Daily Express Checkout

The Daily Express Checkout Card on the Dashboard provides everything you need to quickly create invoices and checkout clients who are currently in the clinic. It displays information only for patients who have an appointment scheduled or a chart created for the current day by default, although you can also change the day.

For these clients, the card pulls relevant billable items from the Calendar, Smart Charts, and Invoices and displays them in one place. Your primary goal is to review any existing invoices that need attention and, if necessary, create a new invoice for today’s visit.

The Daily Express Checkout Dashboard Card

Overview

Each patient has one blue bar in the express checkout, which starts closed. You can click the blue bar to open up the details on that patient. To the left of the patient name is the patient menu button, which allows you to access the Client Workspace for this patient and also produce a Patient Label if needed.

At the top center of the Express Checkout card is the date navigator. When the card is loaded it will always default to the current day, however you can click on the date or use the arrow buttons to navigate to another day. Clicking on the Today button will bring you back to the current day.

At the top right of the Express Checkout card you will find buttons to create new blank invoices and blank refunds. While the express checkout’s main purpose is to quickly create invoices based on a known patient and known services and products recommended in their charts, sometimes you may want to create an invoice or refund from scratch, for example for a walk-in client. In those cases, you can do this by clicking on the blue + Invoice button or the grey + Refund button. Both of these actions can also be done from the Dispensary transactions page, but sometimes it is easier to do it right from the Dashboard.

A dispensary must be selected in the dropdown before either of these buttons works — the invoice or refund is filed in that dispensary’s books.

Select Dispensary Column

The Select Dispensary column displays all the dispensaries you have access to. It’s crucial to select the correct dispensary account before creating an invoice, as the invoice will be created within that specific account’s set of books.

Depending on the dispensary you select, some products or services may be enabled or disabled. This is because those items may or may not exist in the selected dispensary. For example, if a practitioner and the clinic both sell supplements, an admin would need to create a separate invoice for each dispensary. When the clinic’s dispensary is selected, the practitioner’s products would not be available to add to the invoice, and vice versa. Each dispensary tracks its own sales, inventory, products, and purchases — multiple dispensaries let you separate different businesses that share a clinic space. See our help file on managing multiple dispensaries for more information if this is your situation.

Services Column

The Services column displays all appointments booked for the client in the calendar that you have permission to see. Admin staff will see all appointments for all practitioners, while practitioners will only see their own appointments.

To add services to an invoice, simply click on the desired service in the list. The item will turn orange, indicating that it will be added to the invoice when you click the green New Invoice button at the far right of the row. Note that this is different from the blue + Invoice button that at the top right of the Express Checkout card, which will create a new blank invoice.

Select Items Column

The Chart column displays all billable products and diagnoses included in any Smart Chart created today that you have permission to see. Admin staff will see items from all charts, while practitioners will only see items from charts they created or that have been shared with them.

To add items to an invoice, click on the item in the list. It will turn orange, indicating that it will be added to the invoice when you click New Invoice or Checkout. If you’ve used billable diagnoses in your chart, they will also appear here and be added to the invoice’s memo section.

Each item has an options button to the left of it. Clicking on this will give you access to the Treatment Plan related that time, as well as additional options specific to the type of item. For example, if the item is a product, then you will have the option to print a product label. If it is a prescription, you will be able to generated a signed prescription.

Items That Are Greyed Out

Items which are greyed out cannot be added to the invoice because they are not related to the selected dispensary. This means that while they were recommended by the practitioner in their chart, the items are part of a different dispensary.

Items With A Red Background

Items that appear with a red background in the Express Checkout card cannot be added to an invoice because they have not been finalized in the practitioner’s chart. For example, IVs or other blends may appear in red if the recipe was not completed and finalized by the practitioner. If you try to click on a red item, a warning will appear stating that it is not finalized.

What is a “Finalized” Blend, Injection, or IV?

A blend, Injection, or IV is not considered a billable product until it has been finalized (ie produced). The practitioner must “finalize” the recipe in their chart to officially produce the blend.

When a practitioner finalizes a recipe, a few things happen:

• The recipe is locked in.
• The blend is produced in the dispensary.
• The inventory of the ingredients that make up the blend is reduced.
• The inventory of the newly produced blended product is increased.
• A unique lot number is assigned.
• The product is date and time-stamped, which helps ensure regulatory compliance.

If this process is not completed, the product does not technically exist yet and cannot be added to an invoice through the Express Checkout card.

Checkout and Transactions Column

OutSmart displays invoices in the Checkout column if they fit any of the following criteria:

• Any invoice created today (open or closed, paid or unpaid).
• Any invoice that is unpaid.
• Any invoice where the total payments do not match the total on the invoice.

If an invoice for the patient fits any of these criteria, it will appear in the patient’s row, allowing you to adjust and complete those invoices.

At the top of the list, a green New Invoice button is always displayed. Clicking this button will pre-populate a new invoice with all the selected items and services from the card, including the practitioner name, date, patient information, products, services, taxes, and currency. All you need to do is verify the information and record the payment method.

