Office Startup - Syst Prefs
This screen has your setting for the Appointments Module, Printers, and other setting. Your letterhead is also designed here as well for use in the Letters module.


Appointments Module
If you are using the Appointments module these are your options:

• If All Slots is "Yes", then all appointments, filled or not, will be shown when you print an appointment list.
• In Days Seen you get to select which days of the week will appear in your Full Week View, Mon-Fri, Mon-Sat or Sun-Sat.
  
• In View you set the default view you want to see when you go to the Appointments module. In Full, full screen scrolling lists are shown. Single shows only one day but with more visit details, and List gives you a list view for a selected day.
• Delete Age lets you set how old appointments can be before they are deleted and Archived to the Appts Archive database. If you set it to “0”, then you keep all entered appointments. If, for example, you set it for 60, you will be asked if you want to delete appointments that are over 60 days old.
• If you select Add Missing to "Yes", then you do NOT want to build your schedule for months ahead. This feature will allow you to create appointment days as needed in the future, or to add slots to already created days because the number of slots in that days does not match the day's template in the Days Module.
• Selecting Manual Entry as "Yes" will allow you to schedule slost for patients NOT in the Patient Module. These records are given the temporary chart number of ".99" so that can be found and that appointment slot assigned to a "real chart number". More details in the chapters about the Appointments Module.
  
• The fields Available, Not available, and taken are used by Appointments to signify the status of an appointment. If you wish to change the colors, you can select from the nine colors shown. Click on the color you want and drag the color to the fields you want the color to change to. If the click & drag does not function, this needs to be turned on. See the Workstations chapter under Getting Started Essentials.

Letterhead and Letterhead Graphic
These fields stores the left side and right side of the text used for your letterhead and any graphic you wish to display on your letterhead.These fields can be used in the Forms or Letters module. To edit these text fields use standard  text editing technques. You could also do your design in a  text processor, copy  and then paste your work.
 
Printer Names and Setup
Because of the cross platform nature of PracticeMaker®, you may want to select a particular printer that you want the user to always print to, based on platform, either Macintosh or Windows. These setting are platform specific for maximum flexibility.

• If you want PracticeMaker® to always check for the current printer before it prints select "Yes".
• If you want background printing select "Yes". However, this feature at present only works for free in Macintosh OS8.6-9.1 when using the older Dymo Costar Labelwriter software and printers. Otherwise, this function is a value-added feature that not all practices require. When properly enabled the software will change to the correct printer without the user having to think.
  
  

• The Main and Labeler printer names need to be entered in manually. The best way to do this is to first select your default printer for the operating system you are currently using. Then click the set printer button. This will change the field from <unknown> to the currently selected printer. Then drag and drop the printer name to the correct field.
  
  

Additional Settings
This section allows you to set several passwords and other features, too! There are three passwords that can be edited when needed. The passwords are invisible. In order to change these passwords the software MUST have been opened with the highest level database password the doctor was given (This is not the same as the login password). To change a password simply click into its field. If the incorrect database password was used, and a password is attempted to be changed, this is considered a violation and the event is logged!

• Admin Screen password allows the current user in the Billing Module to go to the Administrator screen.
• If you office wants to maintain inventory, you use the Inventory password to manually deduct from inventory.
• If a particular user is not allowed to delete, this password would be entered as needed to delete important items, such as invoices, patient records, insurance companies records and other.
  

• If your practice wants to manually assign chart numbers, the Auto Chart#'s and Next Chart# fields must
  
• Small Pick Lists means you do not want dialog boxes to select from when you can use a smaller, standard, FileMaker "pop-up" pick list instead. Practices with smaller selections of referring doctors may want this choice versus the fancier dialog boxes.
• Fill Chart Ext – The field Chart Ext can be used by your office to fill in your own chart or medical record number after a patient's record is created. If you want the Chart Ext field to be filled with the Chart number select "Yes". Otherwise, the field will be left blank.
• If Default Sex is selected as "Male" or "Female," all new patient records will be assigned that Gender. This was specifically designed for Ob-Gyn practices.
  
• Chart Label Order - If you intend to print chart labels directly from the software, you can select how you want the patient’s name to appear (last name first or first name first)
• Chart Label Extra – For any additional information on the label (the Chart or Patient ID Code)
• Default Facility – Select from the pop-up list the default facility that each new patient will be assigned. The facility assigned can, of course, be changed at any time.
• Default Office Doctor – Select from the pop-up list the default Office Doctor that each new patient will be assigned. The Examiner for each patient will also be assigned this provider. As with the facility, this can easily be changed for each patient.