1. Inventory should be added or modified from the AR web portal, so head to your web dashboard get started.
2. Navigate to the Inventory tab
Example One: Add a Dermal Filler to Inventory
3. In many cases, we may already have the product listed in the AR Product Directory. We recommend checking there first before beginning to manually add it!
4. Search by the product you'd like to add
5. If you find the product you need, click the checkbox.
6. Click Activate to send it into your AR inventory
7. Now that it's in your inventory, locate the product, and click on it to finish filling out your practice-specific information.
8. Notice some fields are already completed, such as inventory type, category, images, descriptions, etc. but you can make any desired changes to what is pre-populated.
We have three types of inventory in Aesthetic Record:
Services: Items you will be using when performing a treatment that are part of the actual treatment i.e. filler, toxin, microneedling tip, coolsculpting cyles, IV nutrients that you will want to chart and document
Retail: Items that sit on the shelf! These could include skincare, supplements, branded merchandise, makeup, etc.
Medical Supplies: Items that are typically used to perform the service but are not considered part of "the treatment." For example, IV tubing, BD syringes, arnica gel, 4x4, etc. You will be able to auto add these to services so that you can still keep an accurate count of their usage, but you don't need to chart and document them.
Product Categories are also a critical part of organizing your inventory. You can add as many as you like to your inventory, but we encourage you to find a grouping system and stick with it. You can organize categories by manufacturer, by treatment, by concern, etc. But it's helpful to know these categories are tied to your Business Insights reporting, and they are tied to your tax rules.
9. Under Product Type, since it is a filler, the best option is Injectable. Under Cost to Company, add the amount you pay per syringe.
A Note about Cost to Company: if you buy syringes that are 2 to a box, make sure you add the CoC as 1/2 of the box price! You want your inventory to be the lowest possible unit breakdown you can get of something- so a 2 pack would be inventoried as 2 single units, and the cost for each would be 1/2 the box. This is also important to consider for consumable cards you get with your devices. If you buy a card with 6 cycles, be sure to inventory per 1 cycle and use 1/6th the cost of that card as the CoC. For toxin, you will break down your 100 or 300 unit vial to the PER UNIT price- not the whole vial price.
10. Under Unit Settings, we've designated the unit type as MLs since it's a filler injection. You have other choices there that correspond with various types of treatments, so you can look through the list and find the best match.
When we selected a Product Type of Injectable, it dynamically changed our charting options to Injectable Type. There are several options to choose from. We are choosing Filler since that's what we are adding, but you can use the drop down to find the best match. But note, this field is driven by what you select under Product Type.
The next two fields are specifically about how you want to chart your product. You can think about it this way: what is the lowest amount I will use of this product in a single area? That is your Start at Unit measurement. We want to start our charting at 0.5 MLs so when we make a chart dot, we have to use at least .5MLs on that dot. But once we do, we can increase it in increments of 0.1 MLs which is our Count Units By field.
Additionally, we are going to mark this product to Bill for the Whole Unit. This means if the client only needs 0.8 MLs, we are still going to charge the full price for a syringe since we can't do anything with the excess! You can also use Pricing Variations to compensate for this in some cases, but for filler particularly, we can't save syringes, so if we crack it open, it's open! We will want to bill the client for the whole thing. If you don't mark this, and you only use 0.8MLs, the system is going to charge the patient for 80% (0.8/1.0) of the full price.
11. Next, we need to set the Regular Price. If you have more than one clinic and want to charge the same price at all of them, you can click Same for All Clinics or you can set a clinic by clinic price.
12. Once you've set your Regular Price, you will see a popup letting you know that now Membership Pricing is available to set. Once you click into Membership Pricing, you can set prices by clinic and by membership. We strongly recommend you read this article for an in depth overview of how our dynamic membership pricing options work!
13. Next, we need to add our physical inventory count into the system. Under Traceability, toggle on lot number and expiration to begin adding your batches.
