Suggested change to financial info on left panel
Would anyone object if we requested a change to the financial information on the left panel as follows:
1) delete the 'Credit Amount' line because whenever the customer is in credit the Balance line at the top shows the same amount.
2) add at the bottom (below Unbilled) a line with the label line ‘Effective Bal.’ or ‘Eff.Balance’ or ‘Tot.Balance’ or … which is the sum of Balance + Unbilled - ie this is the amount that the customer will owe when the Unbilled amount is actually billed.
[In our case, when we have patients in hospital after an operation, we ask them for a pre-payment so the account (for a customer who pays on time) shows something like Balance -$5000, Overdue $0, Current $0, Credit -$5000, Unbilled $19,146.57 and when the customer rings and says 'what has it cost so far' reception has to subtract $5000 from the unbilled amount to get the answer. In this case the arithmetic is easy, but if their balance was say -$3456.78 then the calculation is far more difficult.]
Regards, Tim G
Re: Suggested change to financial info on left panel
Hi,
Staff have just learnt to accomodate this quirk but I agree the solution you propose sounds sensible.
Cheers,
Adrian
Re: Suggested change to financial info on left panel
Thanks Adrian - having used OpenVPMS for all of 6 days, our staff are still in the 'why does it work this way' mode whereas those with more experience cope with the quirks. However, questions from new users do indicate areas where things can be improved, such as this one. Regards, Tim G
Re: Suggested change to financial info on left panel
Hi Tim,
I agree that user changes should always be proposed but there should be a settling in period for new users as I have found many users are initially tryng to make the software behave and look like their old software and take a period of time to forget the old and embrace the new. If we react to initial requests before they understand the new software we may find ourselves going around in many circles and wasting precious resources.
So my council is document change requests and then revisit after 2-3 months of production use.
Cheers Tony
Re: Suggested change to financial info on left panel
Tony - I agree with you. My son has already changed from (days 1&2) 'b.awful' to (end of day 5) 'its got some good features'. I also agree that this particular request came to me as 'RxWorks ...'. However, since I cannot see why the Credit line is not redundant, and I can see the benefit in displaying 'balance+unbilled' at the cost of one add operation.
Nothing will happen before the call for 1.8 features. But I would be interested in whether other users consider this a sensible change.
Regards, Tim G
Re: Suggested change to financial info on left panel
It would be nice to hear from others but I guess I come to this as someone 2 years into OVPMS and I know we still occasionally get "bitten" by the situation described in the intial post, even with experienced staff.
Re: Suggested change to financial info on left panel
The financial info panel has always been a bugbear for me...When we moved to Open our vets were resistant - they didnt like the idea of displaying financial information to a client while consulting...In our consult rooms clients can see the screen of the workstation while the vet examines the animal....I think in 1.8 it would be nice to see increased customization options -
ie
Display Financial info - maybe even customize the format
Display Client address / phone numbers (more than 1 maybe)
Display Customer Alerts
etc etc etc
Mind you I dont think I would remove financial info nowadays...personally If a client owes us money I am quite happy for that consult machine to be a constant reminder.
Ben