Turn On the Free Follow-up Window and Waive the Follow-up Fee

Many clinics promise “come back within two weeks and the review is free.” The free follow-up window turns that promise into a rule Veona keeps for you. A practice manager switches it on once; from then on the front desk does nothing special — when a returning patient is booked a follow-up, Veona consumes a free visit and waives the consultation fee by itself.

Who / when: a practice manager turns it on once under Appointments settings; the front desk books as normal forever after. Key terms: the free follow-up window is the period, in days, after a paid new consult (the patient’s first consultation, paid for) during which return visits are free. A grant is the entitlement Veona opens for that patient automatically — it remembers how many free visits remain and when the window closes.

Part A — Turn it on (practice manager, once)

1. Practice Manager — open Appointments → Settings and find the Free Follow-up Window panel. (This is a practice-manager task.)
2. Practice Manager — turn the “Free Follow-up Enabled” toggle on (“Grant free follow-up visits after a paid consult”).
3. Practice Manager — set “Default Free Visits” — how many free follow-ups each paid consult earns (for example 1 or 2). The range is 1 to 20.
4. Practice Manager — set “Valid For” — how many days the window stays open after the paid consult (for example 14). The range is 1 to 365 days.
5. Practice Manager — press Save. From now on, every paid new consult opens a grant for that patient automatically.

Note

While the toggle is off, the two number fields are greyed out and nothing changes — booking and billing behave exactly as before. The feature only ever removes a charge, never adds one.

Part B — The waiver applies itself (front desk, every booking)

There is nothing extra to do at the desk.

1. Front Desk — open Appointments → Booking and pick the patient as usual. If the patient has an open grant, a banner shows “N Free Follow-up Visits Remaining Until {date}…”. This is informational only — you do not tick anything.
2. Front Desk — book the Follow-up appointment. If the patient is still inside their window and has a free visit left, Veona consumes one and stamps the appointment fee-waived — it raises no charge, so the patient is never invoiced and the payer is never billed for that visit.
3. Front Desk — when the free visits are used up, or the window has passed, the next follow-up bills normally, with no special handling.

Caution

Be honest about the limits: the feature is off by default and must be enabled per facility. It does not retroactively open grants for visits paid before it was switched on. You cannot hand-create a grant — they open automatically when a new consult is paid. And the waive stands even if a different clinician sees the patient for the free follow-up, even though the grant was bound to the original attending clinician.

What happens next

A waived follow-up raises no charge, so it simply never reaches an invoice or the General Ledger — there is no credit note to chase and no revenue to reverse. Opening and closing a grant is audited, so you can always show when a patient’s window opened, which visit consumed it, and when it closed.

Follow the trail

• Related: Set a Per-Practitioner Consultation Fee
• Related: Veona Appointments · Veona Bill