Reporting

The Reporting workspace is used to handle various processing and reporting functions.

Till Balancing

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This screen is used display, print, adjust and clear balances. For background information see Concepts|Tills.

Summary: How to clear the till

  1. if necessary press Select to select the required till
  2. if business needs to continue, press Start Clear to freeze this till balance and let a new one start so that business can continue
  3. press Print to get the Till Balance Report
  4. count the till and compare with the report
  5. if necessary make corrections (see below) and go back to step 3
  6. when it all matches, press Clear

Initially the screen shows the current uncleared balance of the default till for the current location. The following shows a till with very little activity - normally there will be far more transactions.

The top half of the screen works as a standard select screen to select and display the Till Balance records for the selected till. The bottom half shows the payments making up the selected Till Balance.

If the till displayed is not the one you want, press the Select button to select the required till.

The columns in the top half of the screen are as follows:

Date - this shows the date of the first payment made after the till was previously cleared, ie it will have the same date as the earliest payment in the set shown at the bottom of the screen.
Type - this always shows as 'Till Balance'
Status - will be either Cleared or Uncleared. These should be only one line with status Uncleared, but this will not appear until the first payment is made following the till being cleared.
Amount - this shows the total of the payments received since the till was last cleared.  It will always be negative because OpenVPMS treats amounts that the customer owes us as positive, and the amounts they pay as negative. NOTE that this amount does not represent the total of the cash money in the physical till. When you need to see the cash total, use the Print button to print the Till Balance Report.
Description - always blank

The fields in the bottom half of the screen are as follows:
Start Time - the date of the first payment in this till balance
End Time - blank if this till balance has not been cleared, else shows the date on which the till was cleared
Amount - the sum of all the payments shown in the columns below
Cash Float - the amount of cash left in the till each time it is cleared so as to give some money for change.
Printed - set when the till balance is printed
Status - shows Cleared or Uncleared

The columns in the bottom half are as follows:
Date - the date of the transaction
Type - the transaction type, normally Payment but also can be Refund or Cash Float Adjustment
Customer - the customer's name, or if this was a payment for an OTC sale, the name of the OTC account. Note that this is a link so you can click it to jump to the customer.
Amount - the amount of the payment
Description - almost always blank

Buttons - the buttons are as follows:

Start Clear - starts clearing the till. This changes the status of the current till balance to Clear In Progress, so that new payments and refunds don't impact it while it is in the process of being cleared. This can be used in practices that want to perform intra-day till clearing without suspending payments and refunds.
Clear - clears the till. Don't use this until you have checked the amount of cash in the till against the Till Balance Report.
Print - initiates the printing of the Till Balance Report for the selected Till Balance. You will need to print the report so that you can check that the amount in the till matches what the system thinks it is and that the other appropriate documents (eg cheques, credit card clips, etc) are present.
Adjust - generate an adjustment transaction to correct the cash amount in the till.
Reverse - (only appears if till status is Clear In Progress, and a Payment or Refund transaction is currently selected) - reverses the currently selected transaction.
New - (only appears if till status is Clear In Progress) - allows you to create a new Payment or Refund.
Transfer - (only appears if the till status is Uncleared and when one of the payments is selected) - transfer the payment to another Till. When you press the button, a confirmation window will appear allowing you to choose the till.
Open Drawer - open the till's cash drawer. This button is only displayed if the Printer Name and Drawer Command for the till have been configured.

 

Making Corrections

The following table lists the possible errors and their corrective actions.

