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PPS provides the ability to create and associate ‘locations’ to diary users (alongside client’s records, charges and payments). Furthermore there is the ability to create and associate ‘treatments rooms’ with a diary user or simply allow the creation of treatment room availability for appointments to be inserted with individual diary users “on the fly”.
To create your Treatment Rooms and/or Locations you will need to navigate to the PPS Menu > Tools > select “Look Up Tables” from the menu and in the Look Up tables area, highlight one of the options as shown below before finally clicking on the Open button
Note: Treatment Rooms and Locations are designed for use with multi-site or multi- room clinics; however if you are running more than one company then you will need to purchase an additional licence as the PPS system is designed to reflect one set of accounts for a single business with multiple locations and rooms.
If you have more than one treatment room in your clinic you can create a list of rooms that can subsequently be allocated to practitioners when setting up the appointment diaries. Alternatively you can setup treatment rooms in a “stand-alone” fashion without the need to associate a diary user’s availability to the treatment room first.
You can also specify a colour and short code for each location to make the appointments diary even clearer to view if you need to save space due to the quantity of treatment rooms on display.
The arrows displayed to the right of the list of Treatment Rooms allow you to define the order of rooms when viewing/printing the appointments diary and from the numerous Treatment Room dropdown menus throughout PPS.
Note: Treatment rooms are entirely optional and as such do not need to be specified if you are running your diary by practitioner.
Appointment Diary Locations work in a very similar way to Treatment Rooms but allow you to define separate clinics locations instead of individual rooms in a set location.
When you add locations into PPS you are also given the option of setting the location address. This can be used alongside the “THISAPPTLOCATION” merge field which will output the locations address of the clients appointment into a letter, e-mail, SMS text message, etc. instead of the main clinic address.
This is essential merge field if you are using a single PPS database to run several clinics and send out appointment booking confirmations or appointment reminders.
Once Treatment Rooms and Locations have been added to the system you can then filter your diary using these.
The arrows displayed to the right of the list of Locations allow you to define the order of Locations shown when viewing/printing the appointments diary and from the numerous Location dropdown menus throughout PPS. You can also assign clients to a default location from within the ‘Client Details’ screen. Furthermore you can assign the location of a Practitioner from the ‘Setup Appointment Diaries’ screen in the PPS Tools Menu.
Note: Locations are only available for client records if you have defined a “Location” from your PPS system. To select a default location for your PPS system you can navigate to Tools > Options > General System Options. 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 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. 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 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. Create
See: Add; Charge – Create 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. 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. Diary
See: Appointments Diary 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. 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. Look Up Tables
Look up Tables are used in PPS to control the entries that are allowed in certain fields. This means that you can restrict what values are input to just those that you want recorded. For example, when adding a new appointment, the “Appointment Type” look up table can contain entries such as “Initial Assessment”, “New Patient” or “Hydrotherapy”. This helps when running reports as you can select to break down the results of your report by the look up table entry thus minimising the number of different entries (especially slight variations of spellings!).
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Some Look Up tables will store additional default values. For example the “Appointment Type” table can optionally have a Charge Codes associated with each entry. When the selected entry is used for an appointment, the charge code will be automatically selected for you when you create the charge for the appointment.
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Look Up Tables are set up and maintained using the PPS Menu: Tools – Look Up Tables.
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You can control which of your PPS users has access to setting up and maintaining Look Up Tables as part of the PPS Access Control system.
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Also see the entry under the name of each Look Up Table e.g. Occupation 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. 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. 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. 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. Printing
See: Print 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. Reminders
See: Activities; Appointment - Reminders 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. Tools Menu
Options on the Tools menu are listed alphabetically in this reference guide under each Section e.g. Look Up Tables.
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