Before clicking New Invoice, click the refresh icon at the top right of the card so any updates the practitioner just added to the chart land in the checkout before the invoice is created.

You can also click on any of the invoices displayed in the Express Checkout to open them for viewing and editing. It’s a good practice to settle any outstanding invoices first, then create a new one for the current visit.

Caution

Each invoice must be paid separately. OutSmart does not let you take a single payment across multiple invoices — every invoice is a self-contained transaction, recorded with its own payment. If a patient is settling several outstanding invoices at once, take a separate payment against each one in the same checkout session.

Putting It All Together

The Daily Express Checkout Card is designed to streamline the invoicing process by gathering all billable information from the Calendar, Smart Charts, and Invoices into a single, convenient location. It only displays information relevant to clients scheduled for the current day.

In short, to use the card: find the patient’s row, click on each service and item they need to pay for, and then click New Invoice. It’s that simple.

Express Checkout Preferences

You can access Express Checkout preferences by clicking the “gear” icon at the top right of the card.

Default Billing Dispensary

Setting a default dispensary is useful for speeding up the checkout process if you commonly bill to the same dispensary. The Express Checkout will automatically select this dispensary for you, though you can still manually change it if needed.

Checkout Alerts

The Checkout Alerts preference surfaces important patient notes right inside the Express Checkout — without you needing to open the Patient Workspace to check. You pick which note labels you care about (for example, Billing, Emergency Alert, Allergies), and any patient who has a note carrying one of those labels gets:

• A small red count badge next to their name in the checkout list, showing how many matching notes they have
• An Alerts panel inside that patient’s expanded row, above the Select Items column, listing each matching note

A patient with no matching notes shows no badge and no Alerts panel. If nothing matches for any patient on the day, the Alerts panels don’t appear at all — the badge and panel only show when there’s something to flag.

Defaults. If you haven’t picked any labels yet, the card pre-selects Billing and Emergency Alert so you see useful alerts out of the box. The picker shows these defaults as already selected, so you can see what’s currently in effect and adjust from there. Saving any selection (even the defaults) makes it your own preference.

Editing the selection. Click the labels picker in the Checkout Alerts section of the gear panel. Add or remove labels — the picker shows the same coloured chips you see elsewhere in OutSmart. Save and the next refresh of the card reflects the change.

How a note becomes an alert (end-to-end)

There are two ends to the matching — both have to be set up before alerts appear:

1. In the Express Checkout gear panel, add the label name to the Checkout Alerts picker. For example, add the New label so any note marked New will alert the checkout.
2. In the patient’s workspace, add a note and apply the same label to it.

After both ends are in place, on the day that patient has an appointment, the red count badge appears next to their name in the Express Checkout list. Clicking the patient’s row opens the slide-down details and shows each matching note in the Alerts panel above Select Items. Notes labelled with anything not in the picker don’t trigger the alert.

If you’re testing it and no badge is appearing, check both ends — the label has to be in the gear-panel picker and applied to a note in the patient’s workspace. A label only in the picker (with no note carrying it) does nothing; a labelled note (without that label in the picker) also does nothing.

Tip

Pick labels that mean “stop and read this before billing” — things like Billing, Emergency Alert, or Allergies. The whole point of Checkout Alerts is to make sure the admin running checkout doesn’t miss something the practitioner flagged. Add too many labels and the badge becomes noise that people stop reading.

Blend Billing

When using Express Checkout for blends, IVs, or Injections, you have the option to bill for a single unit of the blend, or for a number of units equal to the total blend volume. Here is the difference between your two options:

• Single Unit: When you bill as a single unit, your invoice will show that you are billing for ONE IV for example, even though the total number of ml used in the IV may be 200ml for example. Billing as a single unit is useful if you are not doing blend inventory management.
• Total Blend Volume: If you want to manage your inventory on the level of actual ingredients used in a blend, then billing for the total volume is ideal. It allows you to bill a single 200ml blend as 200x 1ml of that blend. This will allow you to manage inventory of the actual ml’s of each ingredient used in your blends.

Another option you have is for your IV Therapy ingredients to be auto-populated into the invoice. This is useful if you want your IV formulas to be displayed on the invoice, for insurance or regulatory purposes.

Other Options

Include patient diagnoses on every invoice: This option allows you to ensure that the practitioner’s diagnoses are always populated on the invoice. It is a common practice for some insurance companies to require that information on the invoice.

Automatically applying promotions to invoices created via the Express Checkout card: This option will automatically apply discounts on specific products based on the promotions a client is eligible for.

Automatically add “Recommended By…” information for every line item in the invoice: This option is useful in cases where a patient may see more than one practitioner at your clinic and you want to clearly indicate which practitioner recommended the specific products or services being sold. Under each line item in the invoice will appear a description text specifying the practitioner who recommended that item as well as their license number.