Printing accounts again

There is no separate printing format in Access Anaesthetics for receipts or reminders. These are the same as account printouts except that payment details or reminder messages are included in addition to the original account details.

If you print an account which already has an Account date, it will be considered either a copy of an account, a receipt, or a reminder. In this case, although the standard print dialog box will appear, the date specified in the box will not be inserted into the account. Rather, the account will retain its original Account date, and the date in the print dialog box will appear on the account in the format This statement was printed on 27/Jul/2003 (provided this option is specified in the Options form).

Additional message when re-printing accounts

When an account is re-printed it is assumed that it is either a receipt, a reminder or a copy of the original account. At the time of printing, an additional message can be added to the account which will appear at the very bottom below the items list, standard message and any payment details. This additional message is intended to add information relating to the payment of the account. That is, for paid accounts, a thank you message or remark that a balance is required. And for overdue accounts, a message related to the degree of 'overdueness' of the account.

When an account is reprinted, a default message will be attached. Which message is attached will depend upon whether the account is designated an account (copy), receipt, or reminder. Before each account is printed, you are shown the attached message and given the opportunity to change it. The following screen appears after you have pressed the preview or print button in the print dialog box. If you are printing multiple accounts, each will be shown in a separate row.

Usually you would simply accept the default messages. However, for each account being reprinted, you can use the listboxes to specify whether it is an account, receipt or reminder, and you can select an alternative message. Additionally, you can adjust the message by directly typing in the message field.

Of course, you can also elect not to show any additional message either by deleting the displayed message, or by selecting NO ADDITIONAL MESSAGE from the drop down list. In all cases, the standard message will be unaffected and will appear exactly as it is stored in the account.

If an account is reprinted within 16 hours of it first being printed, the COPY OF ORIGINAL ACCOUNT message will not be automatically inserted. This is to make it easier if an account is printed more than once in its first printing session. The aim of this is to avoid the user having to delete the additional message if the account is simply being reprinted after a minor modification was made or a printer problem resolved.

When printing a lengthy list of accounts, you can untick the OK to print? checkbox if you do not wish to print one or more of the listed accounts. This is to avoid you having to close and reopen the window while in the process of printing.

Setting up the messages

The MessageType for these additional messages should be set to Rpt so that they will appear in list on the additional message screen shown above. You can edit the messages taking into account the following MessageCodes:

There is no limit to the number of additional overdue messages you can specify. If the number of reminders is greater than the numbers of reminder messages available, the 'biggest' message will be shown. Note that all consecutive codes must exist, that is, you can't have Over1, Over2, Over4, Over7, or the intervening reminders will show no message.