Different options for products and reminders
We are re-doing our products and reminders. We have looked at different forum posts and in concepts and context sensitive help but still have a few questions.
What is the optimal type of product (class) to have for a product, such as a vaccination, which needs a reminder?
Is a G6 vaccine, as listed in the examples, 1 bottle or a combination of other products. We routinely use a vaccine which is a combination of 2 different products. Depending on the age of the dog or the stage of the vaccination program, a reminder may be needed for only 1 of the products or for the combined vaccine. Do we need to enter these as different products so that we can associate them with different reminders?
Currently we have our vaccination products entered as templates (so that we can automatically keep track of vaccine, syringe and needle stocks). The problem with this is that when we do vaccinations for breeders, the quantity of each line item needs to be changed individually. Also no reminder needs to be linked in this situation.
Is it best to have multiple templates to account for different scenarios using the same vaccine, so that they can have different reminders attached to them eg. 1st puppy vacc, 2nd puppy vacc, 1st adult vacc, annual adult vacc. Or should we attach multiple reminders to the one vaccination product? If we attach multiple reminders to a single product, we are relying on the staff to select the correct one at the time of invoicing.
It would be interesting to see what other people do.
Regards, Mary
Re: Different options for products and reminders
Mary:
1) Product Type - has nothing to do with reminders. In our case all vaccinations have product type Medication - but so do a whole lot of other things. The product type is there to allow you to group things together on the invoice and for reporting purposes and for common discounting.
2) Product templates - are used to group products together so that calling up the template populates the invoice with multiple products. You cannot attach a reminder to a product template. Product templates can have a classification but NOT a product type.
However, since you are heavily into templates you could do as follows:
a) create product type called Reminders
b) modify the invoice and credit note so that any line item with a product type of Reminder is not printed (or alternatively hide any items with a zero price)
c) create service products [you want them to be services so that you do not do stock control on them] that are reminders, set them to have zero price, product type Reminders, and the appropriate Reminder Type and attach to the appropriate templates
d) create the appropriate reminder groups and put those reminders that should cancel one another is the same group. (eg Puppy Vacc XXX should be in the same reminder group as Adult Vacc XXX - if you use different reminder types for each.)
What we have effectively done is to separate the reminder from the vaccination product and attach it instead to the template by using a dummy reminder product that is included as one of the products in the template and serves to generate reminder when that template is used.
What do we do in Hong Kong? Vaccinations have reminders attached so that it is common for a patient to have multiple vaccination reminders all of which are generated on one 'give Bozo his shots' visit. We send out reminders using a fixed postcard with an address label that lists up to 6 reminders - one card for each patient, so if I have two dogs Bozo and Fifi, two postcards arrive, one addressed to Bozo Gething and one to Fifi Gething.
Hope this helps, Regards Tim G
Re: Different options for products and reminders
Mary - since 1.8 is coming, I should mention that one of the changes is that templates: a) can include other templates - with a quantity; b) can be set up so that the items include depend on the patient weight.
See http://www.openvpms.org/documentation/csh/1.8/new-features and http://www.openvpms.org/documentation/csh/1.8/new-features/implementatio...
Regards, Tim G