14. This will immediately populate all your clinics. Locate the one you want to start with and click on Options
15. And then, View Batches
16. Click Add
17. Add your lot number & expiration information here along with your batch-specific Cost to Company. When you add traceability into a procedure, the system will pull the all the details from the batch you tied to the procedure for your reporting. For example, if you bought 50 filler units on a promotion for $150 vs. $185 with batch #12345, when you chart products from that #12345, CoC reporting will show $150. If you have multiple CoC in a single batch, it is going to take the average of those numbers based on what is still left in the batch.
If you only chart the product without adding traceability, it will pull the general Cost to Company you added on the first page of the inventory setup.
18. In our example state, medical procedures are not taxable so we will not be toggling on a custom tax rule.
However, if your treatment is taxable, you can toggle on the Custom Tax Rule and set your taxes by clinic for this individual product. This is extremely helpful if your clinics are in different states or different districts with different taxable amounts.
Note: If this service item is tied to a category that has a custom tax rule, the category tax will be automatically applied. However, you can override that by adding a product-level custom tax rule.
19. As you get more comfortable with AR and work through your inventory module, we recommend learning more about the Purchase Order process that allows you to automatically reorder and send your POs to your vendors & track delivery through the AR web portal.
Later in this article, we will cover how to set your stock thresholds and out of stock notifications.
Example Two: Add a Microneedling Service
20. In this example, we are going to skip the AR Product Directory and instead, click Add Product.
21. We've named our product Microneedling and listed it as a Service. We are going to be using the microneedlings tips as our underlying inventory item. We created a new category called Microneedling which we can use for this procedure and our RF Microneeding procedures. We were able to choose Microneedling from the Product Type list, and we assigned a $15 cost to company. Next up, the description!
22. For our unit settings, we've chosen Tip as our type, and a Start at and Count by 1. Since we are starting at 1, you do not have to click Bill by the Whole Unit to ensure that happens. It's going to bill by the full tip each time.
23. We set our price to be the same for all clinics at $150.00. As we add additional boosters or smaller add-on areas, we can use Pricing Variations to create those total prices with this core inventory item, Microneedling, as the foundation so we don't create multiple different versions and then double count or under count our tips!
24. Now we can move on to our Membership Pricing. In this case, we want to set the pricing per membership and then use that same pricing structure for every clinic. For an in depth review of Dynamic Membership Pricing, click here.
25. Add in your microneedling tips by toggling on Lot Number and Expiration,
26. All clinics will be displayed now, and to set the inventory for a specific location, click Options for that clinic.
27. Then View Batches
28. Then Add
29. Add in your physical inventory by batch / lot numbers, and be sure to accurately report the Cost to Company for the batch you are adding. Just like in our dermal filler example, the lot or batch you chart will determine with CoC is used. If you don't add a specific batch number, your CoC will default to the general CoC you added under the Information tab.
30. Since this is a medical procedure, we will not toggle on a Custom Tax Rule since it's not taxable in our example state. If this were a taxable service, we could add a tax rate at the category level and/or potentially the product level if it differed.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of what your new Inventory Management system can do! Be sure to watch the modules in Core4 and join a Client Success Coach after for a follow up webinar Q&A.
Setting Stock Alerts
31. You can set stock alerts for any of your inventory items to notify you via email and within the AR notifications bell that stock has reached the alert threshold. To do that, click Options and Edit Stock Alert.
31. Set your Stock Alert threshold and click Update.
32. Stock Alert emails can go out at any cadence you choose. Please note that anyone with this privilege will get this emails. We aggregate all low stock products over the course of a day and send in one communication. To set this up, navigate to Stock Alert Emails on the left navigation bar, then click on the days you'd like to have these notifications sent.
33. Click Save and your preferences are updated but can be changed at any time.
Delete or Inactivate Items in Inventory
If you need to delete items, or if you see the option to inactivate items in your inventory, you will first need to make sure the item is removed from any active promotions or pricing variations.
When you go to delete the item, if it is currently being used, you will see a popup such as below. This will allow you to notate which promos / variations the item is being used in so you can head to each and remove.
This is a failsafe to prevent error with using unavailable products or services through your special pricing offerings.
Next we recommend the following articles: