Pricing
OpenVPMS has a powerful and flexible product pricing system.
Price makeup
Products have two components to their price:
Fixed - this is the fixed component - it is effectively the 'flag fall'
Unit - this is the 'per item' component
Hence if something has a fixed price of $10 and a unit price of $1, then the total price for 4 is $14.
In general things that have no overhead such as cans of food will have no fixed price, and only a unit price. Things that have an overhead - such as tablets where you want to charge a dispensing fee as well as the per-tablet price, will have a fixed price representing the dispensing fee and a unit price for the tablet. You can also use this approach for services, where you might want to set a fixed price for some surgery, and a unit price that represents the per-hour charge for the theatre time. [Note that an alterative to this appoach is to have mutiple fixed prices - see below - so that you have different prices for different lenght operations.]
Note that the fixed and unit prices always include any applicable taxes. Hence on the Product screen and when you are looking at invoices, the fixed and unit prices are 'tax-inc' prices.
When you are setting the price, you can provide an ex-tax cost price and a markup percentage, and the system will calculate the resulting tax included price (as (C x (1 + M/100)) x (1 + T/100)). Alternatively, you can set the tax-include price over-riding any cost and markup.
Dates
Prices also have from/to applicability dates. This allows you to keep previous prices for reference purposes. It also allows you to set future prices, ie one that will take effect on some future date.
Templates
A product can have its price set from a 'price template'. This allows the Fixed price component of a number of products to be set from a standard value.
Multiple Prices
It is possible to set multiple fixed prices for a product, each with its own name. When the product is called up when generating an invoice, the fixed price field will have a pull-down which can be used to show the available prices (with their names) as follows. Note that here the 150/medium price has been set as the default and so is initially displayed.
Negative Prices
You can set as price as a negative amount - although this is not really kosher. Negative prices are used with a product that is in fact a discount. This enables you to have a discount line item on the invoice. For the standard way to apply discounts, see Concepts|Discounts.