Error Action
(if Start Clear has been pressed and status is Clear in progress)
Action
(if status Uncleared)
Cash amount less than shown on print Use Adjust to insert an adjustment transaction with description ‘Cash amount less than on print’, the amount equal to difference, and the Credit box unticked Same
Cash amount more than shown on print Use Adjust to insert an adjustment transaction with description ‘Cash amount more than on print’ and amount equal to difference, and the Credit box ticked Same
Print shows payment (cheque, credit card or EFT), but document (ie cheque/credit card slip/EFT record) not found Use Reverse to reverse the payment Use Customers|Account to reverse the payment
Print shows payment (cheque, credit card or EFT), but document in till has a different amount Use Reverse to reverse the payment, then use New to create the correct payment Use Customers|Account|Reverse to reverse the payment, then use Payments|New to create the correct payment
Print shows payment (cheque, credit card or EFT) but details are incorrect Use Reverse to reverse the payment, then use New to create the correct payment Use Customers|Account|Reverse to reverse the payment, then use Payments|New to create the correct payment
Payment has wrong customer (ie payment is for Smith but should be for Smyth) Use Reverse to reverse the payment, then use New to create the payment for the correct customer Use Customers|Account|Reverse to reverse the payment, then select the correct customers and use Payments|New to create the correct payment
Have evidence of payment (ie Cheque or credit card slip or EFT details or even cash) but no matching customer payment recorded Either use New to create the matching payment, or alternatively, move evidence to new current till contents and create matching payment using Customers|Payments|New Create matching payment using Customers|Payments|New

 

Confirm Adjust

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This is the window that is displayed when you press the Adjust button on the Till Balancing screen.

s

The fields are as follows:
Date - the date of the adjustment
Description - the reason for the adjustment (the default is shown above)
Amount - the amount
Credit - tick this box if this is a credit. If the amount of actual cash in the tin is more than is shown on the Till Balance Report, then leave the box unticked. If the amount of actual cash is less, then tick the box.

The buttons have their normal meanings.

Confirm Clear

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This window is displayed when you press the Clear button in the Till Balancing screen.

The fields are as follows:
New Cash Float - this is float amount for the new till. It defaults to the current float amount. If you modify this, then an Adjustment transaction will be added to the till balance being cleared to reflect the change in float amount.
Deposit Account - choose the account into which the cleared amount is to be deposited

Press the OK button to proceed, else Cancel.

Confirm Start Clear Till

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This window is displayed when you press the Start Clear button in the Till Balancing screen.

The New Cash Float is the float amount for the new till. It defaults to the current float amount. If you modify this, then an Adjustment transaction will be added to the till balance being cleared to reflect the change in float amount.

Press the OK button to proceed, else Cancel.

Confirm Till

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This window appears when you press the Transfer button on the Reporting|Till Balancing screen. Click the till you wish to transfer the payment to and then press OK, or use Cancel to abort.

Deposits

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This screen is used to manage deposits from tills into deposit accounts

How To Summary:

  1. if necessary, press Select to select the account
  2. press Find to find the undeposited amounts
  3. press Print to print the deposit slip
  4. press Deposit to do the deposit

Having done steps 1 & 2 the screen will look like the one below. Note however that here we have set the Status to 'All' to show the Deposited amounts as well - the default is 'Undeposited' and this will show only one item (or none if there have been no till clearances since the last deposit).

The top half of the screen works as a standard select screen to select and display the Bank Deposit records for the selected account. The bottom half shows the payments making up the selected Till Balance.

If the Deposit Account displayed is not the one you want, press the Select button to select the required account.

The Status can be set to All, Deposited or Undeposited.

Note that the account details shown on the right of the Select button are not updated immediately you make the deposit. They will be updated if you select a different account and then switch back again. (This is a known bug.)

The columns in the top half of the screen are as follows:
Date - this shows the date of the first till balance made after the last deposit was made, ie it will have the same date as the earliest till balance in the set shown at the bottom of the screen.
Type - this always shows as 'Bank Deposit'
Status - will be either Deposited or Undeposited. These should be only one line with status Undeposited, but this will not appear until the first till balances is done following the last deposit.
Amount - this shows the total of the till balances that are part of this deposit.  It will always be negative because OpenVPMS treats amounts that the customer owes us a positive, and the amounts they pay as negative.
Description - always blank

The fields in the top of bottom half of the screen are as follows:
Start Time - the date of the first till balance in this deposit
End Time - blank if this deposit is still undeposited, else shows the date on which the deposit was done. (Note that because of a current bug, this field is always blank.)
Amount - the sum of all the amounts in the till balances shown in the columns below
Printed - this is set if the deposit has been printed
Status - shows Deposited or Undeposited

The columns in the bottom half for the Till Balance records are as follows:
Date - the date of the till balance
Type - the transaction type, always Till Balance
Amount - the amount of the till balance
Description - almost blank

If you select a Till Balance record, its details are shown (as they are in the above screen shot). For further information see Reporting|Till Balancing.

