The catalogue & prices

Your catalogue is the master list of everything you charge for. Every line on an invoice or estimate comes from here, so getting it right once saves typing it out every time.

Catalogue in the sidebar - it's a main screen, not a settings page. The heading reads Products & Catalogue. Tabs: Catalogue Items (where you'll spend your time), Packages, Inventory if your clinic tracks stock, and Categories.

It's management-only. Editing prices needs Manage the catalogue, which by default only a Practice Manager or the clinic owner holds - so most vets, nurses and receptionists won't see Catalogue in the sidebar at all. See Your team & permissions.

Common tasks

Filling in an item

• Item Name (required) - what staff and clients see. For medicines this box also searches the drug reference as you type.

• What kind of item is this? (required) - Service, Euthanasia, Discount, Product, Medication or Vaccine. This is the one that matters: it decides which boxes the form shows you, whether the drug library and Schedule 8 fields appear, and whether the item gets a weekend loading.

• Category (optional) - which folder you file it in. Purely for finding things later; it says nothing about what the item is. Leave it blank and the item reads Unfiled.

• Item Code (required, but usually automatic) - answering the kind question makes Wattle suggest the next free code (MED-004). Overtype it if you like; a code you typed yourself is never overwritten.

• Cost and Sale - Markup % is worked out from the two, and typing a markup updates the sale price instead. The markup is a percentage added to the cost: 150% adds $150 to a $100 cost, so it sells for $250. Nothing is stored - the figure is just arithmetic on the two prices, so if you change the cost later the markup moves and you can decide what to do about the margin.

  A Discount item asks for one figure, and it's only a starting figure. It has no cost price and no markup - those belong to things you buy and resell, and a discount is neither. The box is called Usual amount, and it takes either: type 20% to save a rate, or 20 to save dollars. You need one Discount item in the catalogue, not one per amount: whatever you put here is what the amount box opens on when someone discounts a visit, and they overtype it every time. Pick a round number you often give away. Nothing treats it as a real price, so a discount is expected to differ from it. See Discounting a visit.

• Prices entered as - a small control at the top of the pricing section, set to including GST or excluding GST. It changes the number you type, never what a client pays.

  Set your usual choice in Settings, Tax & GST, where it sticks and follows you to any device you sign in on. The control here starts from that choice and lets you flip it for the item in front of you - handy for checking a figure the other way round. That flip is deliberately temporary: close the item and you are back on your usual setting, so glancing at one price the other way never changes how the next twenty are typed.

  Every price box says which it is - Sale price (inc GST) - and a line underneath shows the same money the other way round. A price is always stored including GST, whichever way you type it.

• Finding the GST-free ones. If you're registered for GST, the list has an All GST filter next to the category and status ones: switch it to GST-free to see only the items carrying no GST, or Taxable for the rest. It's the quickest way to check nothing is marked wrong, and it's where Wattle sends you if you ask to review the items after registering.

Then the switches:

Walk-throughs

Hide vs delete

Two different jobs, and only one of them is on the row menu.

• Delete removes the item for good, with a confirmation that tells you what it affects first. On the row menu, and on the toolbar when you've ticked several. Can't be undone.
• Active off is a setting on the item, not a way of avoiding a delete. Open the item, switch Active off, save. It stops appearing in billing pickers and comes back the moment you switch it on again. Use it for something you've stopped stocking for a season.

There used to be a Deactivate action on the row menu as well, and it's gone. Two similar-looking verbs on the same row made Delete feel like the dangerous one, and it isn't - see below.

Your history is untouched. Past invoices, estimates, stock movements and the controlled-drug register each keep their own copy of the item's name and price at the time, so deleting never changes an old record. Nothing you've already charged moves.

What the confirmation tells you

The delete confirmation asks the system what this particular delete costs, and says so before you commit. Depending on the item, you may see:

• "Ketamine is on the controlled-drug register." Deleting the item breaks the link, so it stops being captured for the register. Every entry already in the register is kept - but new doses won't be recorded against it until you set it up again.
• "12 doses on hand, which will be written off." Your stock count goes. The movement history is kept, so the stock record still reads.
• "Charged 40 times." Reassurance, not a warning - those charges keep their description and price.
• Which packages lose a line, by name. More on that below.
• "You don't have permission to delete catalogue items." Then the button is off. Ask your practice manager or whoever set the clinic up - it isn't something a vet can do by default either.

Deleting does change your packages

An item in a package is removed from it, and the discount you set stays as it was - so the package now holds less and charges less. The confirmation names every package that would lose the item, and tells you to check its price. If the item is the last thing in a package, it says that instead, so you can decide whether to retire the package.

Nothing is queued up for you to fix afterwards. The Packages tab shows each package's item count, what's in it and its current price, so a package that has shrunk is visible as soon as you look.

The one to watch is $ off: the discount doesn't shrink when the contents do. Take a $90 item out of a $240 package with $60 off, and the client pays $90 for $150 of goods - an intended 25% off has become 40%. % off scales down on its own, which is the main reason to prefer it.

Switching Active off doesn't do any of this - the item stays in the package and still charges.

Gotchas

• Create won't work until Item Code and Item Name are filled, and you have answered what kind of item is this. A category is optional.
• An item that "disappeared" probably has Active switched off, rather than being deleted. Set the status filter to All statuses, open it, tick Active. If the list still looks short, check the All GST filter too - it stays where you left it.
• The Delete button is greyed out because your account doesn't have permission to change the catalogue. The confirmation says so.
• A new item you can't find when billing had Active switched off.
• No drug-reference suggestions? Type at least two letters and pause. If nothing matches, the product isn't in the reference - fill it in by hand and your typed name stays.
• A picked product still showing $0 is expected. The reference never sets prices.

Related

Charges vs invoices · Invoices · Estimates · Inventory · Schedule 8 register · Settings