Working with fixed surcharges, bundles and product variants

In Vetocare you can of course already create products and assign them to a patient. But sometimes you would rather not charge for a procedure separately, or you regularly use the same products for a particular treatment. In this article we share some tips that can help.

Fixed surcharge

We start with the fixed surcharge, because it comes back in product bundles and product variants too. So it is useful to understand what the fixed surcharge in Vetocare can do and how it works.

A fixed surcharge lets you charge a fixed amount for an extra procedure when a product is sold. You could also put it on the invoice as a separate line, but sometimes it is more appropriate to include it in the price straight away. And in some cases you cannot include the procedure as a margin, because some procedures are not tied to the quantity of the product.

A few examples where this can be the case:

• A surcharge for preparing a prescription;
• A surcharge for registering a microchip;
• A surcharge for administering a medicine.

In these examples the quantity or type of product does not always matter, so you can use the fixed surcharge to include the procedure in the price. When invoicing, Vetocare automatically works the surcharge into the amount on the invoice.

This is how it works:

Say a product costs €1.00 per millilitre and you administer 10 millilitres, with a fixed surcharge of €15.00 for administering it. The price is then not charged as €1.00 per ml but as €2.50 per ml. That price is made up of the product price of €1.00 plus €1.50 of fixed surcharge spread over the quantity administered (€15.00 / 10 ml). And all of this is handled automatically, without any extra arithmetic.

Product bundles

Some treatments, operations or procedures consist of a number of fixed steps that regularly use the same products. Think of call-out fees, a starting rate, sedatives, disinfectants and so on — and then the treatment itself on top. So that you do not have to gather a list of products and services for every procedure, you can set them up in product bundles.

In a product bundle you choose the products in advance and can optionally set a quantity per product. When you assign a bundle to an animal, you enter the quantities actually used and select any batch numbers. Product bundles save a lot of time and stop products being forgotten on the invoice or when booking them out of stock.

The fixed surcharge above can be applied here too when needed. If administering a product is part of the procedure, you can also choose not to apply the surcharge.

Product variants

The newest addition to our features is product variants. Adding a fixed surcharge to a medicine can mean the product counts as a service and, for example, has to be charged at a different VAT rate. Another example is selling a microchip with or without registration. In both cases it is the same product, but with a different selling price, description or even VAT rate.

You could solve this by entering them as separate products, but the examples above do share the same stock and batch numbers. Sharing stock makes it all a little more complicated, and that is why we came up with product variants.

With a product variant you make a copy of the main product — a medicine, for example — in a single click. You then give the new variant a different name, apply the fixed surcharge and choose the right VAT rate. The new variant simply appears among your products, but uses the stock of the main product. So there is no longer any need to correct the stock or particular batch numbers by hand.

For inspiration, a few more situations where you could add a product variant:

• A different VAT rate for prescribing or administering a product.
• A product with or without a fixed surcharge, for example for registering a microchip or not.
• A product with a different dosage, withdrawal period or explanation depending on the species.
• A variant with a different price or margin rule.
• A variant with a different product group for the revenue report.

Product variants can also be used together with product bundles. We hope these tips save you plenty of time and arithmetic, so you can focus on the work that really matters.