Introduction to Automatic pricing:

You will already have some idea of the power of automatic pricing, as we discussed how adding clinical work via AP can save you time in Chapter 6. As a brief refresher, Automatic Pricing is a method of entering work quickly and easily, letting the system price it for you automatically. You enter a code for the procedure or stock item you wish to add. The description is added to the client's consultation record and the price is worked out. For example, in Chapter 6, we wanted to add a record of 12 amputation digits to Mr Henderson's clinical record screen. At the item prompt, ('A'uto) we entered the following AP code:

12 ad

(3)	Henderson: Senior			Fees	Drugs	Bal	Ana	U
28.01.98	12 Amputation digits(s)			261.60		261.60	249	1T

This chapter will show you how to define your own Automatic Pricing codes. The differences between AP procedure codes and stock codes are as follows:

• The full facilities of the stock control module are only available to stock codes, while automatically priced procedures can, if desired, combine one or more stock items and destock them.
• The prices of procedures are unrelated to the prices of any stock items contained in the procedure.
• Automatically priced procedures have certain additional features not available to stock codes, such as price bands based on the number of animals treated at one time, and setting recall and sex codes.