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Billing: Invoice Production

The 'Standard Invoice' (Invoice production - Print bills) is the main method of sending the client an invoice. The standard invoice has a wide range of options to alter the layout to suit your needs and a varying discount/surcharge structure.

There is no single layout that suits all practices so rather than show you a complete invoice run we shall show partial examples of the options available allowing you to experiment.

The billing run can be aborted in the middle of processing by pressing the ESC key.

Where we have used examples to illustrate a point, bear in mind that the reproduction of screens in this manual may not exactly match the details you will see on your terminal - fonts may be different and transaction lines that are not relevant to the purpose of the example may not appear.

As we have already mentioned, there are three different billing formats on the system: fee notes, itemised bills and detailed invoices. We've already covered fee note production; and the printing of itemised bills and invoices is handled in a separate process - the Standard invoice program. We will shortly look at all the options the Standard invoice program presents, but first we'll explain the various bill types and their functionality in more detail.

Bill Types

F Fee note: user defined letter.
D Detailed invoice, one invoice per animal.
C Composite invoice, one invoice per client, inc. a summary.
N Composite invoice, one invoice per client, NO summary.
I Composite itemised bill.
S Itemised bill one invoice per animal.
A Detailed bill one invoice per animal plus a summary.
L Look and See, either type F or D if no related animals or type C if large animal record present.

Detailed invoice (Bill types D, L and A)

This is the default invoice type and will print an invoice for each record on the system one page per animal/farm. The client's name and address is at the top of the page and alongside appears the animal/farm name. It contains basically as much detail as is contained in the clinical records, although it is also possible for work which has been allocated to a certain analysis code to be translated into some other substitute text, e.g. 'Drugs'. It is also possible to mark a clinical record comment line in such a way that it is not included in the invoice. Type 'A' bills will include a summary with all related animals.

Sample Type D Invoice
Sample Type A Invoice

Statement (Bill types D, L and A)

If a client with a detailed bill has no work done during the month but does have a balance from the previous month a statement will be produced. This gives the client's name and address with the total amount outstanding. Sample Type D Statement
Sample Type A Statement

Composite invoice (Bill type C, N)

This produces one invoice per client itemising all animals one after another. The format of the clinical information is the same as a detailed bill except the first line tells you which animal/farm it applies to. The totals at the foot apply to all animals. Bill type 'N' is identical to this except no summary will be produced. Sample Type C Invoice

Itemised bill (Bill types I and S)

This type of bill substitutes exact clinical terms with broader categories. Multiple lines of clinical records may be condensed under the title "Pathology", for example. Your client will not see the work you have done in detail, but the bill contains more information than a simple fee note. The system uses the same parameters as the itemised bill from the management record. Bill type 'I' will include all animals on the same invoice, whereas type 'S' bills will have a separate page per animal.

Note:

Sample Type I Invoice
Sample Type S Invoice

Summary (Bill types C and A)

If there are related animals a summary is included with certain bill types. This summary lists all animals billed on one sheet of paper.

Note:

Sample Type C Invoice
Sample Type A Invoice

Look and see (Bill type L)

The billing type of a chain of related records is usually based on the billing type of the first record in the chain. However if there are records of different types (small animal, farm, equine) related together, then the billing type would probably be set to a different default type for each of these when the record is added.

The type of bill would then be arbitrarily dependent on the type of the first record. This would not necessarily always be suitable. For instance if a farmer's small animals were added to the system first, defaulting perhaps to type 'F', and then the record for the farm itself was added, then the farm itself would get a fee note even though the billing type for the farm might be 'D'.

This situation is remedied by setting all records to bill type 'L'. Premvet 5 then scans the chain of related records and uses bill types according to the following circumstances:

Bill type considerations

Presented below are some of the functional properties of bill types which you will need to consider before deciding how Premvet 5's invoicing program can best suit your practice.

Detailed and Composite invoices

  1. The maximum number of transaction lines that can be printed for any one client on a bill cannot exceed 1000.
  2. If the bill type is unknown then a detailed bill will be produced as the default.
  3. A payment line is determined depending on whether the first four characters of a clinical line start with the word PAID (in upper or lower case). The payment analysis code is NOT used, so make sure you do not enter text such as 'paid in error' as this will be treated as a payment.
  4. If a clinical line is unpriced and blank then it will not be printed.
  5. The message '(at 17.5%)' appears on the line at the bottom of invoices which says 'VAT on work done this month'. This does not apply to systems which have been set up to deduct VAT on discount at the time of sale (as, of course, the VAT rate is no longer 17.5% in this case).
  6. On bill types 'A' and 'D', if the invoice total is negative e.g. a credit note, then the wording at the top of the invoice will be changed to 'Credit'.

Billing related animals

When billing related animals the following should be noted:

  1. Only when the master record is billed will all animals be included.
  2. If one specific related animal is billed (e.g. Start and end at the same client) the bill type will change to 'D' and all other related animals will be ignored.
  3. If, while processing a chain of related animals, bill types C, N or I are encountered, then the bill type for further animals will be ignored. If a detailed invoice is required then the record MUST be before the switch to composite.
  4. If discounts and surcharges are implemented then they will be added to the appropriate animal's record.

Points on itemised bills

  1. Itemised bills (types 'I' and 'S') break down work into categories. Your client may have only incurred charges for work in two categories. You can choose whether the bill displays all the categories of work your practice undertakes, or only those against which the client will be charged. You may choose to display all categories as a kind of advertisement for your practice's other services, and this option can be controlled by one of the customisation switches.
  2. The system uses the billing end date to control the range of work being printed.
  3. Itemised bills include the client number in brackets next to the animal name.

Dates

All bill types except Itemised bill will print the clinical work in date order. It doesn't matter whether the work was entered in date order or not. If the transaction date is prior to the bill start date then it will be included in the 'Brought forward' figure and if after the billing end date then it will be ignored.

Sometimes details of completed work may come in after the end of the month and the bills have already been sent out. The work can of course be entered for inclusion in the following month's billing run. However, it would have to be dated as if it were completed in that month, or the system will assume it has been billed already. This does not give the client receiving the invoice an accurate indication of when the work was actually completed.

Therefore Premvet 5 has been programmed to look for a valid date in the first eight characters of the transaction line text. You can use these characters to record when the work was actually carried out. Premvet 5 will then replace [the date you entered the work] with [the date the work was carried out] when printing an invoice.

Note: This function will not work if the 'join lines' option is switched on. Please also note that if the text of a line does start with a date, it will always be treated in the manner described above. In other words: don't put a date at the beginning of the text unless you want this to happen.

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