Help Centre › Stock & pricing

Price groups

Staff rates, senior discounts, rescue rates — a named alternative mark-up that whoever is charging can pick, on any item, anywhere in FastVet.

A price group is a named alternative mark-up. Where the everyday price of an item is your cost plus your usual mark-up, a price group says “for these clients, use this mark-up instead”.

The cases practices set them up for:

Staff — the team buy at cost, or close to it.
Seniors — a standing discount for pensioners.
Rescues and charities — a reduced rate for organisations you support.
Breeders or wholesale — volume rates.

Note

A price group holds nothing but a description and a mark-up percentage. There is no separate price list per group and no per-item override — the group is a single number applied to the item's cost. That is what makes them quick to set up and also what limits them.

How the price is worked out#

This is the part worth understanding before you create any, because it is not a discount off your selling price:

Careful

A price group prices the item from its cost: cost × (1 + the group's mark-up) + tax. It ignores the item's normal selling price completely.

A worked example, from the demo practice. The item is a dental scale and polish: cost R326.09, normal selling price R750.00, tax 15.5%.

Charged as	Mark-up	Sum	Client pays
Normal	—	the catalogue selling price	R750.00
Seniors	25%	R326.09 × 1.25 = R407.61, + tax	R470.79
Staff	0%	R326.09 × 1.00 = R326.09, + tax	R376.63
Custom	—	whatever is typed	anything

So a 0% group sells at cost, 25% puts a quarter on cost, and so on. Choosing the mark-up is choosing the margin, not the discount — if you want “20% off”, work out what mark-up gives you that and set it, or use Custom for one-offs.

Careful

An item with no cost price is charged R0.00 by every price group. The sum starts from cost, so with no cost there is nothing to mark up and the line comes to nothing. Pick a group on such an item and FastVet now warns you on the spot — an amber line appears under the price, naming the group and saying it will charge zero. Charge it as Normal or Custom instead, or give the item a cost under Update Prices.

A group selected on an item with no cost price: the unit price falls to zero, and FastVet says why.

Price groups are only as good as the cost prices in your catalogue, so it is worth a pass through them before you rely on the groups — in some practices one item in ten has no cost recorded.

Note

Even a group whose mark-up matches your usual one will not always reproduce the selling price to the cent. The group recalculates from cost at today's tax rate, while the stored selling price was calculated whenever it was last set — in the example above, the practice's 100% group gives R753.27 against a stored R750.00, because the tax rate changed in between. That is expected, not a fault.

Creating a price group#

Who can do this

Administrators.

Home›Settings›Price Groups

The practice's price groups, each with its mark-up.

Choose Price Groups on the Settings menu.
Press Add.
Give it a description — this is the label staff will see on the chip, so make it obvious: “Staff”, “Seniors”, “SPCA”.
Set the mark-up percentage.
Save.

A price group is a description and a mark-up percentage — nothing else.

Tip

Keep the list short. Every group you create becomes another chip on every item editor in the practice, and a row of eight chips is slower to use than a row of two. Three or four is plenty for most practices.

Note

Deleting a group removes the chip. Charges already made at that rate keep the price they were charged at — nothing is recalculated retrospectively.

Charging at a group rate#

The chips sit beside the price on the item editor, wherever an item is charged.

The chips on a consultation item: Normal, Custom, and one per price group. Normal is selected, so the price is the catalogue R750.00.

Charge the item as usual.
On the item editor, tap the chip for the rate you want. The price updates immediately.
Press Add.

The same item with the senior rate applied — R470.79 instead of R750.00, worked out from cost at 25% rather than from the selling price.

Chip	Does
Normal	The everyday catalogue price. This is the default, and tapping it again puts the price back.
Custom	Lets you type the price yourself, for this one charge.
Each price group	Prices the item from cost at that group's mark-up.

The chips appear in every place FastVet charges an item:

Consultation items, and the Protocol Charge.
Counter sale items.
Hospital and boarding day items.
Grooming items.

Note

If Prices Read Only is switched on under Billing & Payments, staff can no longer type their own amount — Custom stops working. The named group chips keep working, which is often exactly the arrangement you want: approved rates yes, freehand prices no.

They are not applied automatically#

Careful

A price group is not attached to a client. There is no “this client is a senior” setting anywhere in FastVet. Somebody has to tap the right chip on every item, on every visit.

That is the single most important thing to know about them, and it is worth being blunt with staff about it. If a pensioner is meant to get the senior rate, the person charging has to know that and remember to tap it — on each line, not once for the visit.

What FastVet gives you to work with:

Question	Answer
Does the group carry over to the next item on the same visit?	No. Each line is chosen separately.
Does it carry over to the client's next visit?	No.
Is the rate recorded once charged?	Yes — the line remembers which group was used, and reopening the item shows that chip still selected.
Does the client see which rate they got?	No. The invoice shows the amount, not the group.

Tip

The practical answer is the client's notes. Put “Senior rate” or “Staff — charge at staff rate” in the standing notes on the client record: they show on the patient header during a consultation, so whoever is charging sees it without having to already know. It is the closest thing to automatic that FastVet offers.

Seeing what you gave away#

There is no report of discounts granted by price group. If you want to know what the senior rate is costing the practice, the workable approaches are:

The category summary report, compared month to month — a rising share of low-margin work shows up as falling income against similar activity.
The stock used report against income, for product-heavy discounting.
Deciding the rate deliberately in the first place, and reviewing the mark-up rather than the transactions.

Note

Because a group prices from cost, a group mark-up above 0% can never sell below cost — which is a useful floor. A 0% group sells at cost, so it makes no contribution to overheads: fine as a staff perk, worth thinking about before offering it to a client group.

Before you rely on them#

Cost prices are filled in on the items you expect to discount. No cost means R0.00.
The names are obvious on a chip — staff read four words, not a policy.
There are few groups, so the row of chips stays quick to use.
Staff know the rates are manual, and know where to look to find out a client qualifies.
The mark-up is a margin decision, reviewed like any other price.