Departments represent areas of a practice (e.g. Consulting, Surgery, Emergency) and are used  to:

• classify charges for improved reporting
• determine pricing via service ratios

There may be any number of Departments; these are independent of practice Locations.

Configuration

To use Departments, support need to be enabled on the Practice by selecting the Enable Departments option. When enabled, the current Department will be shown at the top-right of the screen, next to the practice Location.

Departments may be viewed and edited in Administration - Organisation.

Scope

By default, users can select from all Departments. To restrict this, assign the Departments a user can select from on their Departments tab.

Charging

Each charge item may be assigned a Department. This defaults to the current Department.

If there is a service ratio associated with the Department, this determines the price of the product.

Service Ratios

Department Service Ratios can be used to apply a multiplier to prices for products of a given product type for a Department. They can also have a calendar, to determine when the multiplier applies.

The multiplier is used when generating charges. This facility is designed to enable:

• different Departments (such as those used for over-night emergency or house-call operations) to charge more for products of certain types
• surcharges or discounts to be applied on particular product types at certain times.

Department Service Ratios are similar to Location Service Ratios except they provide finer control over pricing. Department Service Ratios take precedence over Location Service Ratios.