Buttons - the buttons are as follows:
Deposit - initiates the deposit (there will be a confirmation window). This button will not be present if there is no Undeposited item.
Print - initiates the printing of the Deposit Report for the selected Deposit Account. This will be useful when you go to the bank.
 

Confirm Deposit

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This is the Deposit confirmation window. Press OK to action the deposit, else Cancel.

Debtors

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The Debtors screen is used to manage debtors. You can:

  • display customer balance information with various selection options and print the results
  • print a current or prior statement for a selected customer
  • do the end-of-period processing at the end of the accounting period
  • generate the statements at the end of the accounting period
  • re-print previously generated statements

For background information, see Concepts|Accounting. See also the note on statement detail at the bottom of this page.

How to summary:

  • for month (or accounting period) end processingfor debtor management
    • set the Statement Date to the end of the period (eg end of previous month)
    • press the End Period button to do the period end processing for all customers
    • press the Send All button to generate the statements for the selected customers
    • if you did select customers (say those with 60 days overdue balances so that you can include a payment request note in the envelope with their statement), then clear the selection conditions and press Send All again to process the other customers. The 60 day overdue customers' statements will not be reprinted (unless you use the reprint option).
    • Note that you do not have to generate statements for all customers. If say you have two customer account types, Normal and Staff, you could choose to only print statements each month for Normal customers and never for Staff.
    • set the Statement Date to the required date
    • enter the other selection criteria
    • press the Find button
    • optionally press the Report button
  • for account enquiries (if a customer wants a current statement)
    • set the Statement Date to today
    • set the Customer From and To to minimise the number of customers selected (ie 'sm' to 'smz' if the customer is named Smith)
    • press the Find button
    • click the line containing the customer and press the Print button
    • Note that the resulting statement will only include finalised transactions prior to the statement date - ie it will not show today's finalised invoice.
  • for account enquiries (if a customer wants a statement for a prior period)
    • set the Statement Date to the end of the required period
    • set the Customer From and To to minimise the number of customers selected (ie 'sm' to 'smz' if the customer is named Smith)
    • press the Find button
    • click the line containing the customer and press the Print button
    • Note that the resulting statement will show transactions from the Opening Balance transaction prior to the specified statement date up to the specified statement date.

This is a standard select screen. The selection fields are:
Customer Account Type - this allows you to select customers by their account type
Overdue From & To - use these to select overdue accounts. They are entered as the number of days after the statement date, ie 30 and 60 will select accounts that are between 30 and 60 days overdue. They are both optional. If you enter bad data, it is ignored. Hence:

From To Meaning
    all
30   more that 30 days overdue
30 xxx same as above (bad To value ignored)
  60 up to 60 days overdue
xxx 60 same as above (bad From value ignored)

Customer From & To - this allows you to select customers by name. For this to work as expected you need to set both the From and To entries and the To value must be greater than the From.  If you get this wrong, eg search from 't' to 't', no error will be reported, you will just get 'No results to display'.
Statement Date - the date of the end of the accounting period. Normally this will be the last day in the previous month if you are doing end-of-period and statement printing. However, if you are doing debtors management, then this should be set to the current date so that you can see the current situation.
Balances - you can select All, Current or Overdue. 'Current' selects those customers who do not have an overdue balance, 'Overdue' just those who do have an overdue balance.
Exclude Credit - uncheck the box if you also want to include customers with credit balances. Note that irrespective of any of the selection settings, customers with zero balances are never displayed.
Customer Location can be used to filter customers using their preferred practice location, to support location specific content. Selecting:

  • a practice location, returns customers that have the location set as their Practice Location.
  • None - selects all customers that don't have a Practice Location
  • All - returns customers for all practice locations

