Control Debtor List

This option:

Note: This option has to read all the transaction records on file, so it may take some time to run.

Premvet 5 is based on the 'Balance forward' accounting method. This means the system determines what transactions are outstanding by first adding up all payments received from the client then paying off all transactions in the order they were entered until the payment total is reached. Transactions after that point are then classed as unpaid.

There are very few selection criteria when running this report, this avoids a lot of 'problems' of selection screens and incorrect responses.

You will be asked, End date, if you require the report on the printer.

The records are scanned BY CLIENT and a breakdown of how old the debt is by month is produced. A summary page will be generated with brought forward amounts, monthly totals and any bad debts will be totaled.

If the report is printed, the report will include the Client's telephone number along with the most recent 'Credit Control Note' that appears on any of the records.

The 'Credit Control Note' is a line on the clinical record that gives the reason (if any) for non-payment, this line should have a specific analysis code. You should set in params.txt the line

The 'Play Card' is the only record card ignored all others will be included.

In addition to the printout a CSV file (debtors.csv) will be generated that can be loaded automatically into a spreadsheet if configured.

Automating the Control Debtor List

Add into cron (for vet) an entry similar to:

      30 0 1 * * /usr/local/bin/vet -p debtors

This will run the report at 0:30 am on the 1st of every month and send the results to the print spooler.

The report will default to the end of the PREVIOUS month so run this report at the beginning of the next month e.g. the 1st or 2nd.

You can also run this report via at or batch (see Unix documentation for more details.) The printer used for the reports is as per the vatbook above.

Control debt v Outstanding accounts

The Control debt program ages the work done by reading all the transaction records to determine the amount outstanding and the age of the debt. The outstanding account listing just looks at the balance outstanding on the client's management record card and uses either the last seen or last consultation date for the debt age calculation. Additionally the outstanding account listing has more selection criteria available for reporting. Differences can occur between these reports because of the following:

1. A different search criterion was used between the two reports. As the selection criteria used by the outstanding accounts is the same as that used by the client lists, a setting used for a previous selection may have been overlooked and this would alter the client selection.

2. Financial amounts may differ between the clinical records (used by by the Aged debtor program) and the management record (used by the Outstanding account listing). This can happen if transactions are edited incorrectly or a system failure occurs. However the monthly validation run will detect and advise you of these problems.

3. Credits - The Control debtor program takes clients with credit balance into account while unless specified to the contrary the outstanding account listing will ignore these.