Service Items can reduce stock
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Re: Service Items can reduce stock
Ben - in our system (where there is a specific Product Type called 'No Charge' and our invoice and credit note document templates do not print any item with this type) I can do the following:
Now when this template is called up as an invoice line item the template auto-expands, the service shows as well as the No Charge associated items, and if desired the user can change the quantity of any of them. However, when the invoice is printed these are hidden from the customer.
However, the associated items act as normal items for ordering and stock control and usage reports.
Regards, Tim G
Re: Service Items can reduce stock
Hi Tim,
This is a great way to tackle this problem. I am curious though as to the practicalities... Let's say we are charging out a feeding tube placement. I will use a feeding tube (quite a few different sorts of these) and a packet of suture material (few different sorts of these), etc.
How do you ensure people charge and thus destock the correct feeding tube and suture material?
Thanks,
Adrian
Re: Service Items can reduce stock
Adrian - a cat'o nine tails or a cattle prod does wonders - seriously - I have absolutely no expertise in how to train/encourage staff to do the right thing. In the Hong Kong system, because it was converted from RxWorks which had a notes field that OpenVPMS does not, I changed the product.* archetypes to change the description field from being a derived field that echoed the product name into a standard data field, and changed its display name to 'Description/Notes'. Hence you get the following on the product selection screen
Having changed the archetype, the product edit screen magically changes to allow you to enter and edit description/notes field as shown below.
Note that I did my reply to Ben's post simply to indicate that what he wanted (automatic destocking of consumables) was possible within the current system. However, neither appoach handles your problem of 'was it a 20, 30 or 40 cm feeding tube'.
Since you can create a template with the quantities of the included items set to 0, you could build the template to include zero quantities of the 20, 30 and 40 cm tubes - then the vet just has to adjust the quantites of the items that she/he did use. However, this feels a little ham-fisted to me.
Perhaps a better way is to create a product 'Feeding Tube - pls specify' with quantity 0 and include this in the template (and repeat this for suture material, swabs, etc). Now the vet has a set of zero qty '...-pls specify' items on the invoice which you train him/her to adjust to the actual items used. At the end of the month you run a report listing when/by whom a '...- pls specify' product appeared on an invoice, and then you reduce that person's pay by $10/occurance for not doing their paperwork correctly.
Remember that if you do follow my suggestion, you have to identify the 'non-charged/for stock control only' products in some way, and adjust your invoices and credit notes not to display these. We identify the products by setting their Product-Type to No Charge. (Again RxWorks had this facility and so I had to support it when I cloned the invoice and credit-note templates that we use from the standard ones.)
Hope this helps, Regards Tim G
Re: Service Items can reduce stock
Here is the issue I see with this setup...I am specifically talking about relatively high usage items in a clinic for example
Metacam injection
this production would be used in consult and paid for at RRP (usually a fixed fee + unit price)
but it would also be used in a service template for Desexing which in most clinics its included in a fixed price. The problem therefore is that templates cannot set a price or a discount. or calculate volume based on patient weight.
You cant create an extra product that links to the metacam medication item with no charge because product to stock is a 1:1 link(as it should be)
I see 2 options
1. allow templates to template in prices. or even template in either regular charge/no charge or a percentage discount.
2. allow service items to have a 1:many relationship with products to reduce stock counts.
Re: Service Items can reduce stock
Additionally I would argue...that in the example used above of feeding tube placement I would charge Nett price for the feeding tube anyway and then charge an additional placement fee. Not one fee that included the price of the tube. It isnt unresonable for owners to see those prices at all
However in the example of the discount desexing which every clinic I know does. You charge
All of these items would at some point be charged out at nett price or normal price
however in this situation if done like that would set the price of the procedure to close on $800.00 AU or more in our practice...of course we dont charge that for desexing..because its considered a discount procedure vets offer. In some clinics *not ours* its as low as $150.00.
So you either allow templates to include a Discount line item and show all those item charges or create a service destocking linkage.
Re: Service Items can reduce stock
Hi Ben,
It seems the requirements are:
1) We want items to be associated with services/templates.
2) We want these items to be able to be stock counted.
3) We want to control in what circumstances these products are charged. I.e. Charge if a medication, don't charge or charge a different rate if a part of a service or template.
4) Control if some items appear on an invoice.
While I like the "show everything on an invoice" principal I think for us this is acutally not the way to go. I want a scaple blade to be stock counted, but not charged and definitely don't want it appearing on the invoice. We have large and complex invoices already and it is not out of the realms of possibility we could end up with 20+ page invoices.
Basically I want to account for consumables but not charge for them or have them appear on the invoice. So will probably use the method suggested by Tim G above where I mark these items as "no charge" and alter invoices accordingly.
Re: Service Items can reduce stock
I think the easiest approach is to enhance services to list all of the included products and their quantities. When the service is charged, all of the included products would update stock control, but only the service would appear in the list of charge items.
One limitation of this is that you wouldn't be able to change products included in the service. In this situation, a template or multiple services might be more appropriate.
Support for point 4 could be achieved by:
-Tim
Re: Service Items can reduce stock
Its is interesting to note that there seems to be a bit of support for an upgraded service archetype - ie add item node as mentioned above and also add the NOTE field as mentioned in
http://www.openvpms.org/forum/notes-services
Chance of a project for 1.8?
Re: Service Items can reduce stock
I've created a new project here: http://www.openvpms.org/project/service-product-stock-control
-Tim