The column headings are:
Customer Name - the customers' names - each is a link to the customer.
Balance - the balance of the account as at the Statement Date.
Overdue Balance - the overdue balance, see below
Credit Balance - if the account is in credit the amount will be shown here (as well as in the Balance column)
Unbilled - the amount that is unbilled, ie the total of any in-progress, on-hold, or completed transactions
Last Payment Date & Amount - the date and amount of the last payment
Last Invoice Date - the date of the last invoice

The Buttons are:
Send All - generates the statements for the selected customers.  This will display a confirmation window - which will also allow you to request the reprint of statements of previously printed statements (which would otherwise not be reprinted).
Note that you normally use Send All only after you have used End Period, and you should keep the same Statement Date for both.
The statements generated will be emailed to the customer (rather than printed) if the customer has an email address with the purpose 'Billing'.
The document template used for the statements will be that with the type 'Customer Statement' - and this MUST have an Email Template specified - see Administration|Templates.

Print - prints a statement for the currently selected customer

Report - prints a Debtors report for the accounts of the customers shown on the screen - ie only those customers who match the current selection criteria. Note that this report does not show the selection critera. The document template used for the Debtors report will be that with the type 'Customer Account Balance'.

End Period - initiates the end-of-period processing for all customers (not just those selected). A confirmation window will be displayed. It has a 'Finalise Completed Invoices' checkbox - you should normally leave this ticked. However, if your practice has a policy that all invoices should be manually finalised by the accounts department, then you should untick this. In this case the completed/not finalised ones will be held over and not included in the closing balance.
Note that you use End Period before you have used Send All, and you should keep the same Statement Date for both.

 

Overdue calculation
The overdue date, ie the date at which an account becomes overdue is calculated as:
   overdue date = statement date - customer's account type payment terms

If the customer doesn't have an account type, then the overdue date is the statement date.

A balance is overdue if it's unpaid or part paid, and has been so since prior to the overdue date.

 

Statement Detail
The standard statements generated by the system use a document template that is written so that whether or not the statement contains line item detail depends on the Line Item Print option in the Letterhead that is being used. The options are Always, Never, and 'Not Printed'. If the latter, then the line items are shown if the invoice's Print flag is not set. (This flag is set when the finalised invoice is printed - emailing or previewing does not set the flag.)

 

Emailed Statements

When statements are emailed, the From address will be set to:

  • the Billing email contact associated with the customer's Practice Location; or
  • the Practice's Billing email contact, if the  customer doesn't have a Practice Location, or the Practice Location doesn't have a Billing email contact; or
  • the Practice's preferred email contact, if there is no Billing email contact

 

Location Specific Statements

Location specific statement content can be supported by:

  • filtering by Customer Location, and using the appropriate letterhead
  • examining the customer's Practice Location within the statement template

Confirm End Period

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This confirmation window is displayed when you press End Period to to do the end-of-period processing.

There is a 'Finalise completed invoices' check box. You should normally leave this ticked. However, if your practice has a policy that all invoices should be manually finalised by the accounts department, then you should untick this. In this case the completed/not finalised ones will be held over and not included in the closing balance.

Click OK to proceed, else Cancel.

Confirm Report

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This screen is used to confirm that the Account Balance Report should be run.  Press OK to proceed, Cancel to Cancel.

Confirm Statements

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This confirmation window is displayed when you press Send All to generate the statements.

There is a 'Reprint statements' check box. If you are reprinting, you MUST check this so that Accounting Fees are not levied again on any overdue accounts.

Click OK to proceed, else Cancel.

Work In Progress

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This Work In Progress screen is used to display the current open invoices, credit notes and counter sales, i.e. those that are in progress, on hold, or completed.

This is a standard select screen. As well as the date range you can select by:
Type - can be set to All, Counter Sales, Credit Notes or Invoices
Status - can be set to All, Completed, In Progress or On Hold
Location - the practice location where the charge was created.

The column headings need no explanation.

Double click a charge to view it.

Press the Report button to print the Work In Progress report.

 

Confirm Report

Complete

This is a standard print window - see Introduction|Common Screens|Print.

Reminders

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Reporting - Reminders is used to:

Errors

Complete

This screen is to used to review and correct errors that have occurred when sending reminders.

