[Support]

The new system uses an Appointment Status type to cancel appointments. This means that you can have more than one cancellation type e.g. “Cancelled – need to rebook”, “Cancelled – no rebook required”, or you can just have ONE “Cancelled” status.

You are right though that for some reason these statuses are not apparent in the current BETA but they will be in BETA 4 coming soon.

[Support]

Hi – thanks for your question.

We could design a specific report for you to do this within ClinicOffice, or alternatively you could use MS Word (with the AVERY wizard) to accomplish the same thing.

 

[Support]

Hi Colm – thanks for your quick feedback.

>> it seems very slow in comparison to CO2005
>> in terms of start up and loading up…

This is mostly due to the program now being written in the Microsoft .NET 2 Framework. When you first run CO2007, the .NET 2 Framework has to be loaded first, then CO2007 gets loaded.

If you close down CO2007 and then start it up a second time, you should notice that it opens quite a lot faster as the Framework has now already been loaded.

Also, .NET applications are provided in what is called a CIL (Common Intermediate Language). When you run a .NET application, the Framework compiles the program on-the-fly as it is being run. This means that the first time you open a form, it gets compiled behind the scenes before it can be shown. As before, the 2nd time you open it, things will be faster.

By contrast, CO2005 was written in native Windows 32-bit code which means it is completely pre-compiled and only needs to be executed, no intermediate language, no runtime compilation. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but technology-wise .NET is definitely the way forward and coding directly to Win32 will soon be obsolete.

As PCs get more powerful, the performance lag of the .NET framework will become less and less.

>> do we need the splash screen….

No, but as it doesn’t add much (if any) overhead and it lets you know that something is happening while the application loads up, we think it’s useful (and it looks nice!).

Other things to bear in mind :-
– This is an ALPHA release so there is extra DEBUG code in there which is slowing things down a bit more
– The apparent slowness you have noticed is ONLY in the User Interface (i.e. the on-screen components). The database engine is actually MUCH faster than CO2005 which was always a bit of a problem in CO2005.

>>I couldn’t convert my Dbase as yet

Was there an error with the conversion process? If so please let us know so we can take a look at it.

>>The ribbon bar on the Diary takes up alot of space… any way of making it smaller

Yes – right-click it then click Minimize or you can double-click on any of the tabs on the ribbon to minimize/restore its size.

>>facility to dock the diary side bar so that all you could view was the diary pages

Not a bad idea! We’ll see if we can put that in for you!

>> Really like the ability to redesign the form…
>> how powerful will this be as in this version it will
>> allow movement of fields but not removal???

Ah but it does! To remove a field, simply enter design mode on a form, then either right-click on a field and click Hide or drag-and-drop the field into the Hidden Fields section in the little customization form.

>> Like the zoom in/out buttons on top but note
>> it’s missing from the right click menu

Yeah – there’s a bit more work needed on the right-click menus.

>> Note the addition of weekly veiw, monthly view etc and
>> question the value of this… not a feature we would use
>> working week maybe

Fair comment. The functionality is offered by the component so rather than disabling it we made it available – you never know if someone will find that kind of thing useful!

As usual Colm, thanks for your valuable contributions – please keep them coming!

[Support]

Thanks for the suggestion. Even with CO2005, you can store all correspondence in a patient’s record by dragging and dropping files (such as documents and emails) onto a patient’s record.

ClinicOffice is NOT an email client however (like Outlook) so it is impossible for it to automatically save emails that you send to a client.

If you’re referring to emails sent from WITHIN the program though, then yes they will be saved in an audit log as part of the new Patient Recall System which helps to manage patient communications.

I hope this answers your question!

[Support]

Hi Colm

Thanks for the info, I hope it all works better for you with your new setup! 😀

Just an idea you might want to include Windows Vista on your Options list. Unfortunately more and more of our users are starting to use it as more machines are coming pre-installed with it 🙁

Again Thanks

[Support]

Hi – you can in fact type any value (e.g. “40”) into the default appointment lengths on that screen.

[Support]

Hi there – thanks for your post.

I’ll do my best to answer your questions but I’m guessing you want an independent perspective rather than a Pioneer Software employee, so hopefully someone else will answer you too!

