You might be wanting to move to Express for the freedom and convenience of being able to access your PPS diary, add notes and book clients in on your different devices with ease but there are differences between the full PPS system that you are used to and the Express system.
Log in details and access rights
You will be provided with new Express login details for you and any other users that will access the Express system. These are concurrent users meaning that only one person will be able to use one login at a time.
If you are moving from a full PPS system to Express you might already have these users set up in the Setup Practitioners and System Users tool. You will need to ensure that the access controls for these users are set up correctly before moving to Express as you will not have access to the access controls in Express.
Treatment Rooms/Locations/Departments and Slots
The Express system simplifies the diary set up so you do not have the option to assign a location/department/room or slot description to the different diary sessions. You will not see these options when setting up the diaries or adding an appointment now. If you do have any of these set up currently, they will be removed when we set up your Express system.
Activities
The Express system will be able to process the confirmations and reminders automatically for you.
You will have access to basic templates that you can set up for email or SMS confirmations and there is more information about the templates in this guide.
You will not have the access to set up or use any other activity templates that you had in the full PPS system any longer.
You are still able to send messages through the Express system to other Express users in your database. You can read more about this feature in this guide.
Client Contact Preferences
Any clients that were added into your system before moving to Express will have the same contact preferences in Express but you will not be able to see them like you would have in the full system. Before moving to Express you should ensure that your preferences are set the way that you want any new clients added to the system to be set up.
You also have the ability to restrict clients and exclude clients from processing in Express and you can read more about these features in this guide.
Appointment Types and Charges
In an Express only system you will only have access to 2 appointment types with their corresponding charges.
You will only be able to modify these 2 appointment types and change their charge amount in Express. If you did have other charges and appointment types in the full system they would still be available to select when adding an appointment or adding a charge but you wouldn't be able to add any more or edit the existing ones. If you have charges or appointment types that you no longer use we would advise that you untick these as active before moving to your Express only system.
Mandatory Fields
You will not have access to the same settings that you had previously in the General System Options. This means that if you had a mandatory field selected in your full PPS system you will not have access to turn that mandatory field off in Express. Similarly; you wouldn't be able to make a field mandatory in the Express system.
With this in mind we do advise that you set these fields up as you want them before moving to Express Only.
You can have a look at the Mandatory options by going to Tools > Options > General System Options > Custom Client Fields. You will see the mandatory tick boxes that, if ticked, will prompt you to fill in the filed when adding a new client. Only the 2 standard fields will be visible in the Express system now.
Another Mandatory Field can be found by going to Tools > Options > General System Options > Client Contact Preferences. Here you will see mandatory fields for entering a new client record. The surname is always mandatory but you can make other fields, like post code, town, country and DOB mandatory too.
Tip: Set these fields up the way that you want it in your full PPS system before moving to Express only.
Billing
The billing process is simplified in Express. You are able to bill the client by completing the appointment which will link the charge to the appointment type selected. You can also add an additional charge here.
You can read more about the client billing process in Express in this guide.
The Express system does not offer the option to set up and bill to third parties. This is only a feature in the full PPS system.