scan your items with your bar code scanner, select your charges using the cash desk Quick Buttons, or enter/search for your items using the normal “look-up” entry. 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 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. Appointments Diary
The PPS Appointments Diary allows you to record your client appointments, and manage your available appointment times. There are a variety of diary view styles to suit your needs including single day, whole week, single or multiple users etc. You can access the PPS Appointments Diary from the PPS Menu: Appointments – Appointments Diary, or by pressing Ctrl-A on the Keyboard. You can also click on Appointments, or Diary on the Task Bar. The diary has a toolbar to give you access to common functions such as adding appointments, and when the diary is displayed, clicking on an item in the task bar, or selecting from the PPS menu will normally be related to the currently highlighted appointment. For example, if an appointment for Mrs Smith is highlighted, then clicking on the Accounts option on the task bar will show the accounts screen for Mrs Smith.
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A Practitioner on the PPS Appointments Diary is referred to as a “Diary User”. This is to allow the diary to be used by more people than just Practitioners in your practice. You can select to set up and use your diary either by Diary Users, or by Treatment Rooms – this can suit they way that you are used to booking your clients into the diary.
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See below for further detailed information relating to the various Appointments Diary functions in PPS. Cash DeskPPS 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.
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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.
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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! Clinical Notes
The Clinical Notes facility in PPS is available in the “Professional” version of PPS. This includes screens to record your Clinical Notes, manage Treatment Episodes, complete specific forms (Custom Forms) including body charts and your own questionnaires, etc. All Clinical Notes are structured into the framework of Treatment Episodes. Although some of you may be used to slightly different terminology, PPS uses “Treatment Episode” to define a specific course of treatment for a specific condition, and “Consultation” as the individual treatment sessions/consultations. Therefore each time you see a client – whether or not it is an initial consultation/assessment or a follow up treatment – this is known as a “Consultation”. You can have more than one current Treatment Episode per client if required. When you select to record clinical notes, PPS checks to see if there are any current (not completed) Treatment Episodes for the client. If there is more than one, you can choose which one to record your consultation notes for. Otherwise a new Treatment Episode will be started, and this consultation will be consultation number one for the new Treatment Episode. When you complete the consultation, you can enter set up the full details of the Treatment Episode including the name, number of consultations required, diagnosis details etc. See: Treatment Episode for more details. For more detailed information about recording clinical notes and consultations, see: various entries under Consultation and Custom Forms. Code
See: Charge – Code; Diagnosis Code; Outcome Code Complete
The term “Complete” is used in PPS for both Appointments and Consultations. You can select to Complete an Appointment – where is it marked in Purple, and you can then raise the charge, book another appointment, etc., and you can Complete a Consultation – where you can decide if the Treatment Episode is completed, or how many more consultations are required, you can raise the charge, produce a Discharge Letter etc. The term “Complete” is also used for Treatment Episodes that have an “End Date” entered – see: Completed Episodes. Custom Forms
See: Custom Form Database
The PPS Database can be stored in a separate location on your computer/network from the main PPS application files. This would apply to a PPS installation on a network where the PPS Application files are installed onto each computer, and the database is located centrally on the network. There is the option to change the database location as part of the initial installation of PPS, and there is also a separate “database only” installation available if the database is to be installed onto a computer such as a server where PPS will not be used on that computer – servers often reside in a “back office” and are not used as a desktop computer. Diary
See: Appointments Diary Find
See: Search First Name
See: Client – First Name 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. 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. 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. 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. Patient
See: Client Payment
A Payment in PPS is recorded when money is received from clients or third-parties. A payment must be allocated to an invoice – either immediately or in the future. If a payment is received in advance (a pre-payment) for consultations or treatment that has not yet been carried out, then the payment can be allocated to the invoice in the future when the invoice is raised. Payments are either recorded using a specific PPS screen to “record a payment”, or are automatically recorded when an invoice or charge is raised and “marked as paid”. If payments are received from third-parties, then these are recorded on the third-parties own accounts screen where the invoices to the third party will appear. If payments are received from clients, the these are recorded on the client’s own accounts screen. 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. Receipt
See: Invoice; Accounts - Printing 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. Set Up
See: Medical History – Setting Up; PPS – Setting Up; Custom Form – Maintenance; Users – Setting Up; Letterhead – Set Up 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. 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. Surname
See: Client - Surname Time
See: Activities – Time; Appointments – Time
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