Product Details Screen in VetView 3.3
- Cathy Allison
This page was originally created for VetView 2.0.12 and has been revised to include layout changes made in VetView 3.3 and icon changes in VetView 4.0 and later.
The Product Details Screen is reached when creating a new product from scratch, or when viewing or editing an existing product.
Add a new product to VetView
From the Product Search screen, click on the New Product button. This will start with the New Product screen.
Product Details Screen - New Product
The initial view of the product details screen only displays the minimum information needed to create the product in the database. After the first save, the rest of the information will become visible.
Field | Description |
|---|---|
Product Line Number | The product line that the new product will be added to. These are the custom product lines defined under product setup. If this product does not fit into an existing product line category, you should make the new product line for it before making the new product. |
Sequence | The number that will be assigned to this specific product within the product line. Together, the line and sequence will make up a unique identifier for the product, so that it can be easily found and added to a patient's order. |
Next button | For all products that were added to an existing product line, this will check the database and find the next available number from the last one generated. If this is a brand new product line with no products assigned, the system will recognize this and start with the number 1. |
Active | As products are discontinued, you may need to set them as inactive. This prevents them from being added to patient orders going forward, but preserves the historical data. We recommend creating new products and deactivating old ones if there are major changes in the product formulation, dosage or size, company name, etc. |
Name | The name of the product. This will become a searchable phrase, so be as accurate and complete as possible. For drugs, this would be the brand name, the generic name, and the dosage (e.g. "Heartguard (ivermectin) 272 mcg"). Container and packagingt information will be tracked separately. |
Description | Additional information that did not fit into the name that describes the product in more detail. In the Heartguard example above, this may include "1 box of 6 chewables for dogs 51-100 lbs.") |
Billing Description | How the product name should appear on the patient orders, if different from the product name used internally. |
Standard Code | If your hospital uses its own internal product identifiers, it can be entered here. Alternate IDs such as barcode scanners can also be entered separately. |
Product Type | Hard coded internal categories that will restrict how the product will draw from inventory. Services and Services fees are considered non-inventory items. Inventory, Equipment, and Packages are considered inventory items. Setting a product as an inventory item will automatically add the Inventory tab to this page. |
Category | A custom category for the product, to allow for more granular separation beyond the hard coded product types. |
Service Unit | If this product should always provide revenue to a specific service unit by default, it can be selected here. |
Product Setup Options | These are flags that can be set on the product that will allow for additional tabs to display. Multi-item allows you to create simple combination products outside of packages, such as a pharmacy compound. Prescription Setup allows you to set the pharmaceutical attributes of the product. CDM setup allows you to describe how the product should be billed or displayed when drawn from a CDM machine. ASAQ eligible will mark the product as being part of the ASAQ reimbursement process and allow you to define the attributes as part of that. |
Product Types
After entering in the required information and clicking on the Save Button, the remaining product attribute tabs and the tabs related to the flags you selected will appear on this screen.
The Product Type controls the various sections that appear on the Product Details tab itself.
Service
Use this product type for the services your hospital provides. Patient visits, field service exams, emergency services, boarding, grooming, etc.
Service Fee
Use this product type for additional fees that can be charged on top of your services. Once a Service Fee has been created, it can be added on to services to automatically include the fee on the service when it is added to a bill. A common example might be a bio safety fee to account for the cleaning required after any exam.
Inventory Items
Use this product for any physical item that will be sold to a client and should be tracked within the system. After an item is sold, it will be decremented from the inventory location.
Inventory items can be used throughout the revised inventory system in VetView 4.0 and later, including Purchase Orders, Inventory Search, Inventory Management, Inventory Counts, and Inventory Pulls and Stocking.
Equipment
Use this product type to track physical equipment that is used internal to your hospital, but not sold to outside clients. This can be used to track things like exam tables, computers, imaging machines, etc. By including your equipment within VetView, you can add it to the Inventory system, and use it to keep track of the physical location of the equipment as well as vendor and service contract information.
Package Items
If you will be bundling a services and inventory items into a package that can include time of service and future items, you can create a Package Item instead. Package items allow you to include automatic volume discounts and pre-pay for both services and inventory items. See Product Setup Packages Tab for more information.
Package Items and Multi-Items should generally not be turned on for the same product, as they are two different concepts. Multi-Items are for bundled physical products that are sold as a single unit. Package items are for a combination of products, services, and future discounts that are sold and tracked separately.
Product Setup Options
These flags control additional Product Setup tabs that can appear within the product.
