The October update of eVetPractice includes two significant workflow changes for practices:

We've replaced the workflow to postpone invoices with invoice selection at checkout! Check out the new workflow here!
The boarding calendar is getting a total makeover. It now shows you vacancies, lets pets share a cage, and shows arrival and departure times. We've also added default start times for all appointment types! Check it out here!

This release also includes a few other key workflow improvements:

It's way easier to define what to include in the Usage Report, we've added more information into the report and export, and we've generally cleaned things up.
If you'd like to include Declined Treatments on your invoices or receipts, we've added a merge field to make sure clients know what your staff recommended during the visit.
You're now able to opt out of sending Wellness Plan Renewal Emails.
Clinics love our Referral Letters so much that they want to use them even when we don't have the email of the referring veterinarian. We've made it easier to email the client instead of (or in addition to) the rDVM.
We've also got a few bug fixes.

Checkout Flow

The checkout screen has been enhanced to provide you with more clarity and control over how payments affect open invoices. Above the payment entry section, if the client currently has unpaid invoices, you will see a list of them, with checkboxes, to allow you to decide which ones to link to each payment.

The Balance box next to the payment entry section will include the following

Total Unpaid Balance
Excluded Invoices, which includes any invoices that would have been unchecked in the invoice check-list.
Account Credit if the client has an unused credit on their account
Total Due for Selected Invoices, which only shows if they excluded an invoice or have an account credit.

The Postpone Invoice option has been removed on the checkout screen since this workflow should replace that functionality.

If any of the selected invoices will not have its amount paid affected by the payment, a confirmation window will appear to ask if you would like to include those invoices with the receipt. The confirmation window below will not appear if the payment entered at checkout pays against all of the invoices checked in the list.

The list at the top displays invoices with Payment Applied on this receipt. Payment always applies to the oldest selected invoice first.

The selectable list at the bottom displays invoices that unaffected by the payment. By default these will not be finalized and posted, but you can choose to finalize them and link them to this receipt anyway.

A quick note - We did our best when changing this workflow not to add a single click to the most common workflows. The new workflow also significantly reduces the number of clicks for multi-invoice clients. While we've added prompts to ensure accuracy, the workflow should take a lot less time postponing invoices or reversing invoices accidentally included on the wrong receipt–especially when handling high-volume clients that don't pay their entire bill at time-of-service (like shelters).

Boarding Calendar

Calendar Changes

The Boarding Calendar has a new look!

The first thing you'll notice is that calendars now appear in tabs: Appointments, Boarding, and Grooming. Once under the Boarding tab, you'll see that in addition to the weekly view, there is now a day view to help you manage check-in and check-out times. The week view will always come up first when you select the boarding tab.

The most exciting change to the calendar is that the left panel now shows all of your availability, making it easier to identify and fill vacancies.

Using Default Start Time and Duration

Default Reservation Duration Walkthrough

When creating new reservations, we now use the default duration to populate the appointment end time. Be sure to get an appointment default duration configured for all your appointment types to take advantage of this feature!

To configure the default duration, click the settings icon and locate Appointment Types from the navigation bar area. Choose the appointment type to configure and select the edit icon to open the Edit Appointment Type screen. Locate the Default Duration and enter the duration in minutes as shown below. In the example below 12 hours (720 minutes) is entered for Boarding appointment type.

Default Appointment Start Time Walkthrough

You can now assign a default start time per appointment type. This feature is really useful for the new boarding calendar, but it also works great for your other appointments as well.

For example, if your practice always books surgical appointments at 9 AM, you can set the default start time for your Surgery appointment type at 9 AM. This start time is used when a new appointment is created from the monthly view of the Appointment Calendar, the weekly view of the Boarding calendar, and the non-calendar process to create a boarding reservation.

To configure appointment start time, select the Settings icon and locate the Appointment Types on the Navigation Bar. Select Appointment types, find the Appointment Type to change, and select the edit icon . Locate the Default Start Time and enter start time using the time picker.

Usage Report

A few enhancements have been added to the Usage Report in this release.

The previous billable item selector in the Usage Report has now been replaced with a more intuitive tree-selector to choose the billable items to include in the report.

Each billable item type is included, broken out by category. You can also use the Search box at the bottom to find an item in the list that you may not see.

2. The client's primary phone and email has been added in the report view and exports

3. The client's name was missing from the excel export, which has now been added back in.

4. The Selected Treatments section in the Usage Report has been removed, due to the amount of space it would take up on the page for selecting a mass amount of billable items. Now, the Include items with zero usage in totals filter has been turned on by default (can still be disabled if needed), which will display all items in the totals section at the top, whether or not they were used in that time period.

Declined Treatments

A new merge field has been added to display declined treatment items on custom document templates that your practice might have created for Invoices and Receipts.

The merge field will apply only to Account Balance/Invoice and Payment History/Receipt document template types.

When the merge field is added to the document template, when printing the invoice or receipt, where those declined treatments actually pertain to that invoice, the following section will print with the PDF.

Wellness Plans

Renewal Emails

An option under practice settings has been added to disable the automatic sending of the wellness plan renewal emails, which are sent to clients when a wellness plan is being renewed.

You will find this under Practice Settings | General | Miscellaneous. By default, the box will be checked. If you would no longer like these emails to send to your clients, you can uncheck the box.

Setup

When deleting a billable item from the management screens, if the item exists in an active wellness plan for a patient, a prompt will come up confirming your action and how you would like to proceed.

It will explain the potential implications of deleting. You will be given three options to choose from

Delete - Confirming that you would like to proceed with deleting the billable item.
Make Inactive - Marking the billable item inactive rather than deleting it.
Cancel - You would like to do neither option, just leave the billable item as is.

Referral Letters

A checkbox has been added to email the client in the referral letter screen, rather than having to type it in if you wanted to include the client, or only include the client.

In this screen, if a referring hospital or doctor email exists, the Email Client? will be unchecked.
If an email does not exist for the hospital or doctor, the box will be checked by default.
If the client has no email, the Email Client? will not be shown.

Bug Fixes

When using the Move Billable Items tool, moving a procedure or lab item to inventory will no longer result in an error.
The Checkout Client quick-link will now take you to checkout, rather than not performing any action. This applies to various screens such as the visit page, add/edit reminders, patient general information, and so on.
Occasionally entering certain phone numbers saying they were invalid, has now been resolved.
Printing a label on a dispensible item from the Treatments page will respect the tiered pricing of that item.