The fields are as follows:

Type Selects the type of reminder.
All When selected, show all reminders that have failed to be sent.
When deselected, the Send date is used to filter reminders.
Send All reminders with a Send date on or before this date will be shown.
Location

Used to filter reminders by a customer's preferred practice location, to support location specific content. Selecting:

  • a practice location, returns reminders for customers that have the location set as their preferred location
  • All - returns reminders for all practice locations

The columns are as follows:

Type Shows the reminder item type. These determine how a reminder will be sent.
Status The reminder item status. On the Errors tab, these will always be Error.
Send The date from when the reminder should be sent.
Due Date The reminder due date for the reminder count.
Customer The customer to send the reminder to.
Patient The patient the reminder is for.
Reminder Type The name of the reminder type.
Count The number of times the reminder has been sent.
Error The error encountered processing the reminder. See below.

 

The buttons are as follows:

Find Find all reminders matching the criteria.
Edit Edit the selected reminder
Resolve Resolve the error with the selected reminder, making it a candidate for sending again. Note that pressing 'Resolve' simply removed the error flag - it does not actually fix the underlying cause of the error, so if you do nothing to fix the cause, the error will occur again when the reminder is next sent.
Resolve All Resolve the errors with the all reminders matching the criteria, making them candidates for sending again.
Complete Marks the selected reminder item as Completed, without sending it. If the associated reminder has no other Pending reminder items, it's reminder count will be incremented.
Complete All Marks all reminder items matching the criteria as Completed, without sending them. If an associated reminder has no other Pending reminder items, it's reminder count will be incremented.

Error Text

In most cases the error message will be self explanatory, some are not:

No rules match the customer contacts
This means that there are no rules for the given reminder type and reminder count that match the customer contacts. E.g, it will occur if you have a single rule to email reminders, and the customer has no email contact.
It can also occur if the document templates aren't fully configured. You can glean more information from openvpms-full.log. Look for messages containing the text:
     ReminderProcessor

Resend

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This screen is to used to resend reminders that have been sent or cancelled.

The fields are as follows:

Type Selects the type of reminder to send.
Status The reminder status.
From All reminders with a Send date on or after this date will be shown.
To All reminders with a Send date on or before this date will be shown.
Location

Used to filter reminders by a customer's preferred practice location, to support location specific content. Selecting:

  • a practice location, returns reminders for customers that have the location set as their preferred location
  • All - returns reminders for all practice locations

The columns are as follows:

Type Shows the reminder item type. These determine how a reminder will be sent.
Status The reminder item status.
Send The date from when the reminder should be sent.
Due Date The reminder due date for the reminder count.
Customer The customer to send the reminder to.
Patient The patient the reminder is for.
Reminder Type The name of the reminder type.
Count The number of times the reminder has been sent.
Error Any error encountered processing the reminder.

 

The buttons are as follows:

Find Find all reminders matching the criteria.
Edit Edit the selected reminder
Send Send the selected reminder
Send All Send all reminders matching the criteria
Preview Preview the selected reminder. If the reminder type has Group By set to Customer or Patient, any adjacent reminder matching the criteria will be grouped in the preview.

Send

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This screen is to used to send reminders that have been queued by the Patient Reminder Queue job.

If the Patient Reminder Queue is not configured it will display:

Cannot send reminders.
No Patient Reminder Queue Job is configured to queue reminders for sending.

If there are no reminders queued it will look like:

If there are reminders queued, it will look like:

The fields are as follows:

Type Selects the send type (Email, Export, List, Print, SMS or All) to process.
Send The date to send reminders from. All reminders with a Send date on or before this date will be shown.
Location

Used to filter reminders by a customer's preferred practice location, to support location specific content. Selecting:

  • a practice location, returns reminders for customers that have the location set as their preferred location
  • All - returns reminders for all practice locations

The columns are as follows:

Type Shows the reminder item type. These determine how a reminder will be sent.
Status The reminder item status. On the Send tab, these will always be Pending.
Send The date from when the reminder should be sent.
Due Date The reminder due date for the reminder count.
Customer The customer to send the reminder to.
Patient The patient the reminder is for.
Reminder Type The name of the reminder type.
Count The number of times the reminder has been sent.
Error Any error encountered processing the reminder.

