When product templates in OpenVPMS are expanded, duplicate products are merged so that only a single line item appears with the cumulative quantity.

This is useful for nested templates that include common products, but means that a fixed price is only charged once. This doesn't support the case where pain relief may be administered several times, and a fixed price is charged each time.

To support duplicates in templates, a new Merge Duplicates flag will be added, to indicate how duplicates should be handled.
When selected, all duplicates included by the template will be merged. This is the current behaviour, and will be the default.
When deselected, any duplicates included by the template won't be merged.

Nested Templates

When a template includes nested templates, the Merge Duplicates flag applies to the immediate template. e.g given:

• template A, Merge Duplicates = false
  • tempate B, Merge Duplicates = true
    • product 1, quantity = 1
    • product 1, quantity = 1
  • template C, Merge Duplicates = true
    • product 1, quantiy = 1

The invoice or estimate will contain the lines:

• product 1, quantity = 2
• product 1, quantity = 1

Supplier Orders

If a template is expanded in a supplier order, the Merge Duplicates flag will be ignored, and duplicates will always be merged.