I wonder if there is anyone out there who is using this software for a clinic providing:
a) private GP walk in services
b) medical aesthetic services (botox, fillers, lasers, hair removal, skin rejuvenation etc)
c) medical ultrasound imaging services
d) private walk in gynaecology services

I can confirm that we have clients in all these medical professions. We’ve noticed a real growth particularly in the area of cosmetic surgeries taking on ClinicOffice.

how customisable are the fields to allow collection of diagnosis-specific data so that audits can be performed easily.

There is no limit to the number of custom fields that can be defined, but you may need us to develop some reports for you to get the clinical audit that you desire.

… I presume all this cannot be customised from the available fields but could be developed as a bespoke database.

Actually, because there is no limit to the number of custom fields and/or forms, there is no need for bespoke development to achive this.

…2 systems eg something like EMIS for the GP services, how feasible would it be to join the 2 together so that there is no duplication of demographic data etc.

This would require some bespoke customisation from us.

From the aesthetic services point of view, how easy or difficult would it be to connect a digital camera to the PC and take before and after pictures directly into a given patient’s record?

Simply drag and drop the photo from the camera onto the DOCUMENTS area of the patient record, or the clinical history tree and ClinicOffice will store the photo in the database along with the patient record.

how feasible would it be for this software to talk to the website database and download the customer details so that it does not have to be entered again?

Again this would require bespoke customisation.

I hope these answers help a little!

[Support]

ClinicOffice does not go down to the level of allocating Payments/Credits against individual invoice lines.

It may be that some accountancy software does this, but it would simply add another layer of complexity for users if they had to start allocating payments and credits not only against invoices but also against the individual lines in invoices.

This isn’t something that we are currently planning to implement, although it may be possible to offer some sort of compromise by allowed the stock to be adjusted from the credit/refund screen.

[Support]

I’m not sure I understand – Refunds are on a separate screen (click Finances | Refunds) while Payments are on their own screen too (click Finances | Payments).

You can configure Staff Access Rights to allow/disallow access to these screens. I hope this helps!

[Support]

Under “Grid Options” you can turn off the “Auto Update Grid Contents” option which will stop the grid from refreshing and will keep your place on the grid.

However, this should be something that we can change in the new version.

[Support]

Credits and Refunds are two completely different things and the box “This is a Credit” is correct.

1) Such a transaction reduces the “Credit” balance on the person’s account.

That’s correct. Credits are applied against Invoices in the exact same way as are payments – which is why the “This is a Credit” box is on the payment screen. Credits are given when you want to “credit” a persons account but when no money changes hands.

2) In accountancy terms a refund is a “debit” in the Sales ledger

While Credits are applied against Invoices, Refunds are applied against Payments, and unlike Credits (where no money changes hands), Refunds are given when money is returned to the customer.

Refunds are also more complex because they can affect the account ledger in different ways depending on the allocation status of the Payment being refunded.

For example, let’s say you invoice a patient for £20 and then they pay you £20. Their account balance is £0. Later on you decide to refund them that £20 payment (or perhaps just a part of that payment).

What is their account balance after the Refund? Still £0 – hence the Refund has to be posted both as a negative payment and a negative invoice so that the account balance is not affected.

However, what if a patient has pre-paid £100 for 5 treatments (@ £20 each)? They receive 4 treatments and invoices are raised for a total of £80 – hence their account is still £20 in credit. They don’t want the last treatment so you give them a refund for £20. This is a Refund (not a Credit) because money has changed hands, however in this case the account balance needs to be adjusted.

Of course, it could also be the case that a Refund is applied against a part-allocated and part-unallocated Payment which further complicates the calculations required. None-the-less, ClinicOffice handles all these possibilities.

I hope this helps to explain things a bit better for you. If you have any suggestions as to how all of the above scenarios could be handled differently and more simply then we’d be happy to listen.

[Support]

After clicking “Add Line” and then clicking on the new line, you can press a letter on the keyboard to go straight to the items which begin with that letter.

Unfortunately, having to click the drop-down arrow on a drop-down control to drop-down the list is something that we can’t do much about, but we’ll take your point into consideration for the new version.

[Support]

Hi Claire – please can you call our support line (0870 745 5008) when it’s convenient and we’ll take a look remotely to see if we can find out what is causing this problem.

[Support]

Hi 

I hope that there will be a facility to add standard text to clincial history, with 1 key stroke.

