Only allow key staff to have access to editing formulations and stock. This helps prevent duplication of stock items and formulations and assists with consistency.
Consider bar coding your formulations and using a sheet of bar codes at reception to load formulations accurately.
Use naming conventions for the codes and descriptions for your formulations. Make the descriptions as informative as possible. This will make it easier for your team to find the correct items and easier to distinguish from single stock items when loading on an invoice. For example, your team should be selling vaccinations (formulations) rather than vaccines (stock items).
Set up an Standard Operating Policy (SOP) on how your clinic sets up formulations, how they should be named and how the new formulations are communicated to the rest of the clinic. This can be a very useful document, particularly when a lot of time elapses between initial set up of formulations and addition of new formulations.
Train your staff. It is very important that your staff know which formulations to use and why. This will also facilitate consistency with pricing and customer service as documents and messages may be linked to formulations or items within formulations.
If any unusual messages are displayed, make sure someone, who can take action, is notified. These messages are a safeguard to alert you to any functionality problems with that formulation, for example, deleted or inactivated products. VisionVPM has several layers of built-in safeguards, but if the messages are ignored, problems can arise, particularly with stock control and reporting.
Maintain your formulations. Formulations are one way of increasing the automation in VisionVPM, but they do need to be maintained. Check your formulations in the following situations.
Products – sometimes the product used in a formulation will be replaced by another product, or the same product with different pack size or pricing. For example, you may have changed to a different vaccine, or it may be available as a combination pack.
Pricing – some formulations are for procedures where the price is likely to be compared with your competitors' prices and likely to be quoted. For that reason, you may have selected not to automatically update with component price changes. The price of these products will need to be reviewed regularly – at least annually, if not more frequently.
Procedures – when the protocols change for your procedures, make sure your formulations are also updated.
Professional fee increases – the effect of fee increases will depend on how formulations are set up: whether there are headers in the formulations, how many levels of bundling there are, whether there are negative amounts in the formulations and the options you have selected. When you apply price increases, always review your formulations.
