If you are a member of the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU) then you will be eligible to receive a monthly product file update from the IPU containing supplier-confirmed changes to products such as updated Cost Prices or newly added Products.
All of TouchStore's products allow you to get access to this file and apply it to your product file as and when you need.
Below you will find further details on how this works and how to run your IPU file.
What the IPU file does
The IPU Product File contains information on over 63,000 products, which includes licensed and unlicensed medicinal products available in Ireland, covering pharmacy and hospital related products ranging from all prescription and over-the-counter medicines to cosmetic and front-of-shop products; there are over 12,000 reimbursable (by the HSE PCRS) items also listed.
As well as pricing information, barcodes etc., the IPU Product File Department provides professional information on products such as updates to Product Form, Strength, Active Ingredient, Legal Classification, Precautions and Warnings, Counselling Information and ATC (Anatomical, Therapeutic, Chemical) Codes.
The IPU Product File is updated daily with changes, e.g. new products, deletions, price changes etc., and disseminated on a monthly basis.
The IPU Product File is available by electronic download for IPU members.
Uploading the IPU File
When an IPU Upload is available to be applied, you will be able to apply it from the IPU Imports screen in the Product Imports module.
To apply an IPU Upoad:
- Go to the Product Imports module
- Select IPU Imports located on the left of the screen
Here you will see a list of any outstanding IPU Uploads that can be applied to your system and the number of product updates in each.
Located on the right of the screen we can see what categories we can import.
- Ethical
- OTC
- Veterinary
- Dressings
- Photography
- Hosiery
- Ostomy
- Horticulture
- Cosmetics
To select or deselect a category tick or untick the relevant box
- When ready, select Import File
- Rx365 will then import any IPU changes and apply them to the relevant products
Once the import is complete, you will see a list of the updates applied.
To view the results of an update, click on the Description of the update and you will see a list of all products updated and their status. Any errors will be shown here underneath the product name is red text.
Earlier IPU updates can be viewed in the History section. This will show you the list of all historic imports, not just IPU Uploads.
By clicking View you can view each record in the update, the Barcode, the Product Name and the status of the update. If there were any failures
Include / Exclude Products from being updated
If there are some products on your system that you would like to restrict from being updated by running the IPU Upload you can do this via the Supplier they are attached to.
To set a specific Supplier to have any products attached to it either included or excluded from being updated when an IPU Upload is run:
- Go the Config module
- Go to the Suppliers page
- Find the Supplier you want to change and click the pencil icon to edit that supplier's details
- In the Supplier Maintenance section at the top of the page you will see a tickbox labelled Update products for this uspplier when doing an IPU upload
- If this is TICKED then any time an IPU Upload is run products whose Preferred Supplier is this supplier will be updated as normal
- If this UNTICKED then any time an IPU Upload is run products whose Preferred Supplier is this supplier will NOT be updated