“Template text” is on our wishlist. It’s not going to be possible to add text with “1 keystroke” – after all – which key would you use??? “a”, “b”, “1”? The function keys are all reserved as are CTRL-? and ALT-? combinations.

However, it will be quick and easy to select template text.

Flags that are different symbols that stay on the patients record card on the first page.

Yes, different flag symbols are on the wishlist.

[Support]

Hi Colm,

It is possible to print a range of invoices from ClinicOffice by simply multi-selecting the desired invoices (from the Invoices database), right-clicking and then clicking PRINT and selecting the desired format.

Unfortunately this won’t resolve the issue of wasted paper!

[Support]

What version are you using? The latest build is 1084 and as far as we are aware the problem was resolved. Thanks.

[Support]

Hi Claire – we have not had any other instances of this problem reported and are not able to reproduce it. Please run a Database Integrity Check on your database and tick the “Fix Currency Rounding” option.

If the problem persists, then please send us a backup of your database along with the names of the accounts that have this problem and we’ll take a look at it for you.

[Support]

The fields are not missing, they simply need adding to the SQL statement that provides the data source for the report – which requires a knowledge of the SQL language and our database structure.

Also, if you have modified the layout of your “invoice” report and we sent you a new one then it will overwrite any layout changes you have made, so the best solution is to give us a call and we’ll add in the additional fields for you.

Thanks.

[Support]

Hi – this is something that is much easier if we do it for you.

As it’s only a small change to an existing report and you are on the ClinicOffice Support Plan, we’re happy to do this without any charge.

Please can you make sure that you have RealVNC installed on your computer (you can get it from here : https://pioneersoftware.co.uk/co-updates and then give our office a call (0870 745 5008) and we’ll use VNC to remotely adjust the report for you.

Thanks.

[Support]

This has now been implemented in build 1083.

[Support]

This has now been implemented in build 1083.

[Support]

Hi Guys. If you have definitely created an invoice for a specific appointment but there is no icon showing, then this can be fixed by doing the following :-

– Right click the appointment
– Click Appointment Invoices, and click the invoice in question
– In the invoice editor, click the Notes memo pad and press the space bar
– Click Save & Close
– The icon should now appear in the diary (as long as the refresh setting is not on manual)

What this does is makes a change to the invoice record (i.e. the space character in the Notes field) which then forces the Save & Close to update the database which also updates the appointment record.

We have had a few reports now that the latest builds sometimes seem to miss out the appointment icons, but we’ve been unable to reproduce the problem here!

We’ll keep looking into it though and post an update as soon as we can find a cause.

[Support]

Thanks for the suggestion – the ability to sort both of those screens differently will be available in CO2007.

[Support]

Thanks for your comment – did you know you can tap the TAB key a couple of times to move the cursor to the next field in a form?

[Support]

Hi – just to clarify this subject – build 1080 fixed an issue where when the diary was in “Manual Refresh” mode, it was still refreshing automatically whenever invoices/payments or sessions were entered.

For clinics with 10,000s records, this was causing performance issues. Since build 1080, if you select “Manual Refresh” – the diary will ONLY refresh when you tell it to (which is what should happen!).

If this is not what you want, then please change the dairy refresh (under diary options at the top right) to a different value – e.g. 30 seconds or 1 minute.

Thanks.

[Support]

Well – you can configure your IntelliSMS account so that the txt messages appear to come from a specific number. Patients could then “reply” to the message and it could go to a specific phone, but it’s not really feasible for a computer program like ClinicOffice to “receive” sms messages.

[Support]

Good suggestion – automated sms text messaging is now on the list.

[Support]

Hi Colm – thanks for the report. Since about build 1078, we had to make some changes to where the downloaded updates were stored due to Windows Vista compatibility issues.

Windows Vista doesn’t like any ‘volatile’ data being stored in the “Program Files” directory (or any subfolders thereof) so ClinicOffice now saves downloaded program updates to the shared documents area on your computer, which by default is :-
C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersDocumentsClinicOffice 2005Updates

Thanks for reporting the other issue though – this has been fixed and re-uploaded still as build 1080 because it’s such a small change. Simply re-download and install the update again.

[Support]

Hi Claire – please can you try the following :-

– Click TOOLS | DB INTEGRITY CHECK
– Tick the box that says “Fix Currency Rounding”
– Start the integrity check

This could be caused when you use certain Tax or Discount percentages on invoices which would result in fractions of a pence in your database. This issue was fixed a while ago, but it’s possible that you still have invoices/payments with fractions of pennies on them. The above process should fix that.

