July 2025
News
In this issue
| ACSS payments to approved pharmacists to be automated from 1 July 2025 |
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| What's New in Fred Dispense |
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| Say hello to AIFred...our new customer service chatbot |
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| Catch up with the Fred Team this August in Sydney and Perth |
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| End of financial year and stocktaking help |
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| This Month's PBS Changes |
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ACSS payments to approved pharmacists to be automated from 1 July 2025
ACSS payments for eligible supplies from 1 July 2025 will be included with regular PBS online claims payments. Payments for the periods ending 30 March 2025 and 30 June 2025 will continue to be made manually in July and October 2025.
The ACSS has been legislated in the National Health Act 1953, and has two components:
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ACSS Component 1 A payment for each supply of a Commonwealth subsidised PBS or RPBS prescription of a section 85 medicine with increased dispensing quantities by an approved pharmacist, when supplied at the full maximum dispensing quantity; and
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ACSS Component 2 A payment for each supply of a Commonwealth subsidised PBS or RPBS prescription of a section 85 medicine dispensed by an approved pharmacist.
For more information, see New payments under the Eighth Community Pharmacy Agreement on the PBS website.
What's New in Fred Dispense
ACSS Changes in Fred Dispense
When an item is dispensed that is eligible for ACSS Component 1 or ACSS Component 2, Fred Dispense will claim these payments from PBS.
Fred Dispense has been updated to display the ACSS Payments, where relevant.
Script Analysis Report
When you select Reports > Script > Script Analysis, the Include Incentives? filter has been relabelled Include ACSS payments?
When Include ACSS payments? is set to Y, the ACSS breakdown is displayed in the Script Analysis Report.
PBS Online Summary Reconciliation Report Changes
The PBS Online Summary Reconciliation Report has been updated to display the ACSS Component 1 and ACSS Component 2 payments.
When you select Activities > PBS Online Report Parameters > S, the resulting report will include the following:
PBS Online Report footer changes
The footnotes and legend at the bottom of the following PBS Online Reports have been updated for 8CPA Reporting.
The footer now displays as follows:
Note that the meaning of footnotes (superscripts) on the reports is now different. For example, 1 previously meant both incentives paid, but now 1 means ACSS Component 1 paid.
Say hello to AIFred...our new customer service chatbot
Your new Fred virtual assistant is now live and ready to help you get quick answers, troubleshoot issues, and guide you to the right place.
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Access support anytime, anywhere, even outside of regular business hours.
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Get immediate answers to your queries without waiting in a queue.
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Benefit from help tailored to your needs or routing to the correct support team.
Visit the Fred Help Portal to chat with AIFred today!
End of financial year and stocktaking help
It's nearly time for End of Financial Year Reporting and Stocktaking. To assist you with these processes, refer to the following Fred Office Plus resources:
Important reminder for department stocktakes
If you plan to do a department stocktake, make sure that all product items are assigned to a department. Otherwise, items will be missing from your stock count.
How to make sure items are assigned to departments in Fred Office Plus
- Select Reporting > Inventory Reports > Item Pricing Details.
- Click Open Report.
- Select the No Department checkbox and then click Run Report.
- For each product item in the list, assign it to a department:
- Double click an item to display the stock card.
- Select a Department.
- Click Save and Close.
As a shortcut, you can do this in bulk using the Quick Action Wizard. Select multiple lines, then right-click, select Perform Quick Action and then follow the steps in the Wizard.
This Month's PBS Changes
For the full Schedule of Pharmaceutical Benefits, go to the PBS website at http://www.pbs.gov.au/ where you can search the schedule by drug name.
For your convenience, we've also uploaded a printable summary of this month's important PBS changes to this site.
The next edition of the PBS Summary of Changes will be published here on 1 July.
For Highly Specialised Drugs (HSD) items (CAR and non-CAR), please refer to the Schedule of Pharmaceutical Benefits as well as Services Australia to confirm whether the PBS item code for a HSD is eligible to be dispensed and claimed by your pharmacy type.