Pharmaceutical Chargebacks in Acumatica: Creating Attributes for DEA and NDC

Handling pharmaceutical chargebacks in Acumatica often requiers linking chargeback submitters with Acumatica customer records by DEA, and chargeback payments with items by NDC-11. A good overview of mapping is at pharmaceutical_chargebacks_for_quickbooks.

This post describes how to create Attributes of DEA and NDC for automated integration of pharmaceutical chargebacks in Acumatica.

An Interface to Create Attributes

Acumatica Attributes are custom fields that users can create on customer, item and other levels.

The screen to create attributes of all types is available under menu option Configuration, section “Common Settings”, sub-menu “Attributes”.

Click on the magnifying glass at the right end of the Attribute ID field to see the whole list of attributes.

Click an icon with a plus sign on the menu bar to create a new attribute, and the coming screen will show several fields to populate.

Key Attribute Fields

• Attribute ID.

Attribute ID field is hidden from screens, yet is used during data export or import. Wholesalers without DEA licenses use their HIN numbers instead. “DEA” and “NDC” are good Attribute IDs for the data elements under our consideration.

• Description

Description is the text, under which the attribute will be visible on the screen. That description also shows up also in certain export and import tasks. For consistency, the Description field can be also set to “DEA” and “NDC”.

• Control Type

Control Type specifies how attribute is presented on a screen. For the data elements under consideration, the likely candidates to consider are Text and Combo. Text allows typing in any string, satisfying optional validation rules. Combo lets users define a set of acceptable values for the field.

An interface to maintain the set of items for combo is located at the bottom of the screen. Users just need to specify Value ID and Description for the items. Lists allow adding new items and deleting unused items at any time.

Text is the right control type for the data elements under consideration, DEA and NDC.

Entry Rules

• Entry Mask

Entry Mask specifies character-based validation rule for the attribute values.

Formatting rules for DEA are described at DEA_number and HIN codes at Health_Industry_Number.

Input Mask “AAAAAAAAA” limits entered text to nine letters or digits and accommodates both HIN and DEA values for the customers.

On the product level, the Entry Mask can enforce that each NDC starts with the prepared labeler code. For example, Entry Mask of “00001######” ensures that NDC for all products start with labeler code of 00001.

Entry Mask doesn’t work for manufacturers with two or more labeler codes.

• Reg. Exp.

Reg. Exp., an abbreviation of Regular Expressions, enables a sophisticated mechanism of validating text input. Regular Expressions validation rules rely on expressions, rather than on characters, and allow greater flexibility than Entry Mask. Reg. Ex. can check for the match of the first five characters of NDC to two, or more, manufacturer labeler codes.

For example, Reg. Exp. for a manufacturer with two labeler codes, 00001 and 00002 is

“(00001|00002)[0-9]{6}”.

While the Entry Mask shows predefined labeler code right on the screen, the Reg. Exp. validation starts when user tries to save a record. Acumatica rejects a wrong entry with an error message “Provided value does no pass validation rules defined for this field”, without further details.

Entry Mask is best to use for NDC for processing pharmaceutical chargebacks in Acumatica for one labeler code, while Reg. Exp. is the proper solution for manufacturers with multiple labeler codes.

Conclusion

Creating Attributes in Acumatica for wholesaler DEA and product NDC-11 is fast and easy. Provided Entry Mask and Reg Exp formulas enforce data entry validation. Customer and product mapping based on these attributes helps to automate processing pharmaceutical chargbacks in Acumatica.