[Support]

Thanks for the suggestion – we may be able to include some sort of template messages in CO2007.

[Support]

There is already a Batch Operations feature in CO2007 but it’s unlikely that we’ll implement an import feature that overwrites existing records.

[Support]

At present the colours cannot be changed, but we’ll add it to the wish list for CO2007 – thanks!

[Support]

Thanks for that – we’ll look into it asap.

[Support]

You can always “de-allocate” a patient code by simply deleting (i.e. ‘backspacing’ over it). You can then re-allocate that number to somebody else.

[Support]

Thanks Colm – looks like the patch file was corrupted on our web server. We’ve re-uploaded it and tested it, so it should be sorted.

On the CO2005 update page, there is a link to the “builds.txt” file which logs all the changes made with each release. Not a bad idea to mirror it on the forum though – thanks for the suggestion.

[Support]

Good suggestion – that will be covered in ClinicOffice 2007. Thanks.

[Support]

Hi Jim – actually we only have a handful of NHS users out there – by far the majority of our customers are in private practice, so I’m not sure you’ll get much of answer I’m afraid.

The best recommendation I can make is to download the 30-day trial version and perhaps give it a go yourself to see how it fits in with your practice. We are happy to undertake customization – but obviously we would have to charge for it.

Hope this helps a little!

[Support]

You can click FILE | SETTINGS | User Options, then untick “Confirm Auto Assign Patient Code” in the Optional Messages list.

Hope this helps!

[Support]

Hmmm… most likely you had a device in your E: drive recently and it might be that you saved a file onto it so that somewhere in the document history, E: is referenced.

Please try closing down CO2005 and starting it again to see if the problem persists. Thanks.

[Support]

This has now been fixed – please re-download the update again and all should be ok! Thanks.

[Support]

You’re absolutely correct! 😳

We somehow missed out the versioning information on the latest build. It will be corrected and re-uploaded within the next hour or so. Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience.

[Support]

Thanks for the suggestions Jim – quite a number of them are already on our todo list 😀

[Support]

Hi Maarten – I’m not too sure what you mean to be honest!

If you want to print a list of appointments for a large date range, the best thing is to use the “Appointment List” report.

– Click Reports and Templates
– Double-click the Appointment List report
– Enter the date range against the START date criteria

This will give you a list of all the appointments for your desired date range.
Hope this helps!

[Support]

This is on our “todo list” for ClinicOffice 2007. Our current estimate is that the CO2007 BETA release should be available in April.

[Support]

OK – that’s a pretty simple addition so we’ll add that in. Thanks.

[Support]

Hi – we found the problem and it has been resolved in the latest update (build 1073) which is now available on our website.

Thanks.

[Support]

We’re looking into – will post an answer shortly – thanks.

[Support]

Hi Colm,

Not too sure what you mean to be honest. As you’re on the ClinicOffice Support Plan, I think the easiest and quickest way to resolve this is probably to give us a call when you have 10-15 mins free and we can take a look remotely to see if we can help out.

You may have received an email that we recently sent out about a security issue with RealVNC 4.1.1. The above download link is for RealVNC 4.1.2 (the latest release) which fixed the security issue. If you haven’t done so already, please check which version of RealVNC you have and if it’s 4.1.1, then uninstall it and re-install this latest version.

Kind Regards,

[Support]

Hi Colm,

>> Can you insert a similiar feature within the appointment
>> editor window that will allow the gereration of a Next
>> appointment Slip using the existing Appointment Confirmation
>> Template

The Print button already drops down a list of available appointment reports/templates, so all you have to do is create a Next Appointment Reminder report and it will appear on that menu.

>> can you do it so it goes directly to the chosen printer
>> without displaying the usual document window

We could perhaps do something where it goes straight to a preview window, but that would need to be a future update.

Kind Regards.

[Support]

Hi,

As Colm said, the most likely cause is that your diary intervals are set too high. Try changing them to a smaller value. As a general rule of thumb, your diary interval setting should be the lowest common denominator of the different appointment lengths you intend to use.

For example, if you have appointments of 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes, then the best setting for the diary intervals would be 15 minutes.

[Author]

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