This is where you are able to construct the description text of the professional services that you carried out for the funeral.
- The yellow text box and pink list
- The ‘Services ex GST’ Field
- The Distance fields and locations list
- An Example
The Yellow text box and the pink list
The pink list at the bottom of the screen is constructed from the known data previously entered for the case.
By double clicking on items in the pink list FreeDAM will progressively construct the description text in the yellow box above.
At any time you are able to place your mouse cursor in the yellow text box and make changes to the text.
The ‘Services ex GST’ field
This is for the invoice’s main professional service fee amount.
This can be populated automatically if, any items in the pink list that have an associated price, are clicked. (See example below)
This value can be overtyped and corrected at any time during an edit.
The Distance fields and Locations list
This is not often used now as often we as funeral directors show a separate charge for any extra milage travelled.
The concept is that if you wish to add to your professional service fee a value for distances travelled then FreeDAM can help you calculate this.
- You professional service fee remains the same on the screen
- The travelled distance is input into the distance box
- The price per km is set to the company’s default and the value for the distance travelled is calculated.
- The professional services fee and the distance travelled fee are added together and displayed on the invoice as one professional services fee
The pink Locations and Distance list box on the right is designed to indicate all the addresses associated with the case.
In the preference section of FreeDAM the various locations are able to be stored along with their return distances from your premises.
This allows you to double click on the locations that you travelled to for this case and FreeDAM will calculate the additional charge.
Note: Although the professional service fee and the distance travelled fee are separate on the screen they are displayed as added together on the invoice as your professional service fee. This allows the recouping of travel costs on a per case basis where charging extra for travel might be a sensitive issue for the public. This does mean that your professional service fee will fluctuate from case to case.
This is not often used now as often we as funeral directors show a separate charge for any extra milage travelled.
An Example
Let’s have a look at a typical way of creating our professional services text.
The following image shows the start of the text construction.
Notice that we can attend the family to take instructions (Make the funeral arrangements) at several locations.
Our premises, The deceased’s residence, The place of death, the next of kin’s address or a freely types address or via the internet or telephone.
The real addresses are displayed to assist you.
Selecting any one of the first 6 items in the list will put the appropriate text in the yellow box. The rest of the selections will then disappear.
The corresponding value will be put into the professional services fee field.
This allows for your pricing to be automatically done for you as you describe your services.
Here we can see that the first item in the pink list has been double clicked.
FreeDAM has added the appropriate text into the description field and entered ‘2500’ in the professional service fee field.
FreeDAM has also taken away the remaining 5 options for attending the family as no others can now apply.
The pink list is now waiting for the transfer details to be selected.
Notice that we have 5 options to choose from – Let’s select the first one.
Now FreeDAM adds the appropriate transfer details to the end of the professional services text.
The remaining 4 transfer options disappear as we can only transfer the deceased into our care once.
Let’s now double click on the ‘care of personal effects’ and the ‘Doctor’s Certificate’.
We will skip over the ‘Coroner’s Release’ for this case.
Now we can choose the embalming that was carried out – either Full or Partial (Selection of the embalming will increase our professional service fee by the amount associated with it)
The resulting constructed text (yellow box) looks like this
Notice the use of personal details.
Also of note is that the wording and pricing of the professional services text is customised to your requirements.
Keep double clicking on the items in the pink list that were provided by your company for this case.
Work down the pink list skipping over items that do not apply.
The result should appear like this.
Remember – at any time you are able to place your cursor in the yellow box and change the content.
By Clicking on the ‘Invoice Preview’ tab you can check how this will look on paper.
