The Appointments Diary is the focal point of your PPS system. Not only does it provide an at-a-glance view of your daily bookings but it is a place from which you can raise charges, access clinical notes, contact clients, and review the availability of your Diary User's across all locations.
The following guide will give you an initial introduction to appointments and your PPS Appointments Diary.
Section 1 - Accessing the Diary & Availability
a. Access your Appointments Diary via the Appointments menu at the top of your screen, choosing the Appointments Diary option.
Tip: If you wish to quickly view a list of all the day's appointments then navigate to Appointments > Daily Appointments List
b. The PPS Appointments Diary works on the basis that you make bookings into sessions of Availability set up for each of your Diary Users. These sessions dictate when and where the Diary Users are available. In order to start making bookings for your practitioners, you'll need to add some Availability. The following guide will take you through this process: Availability
c. You can navigate your appointments diary in various ways. Jump to a particular date using the calendar in your task bar or via the date dropdown in the top corner of the diary. Use the arrows in the top corners of the diary to move forwards or backwards as required. You'll also find a red digit icon that will take you to today's date beside two red arrows that allow you to jump to a particular date a certain amount of time in the future.
Section 2 - Diary View
a. The way your Appointments Diary looks can be altered to suit your needs. To make changes, navigate to Tools > Options > Appointments Diary Options > Diary. From here you can control everything from the start and end times of your daily diary, its viewing style, and the order in which your Diary Users appear. You can also choose whether to view your diary based on Diary Users or Rooms.
Additional Information: Some of these settings can also be accessed from the diary. Right click anywhere on your PPS Appointments Diary screen and choose Select Diary View or Select Diary Column Order.
b. You can make further changes to the way that appointments look in your diary via Tools > Options > Appointments Diary Options > Appointments.
c. If you want to flag important dates in your diary, either for individual Diary Users or all then Calendar Dates are a great way to do this.
Find more information on the ways you can customise your Diary View here: Diary View
Section 3 - Booking Into Your Diary
a. Now you've created availability and are happy with the way your Appointments Diary looks you can start making bookings. These come in the following formats:
-Appointments: These are single client sessions. Through the use of Appointment Types, they can have varying durations, charges, and correspondence attached. If a client does not attend then you can mark the booking as Did Not Attend which, in itself, can trigger charges and reminder correspondence.
-Events: These are bookings that can include multiple clients, e.g Classes. These utilise Event Types in the same way that Appointments do.
-Blocked Slots: These are sessions that you can add into your Diary User's availability to signify that they are not available for client-facing bookings at this time. This may be used to mark a break or admin time as examples.
b. Through the Complete this Appointment process you can raise charges for both Events and Appointments. See our guides on both of these booking formats via the links above to view information on accessing the Complete this Appointment Process.
c. Bookings can also be used to schedule confirmations, reminders, and follow-ups which can send to the client with all of their relevant booking information.
d. If you use Clinical Notes then PPS appointments can be associated to a client's course of treatment via the Treatment Episode. Any clinical notes you raise on the same day as a client appointment will automatically be associated to it.
e. Should you make use of equipment in your appointments, you can assign required items to each of your appointments. This allows you to clearly mark any apparatus that may be required and ensure that it is not used in conflict over multiple appointments.
f. The Holding List allows you to keep a log of clients awaiting an appointment based on a preferred time, location, type, or Diary User. You can monitor this list and use it to fill vacant slots or those opened up by DNAs.
Section 4 - Printing and Appointment Reports
a. There are multiple ways to export and print your PPS appointment information. The Print function at the top of the diary provides multiple options and allows you to configure a printout for yourself or a particular client.
b. For a quick export of all daily appointments just go to Appointments > Daily Appointments List and use the filters as necessary.
Filter by location, department or practitioner. Alternatively, you can filter the view to include arrived, being seen, completed or DNA'd appointments and you can also filter to appointments where accounts have been raised, a treatment episode is associated or consultation notes linked.
c. More in-depth information on your appointments can be viewed and exported using the PPS Appointments Reports. These work in the same way as all reports on the system but we have a specific guide on this topic here: Appointments Reports.