The reminder details pane is displayed if you click on a reminder to select it.  See here for details of its fields.

The buttons are as follows:

Find Find all unsent reminders matching the criteria.
Edit Edit the selected reminder
Send Send the selected reminder
Send All Send all reminders matching the criteria
Complete Marks the selected reminder item as Completed, without sending it. If the associated reminder has no other Pending reminder items, it's reminder count will be incremented.
Complete All Marks all reminder items matching the criteria as Completed, without sending them. If an associated reminder has no other Pending reminder items, it's reminder count will be incremented.
Preview Preview the selected reminder. If the reminder type has Group By set to Customer or Patient, any adjacent reminder matching the criteria will be grouped in the preview.

Sending Reminders

Reminders can be sent by clicking Send or Send All.

SMS and email reminders can also be sent automatically by configuring a Patient Reminder Sender job.

Email Reminders

When reminders are emailed, the From address will be set to:

  • the Reminder email contact associated with the customer's Practice Location; or
  • the Practice's Reminder email contact, if the  customer doesn't have a Practice Location, or the Practice Location doesn't have a Reminder email contact; or
  • the Practice's preferred email contact, if there is no Reminder email contact

Print Reminders

Location specific reminder content can be supported by:

  • filtering by Location, and using the appropriate letterhead
  • examining the customer's location within reminder templates

Export Reminders

If one or more reminders are to be exported then the CSV file will be generated and then downloaded to the browser for the user to save on the completion of reminder generation.  See also Reminder Export Format.

Notes

  1. If you do process individual send types (i.e. do not select All), then you should also do a run with All specified to ensure that you pick up all the reminders for the period, and don't forget some types.
  2. Errors. If you get an error saying "... no document template for .. with a reminder count of N..", it can mean what it says (i.e. the Reminder Type does not have a template specified for that reminder count), or that a template is specified but that it does not have Document Template specified, or that it does but the specified Document Template does not have its Content specified.
  3. Processing Limits: the system will only process a maximum or 1000 reminders at a time. If this limit is reached the processing confirmation window will display something like the following:

    You can see that for the List reminders, 1000 have been processed but more are available.
    All you need to do is use the Send All button to process the remaining ones.

See Also

Reports

Complete

This window is used to run reports.  For background information, see Introduction|Reports.

This works like a standard select screen.

The column headings are:

Id - the Id number of the report
Name - the name of the template - see Administration|Templates
Description - its description
Report Type - its report type
Run Level - its run level. Note that you will not be shown any reports with a run level higher than your own. Your run level is set using Administration|Users

Press the Run button to run the report.

Report Criteria

Complete

This window is displayed when you press the Run button on the Reporting|Reports screen. It is allows the input of the report parameters (which will vary from report to report) and also provides the standard print request facilities.

The non standard buttons are as follows:
Export - click this to to export the report to a CSV file so that it can be processed by another program. Note that for best effect, the report itself may need to be adjusted. That is, if the report has page headers, footers and titles (as is normally the case) then these will also be in the CSV output. Hence making a 'no fancy bits' version will produce a cleaner CSV file.
Export & Email - will generate the CSV file and then bring up an Email window to allow you to send it somewhere

Report Parameters
This area will vary from report to report because the parameters vary from report to report.

If the parameter is a date, then you can use any of the date shortcuts - eg '-2y' for two years ago.

If the parameter is a string (indicated by the data field having resize dots in the bottom right corner like the Location name and other selection boxes above) then you can use a macro to enter the information. This can be useful for entering data which a macro can easily generate but which you have to think about.

For example if you define a macro @cid whose expression is $customer.id, then provided the report has defined the Customer Id parameter as a string, you can enter @cid and press Enter and (if there is a current customer) then the @cid will be replaced by 123456 (or whatever the current cusomer's id is).

If fact a better macro expression to use is expr:var("customer.id", "There is no current customer") because this will warn if there is no current customer.

[Note that for the 1.8 and later releases, the above technique is not longer required because the report can be written to provide the current customer ID (and any other current item value) - see here.]