Help Centre › Stock & pricing

Prices & the catalogue

Maintain the catalogue everything is charged from: items, categories, price groups and VAT.

The price list is the catalogue behind every charge in FastVet. Consultations, sales, hospital and boarding days and grooms all draw from it.

Checking a price#

Anybody can look a price up without changing the catalogue.

Home›Check Price

Search by name or filter by category. Each line shows the stock on hand, the price including VAT and the price excluding it.

Note

Your practice can restrict this screen by role, under Billing & Payments. With the restriction on, vets and administrators see every price and everybody else sees only the items they can charge themselves.

Where the catalogue lives#

Who can do this

Administrators only.

Home›Stock & Prices

Tile	Leads to
Update Prices	The price list: every catalogue item, its category, price and VAT.
Update Protocols	Your protocols on their own, each shown with the invoice it prints. See Seeing every protocol at once.
Manage Stock	What you have on hand, stock movements and adjustments. See Stock & inventory.
Suppliers & levels	Who supplies each item and when to reorder it. See Setting suppliers and levels in bulk.
Purchase orders	Ordering from your suppliers. See Ordering stock from a supplier.

Note

Price groups and the list of suppliers are on the main Settings menu.

Adding and editing items#

The price list. Cost, markup and retail are edited in the row itself.

Cost, markup and retail can be typed straight into the list; see Changing many prices at once. Open an item for everything else: its type, where it may be charged, its protocol contents and its picture.

Go to Stock & Prices → Update Prices.
Search for the item, or press Add for a new one.
Choose the Type of Price: Lab, Procedure, Materials, Treatment or Protocol. Treatments and materials also get a measure unit and a low stock value.
Set its category, sub-category, description and invoice description.
Under This price will be visible to, choose where the item may be charged: Consultation, Hospitalization, Sales, Boarding, Grooming, Shop. An item switched on nowhere cannot be charged.
Under Pricing Details, enter the cost and either the markup or the retail price. The VAT is worked out for you.
Press Save.

Note

Every item needs a description, an invoice description, a cost, a markup and both retail figures. If something is still missing when you press Save, a red message at the bottom of the form names the fields, each one is marked, and the screen jumps to the first of them. Nothing is saved until they are all filled in.

Tip

If a vet cannot find an item in the price picker, check that Consultation is switched on under This price will be visible to.

Note

Give every item a sub-category. The consultation price picker browses category → sub-category → item, so an item without one can only be found by searching.

Changing many prices at once#

Who can do this

Administrators only.

Home›Stock & Prices›Update Prices

Search for the items you want, type over the figures in the list, and save once at the end.

Changed costs. The old value stays under each one until you save.

Nothing is saved until you press Save. Changed rows are marked, each changed figure shows its old value underneath, and Discard puts them all back.

Typing a new cost. The switch at the top, When I type a new cost, decides what happens to the retail price:

Setting	What happens when you type a cost
Hold the markup	The retail price moves with the cost, keeping your margin. This is the default, and the right choice for a supplier price increase.
Hold the retail	The retail price stays where it is and the margin changes. Check the margin; it can go negative.

Tip

Search for the range you are updating, then type down the Cost column pressing Enter after each one. Enter moves to the next row’s cost.

Note

More than 300 matching items? The list shows them all but becomes read-only, and a warning above the list says so. The tick boxes and the bulk actions are not offered while it is: click a row (or its Change button) to edit that one item, or search or filter down to 300 or fewer to get them back.

Changing a lot of items at once. Tick the rows you want (the tick box in the header takes everything currently listed, so filter first) and the actions appear above the list:

Two items ticked, with the bulk actions above the list.

Action	What it does
Set markup %	Puts every ticked item on the same markup and works out the retail price from it.
Raise cost by %	Raises the cost. The retail follows or not, depending on the switch above.
Raise retail by %	Raises the retail price directly. Use this for services, which have no cost.
Category	Moves the ticked items into one category. Their stock records move with them.
.?0 / .00	Rounds the retail prices down to the nearest 10c, or to a whole amount.

Note

Set markup and Raise cost by skip protocols and items with no cost price, and tell you how many they skipped. Use Raise retail by for items with no cost.

Note

Cost and markup are excluding VAT; retail is the price the client pays, including VAT. The line under the list says so. (If your practice uses GST, the labels say GST.)

Note

An item priced below its cost is flagged in its row, and the save bar counts how many of your changes need attention.

Finding items that need attention. Use the Show box at the top of the screen, or Show them on the line under the list:

Show	What you get
All items	The whole catalogue. This is how the screen opens.
Needs attention	Both of the groups below, together.
Below cost	Items priced under what you pay for them. Fix them with Set markup or by typing a new retail.
No cost price	Items with no cost. Most are services and are meant to be there; the others are stock that still needs a cost entered.

Re-pricing one supplier’s items. The Supplier box narrows the list to one supplier’s items, so you can tick them all and use the bulk actions. It appears once your practice has suppliers set up. No supplier set lists the stocked items that do not have one yet.

Note

The filters combine with the search and the category. A row you fix stays on screen, without its warning, until you save.

On a phone. The list opens read-only. Tap an item to edit it, or press Edit many to tick several and use the bulk actions. Above 300 matching items there is no Edit many: search or filter the list down first, and it comes back.

Price groups#

Home›Settings›Price Groups

A price group is a named rate: a staff rate, a pensioner rate, a rescue rate. Whoever is charging picks it on the item. A group holds a separate rate for each kind of item, so one group can say "goods at cost, services at half price".

Normal is the everyday catalogue price, and the default.
Custom lets you type the amount for one charge.
A named group charges its rate for that kind of item: a percentage off the price list, the item at cost, or cost plus a markup.

Careful

A markup rate charges R0.00 for an item with no cost price, because there is nothing to mark up. FastVet warns you under the price when that is about to happen, and never applies it automatically from a client's standing rate. A discount off the price list has no such problem.

A client can also be put on a group permanently; see Giving a client a standing rate. The full topic is Price groups.

Note

If Prices Read Only is switched on under Billing & Payments, staff cannot change the price when charging an item: the catalogue price is used, and neither Custom nor the price groups can be chosen.

Protocols#

A protocol bundles several catalogue items under one heading (a vaccination, a dental package, a spay) so the vet charges them all in one go.

Create a price-list item and set its type to Protocol.
Give it a price. This is the Protocol Charge, what the client pays.
Add the items that belong in it, each with the default amount that normally goes with the job.

Note

The client is billed one line, at the Protocol Charge. The items inside it are recorded against the visit (stock comes off, the clinical record is complete) but are not billed separately.

See Protocols for the charge modes, quantities, price groups on protocols, and building a pick-list protocol.

Actions that fire when an item is charged#

A catalogue item can also change the patient's record when it is billed: for example mark the patient deceased or sterilised, or cancel their outstanding reminders or future bookings. Tick the actions you want on the item, under When this item is billed. They are most often used on euthanasia and cremation items, and Mark patient sterilised on spay and neuter procedures.

Book a follow-up reminder books the patient's next reminder for the item, a set number of days after it is billed: see Reminders booked by an item.

Note

The actions run when the invoice is finished, not when the line is added. A line added by mistake can be removed beforehand with no effect on the patient.

VAT#

FastVet holds your practice's VAT rate and works out the VAT on every item from it; you do not enter VAT per item. To show prices on invoices without the VAT broken out, switch on Hide Tax on Invoices under Billing & Payments.

Practices with farming clients can charge some items at more than one rate. Where that is switched on, each item carries a Tax class and the rate on a line depends on both the item and the client: see Zero-rated and exempt items.