In this example, the Inventory subtab, the Presc Setup subtab, the Control Drug Machine Setup subtab, and the Med record subtab will appear.
Multi-Item is for physical inventory items that are bundled together and sold as a single unit, such as pre-prepared compounded pharmaceuticals or surgery kits. This is distinct from Packages, which also include services and discounts within the bundle.
Presc Setup is used for products sold through the pharmacy. This is applicable to both Regular prescriptions that flow through a central pharmacy location, and Dispensary prescriptions that are sold and issued from the clinic.
Control Drug Machine Setup is for pharmacy products that are also sold through CDMs. You can have the same product with distinct pricing for CDM sales, and also link the product to the CDM inventory.
ASAQ Eligible is for Montreal / Quebec only, and turns on the ASAQ tab for the product.
If all the other attributes are turned on for an Inventory item, there may be up to seven subtabs visible.
Product Details Subtab for Newly Saved and Existing Products
Sales Settings
This section defines the sales unit of the product, and determines whether the product can be sold as a fractional quantity (less than one sales unit).
Sales Unit: How the product is sold. Units are defined under the Unit Setup Screen.
Fractional Qty: Indicates that this product can be sold as less than a whole sales unit. This may be useful for liquids that are stocked and intended to be sold as unopened bottles but need to be split into portions for a smaller anima.
Disable Client Type Discount: Indicates that this product is not eligible for discounts, such as employee discounts or insurance program discounts. Use this for fixed fees such as shipping.
Product Pricing
This section determines how pricing is handled based on the actual sales unit cost, the markups and volume discounts, and also allows you to indicate that the product should be taxed based on a specific tax rate.
Base price: The lowest price for this product, either the amount it cost as wholesale on average or a similar unit price against which all other prices will be built.
Markup: The markup that will be applied to the base price to generate a profit.
Volume Discount: If the client is purchasing a large quantity of the product, you may offer a volume discount. This is calculated against the price after markup.
Minimum Price: Use this for products sold in smaller quantities that need to have a higher dollar minimum to stay profitable. For example, the time and labor used to process a prescription will be similar for 30 pills or 60 pills, but 30 pills would be less than this minimum dollar amount. The difference will be added onto the final sale price as a Minimum Price Adjustment.
Product Tax Category: If this product is taxable, the product tax category is the tax rate at which it will be applied. Note that taxes within VetView are also calculated against tax regions, not just tax categories, so the common tax category should be used for products sold in all tax regions.
Service Fee / Add-on Definitions
If you charge a service fee for a specific type of product, e.g. a pharmacy product, and it does not need to be listed in its own line item, you can include it automatically in the price of the product by adding it here.
Fees that require their own line item on a bill should instead be listed as their own separate product.
Inventory Costs and Defaults
This section determines how the product is handled at the Inventory level.
You can have the price auto update based on the most recently Purchase Order of the product, or a rolling average from the last six months of POs. This option simplifies management of the product pricing and allows it to more accurately reflect the cost to your hospital.
Inventory Units are recommended for products that are sold in bottles (such as pharmaceutical items) or boxes. Without these units, the Sales to Stock ratio switches on the Inventory tabs will not function correctly.
Product Notes
The product notes section is included to give you a place to store any other information about this product that you need to record, but which is not accounted for in the base VetView software.
This section also allows you to add a Product Alert. This alerts will appear on Inventory screens and other places in the system when appropriate. In this example, an alert of type Product Alert named Out of Stock has been added, with the note that the product is out of stock until October 21st.
Product Alerts will appear throughout the Inventory Management screens.
Price Calculator
The Price Calculator is a tool included on this tab as well as the Controlled Drug Machine tab.
This tool allows you to preview the final cost of a product for a client type, based on the settings in the Product Pricing section plus any other Service Fees defined in the service fee section.
Client type price sets are defined under Price Set Setup.
If the calculated price is too low or too high based on your settings, you can modify them and then rerun the calculator to see how the price changed.
Default Vendor's Product Info
If this product has a default vendor assigned (under the Inventory tab) you can modify the information provided by that vendor for their stock of the product in this section. Otherwise these fields will appear grayed out and cannot be modified.
Prior Purchase Orders
This section gives you a brief overview of the last purchase orders that included this product.
Alternate ID Definitions
This section allows you to associate an alternate ID number or synonyms with this product. VetView supports barcodes for stock and sales, CDM product numbers (if different from your regular line and sequence number), identical products on the lab software, or any other internal numbering system you need to associate with this product.