This page is built to help you assemble the data needed for your Directory, also utilizing the onboarding template. Expand each section to read more about what info you'll need for each Directory section.
Background
Background
Setting up your Directory is one of the first and most important steps in getting your Beacon account ready for daily operations. The Directory serves as your "Single Source of Truth," ensuring that every case is billed correctly and every shipment goes to the right place.
Before you begin entering data into the console, use this guide to assemble the necessary information for your Directory.
We recommend taking the time to assemble this data before starting to build out your directory to make sure you've covered all areas and identified any potential gaps. If you have adequately assembled your data, you may be able to take advantage of our integrations to import this data.
Facilities (Your Customers) and Pricing
Facilities (Your Customers) and Pricing
Your Facilities are your Customers in Beacon and the information you store in your Directory is key to ensuring your cases flow through the billing pipeline without issue. Take time to assemble this data before setting up your Facilities so you can ensure your Directory is complete and there are no forgotten gaps.
1. Basic Facility Identity & Contact Info
At the most fundamental level, Beacon needs to know who the customer is and how to reach them.
Facility Name: The formal name of the hospital or surgery center.
Physical Address: The main street address of the facility.
Account #: The internal account number you may use for your facility in the status quo.
Primary Contact*: A main phone number or email for the facility. Who you reach out to if there is an issue.
Billing Contact*: This is the phone number and email for the billing department, AP, or other entity who will assist you with Billing?
Additional Contacts*: You may add any number of additional contacts to a facility.
*Note on Facility Contacts: It is a good idea to have at least the Primary contact and Billing Contact filled out, but you may select any of the contacts you enter to designate as the Default for Sales orders and the Default for Invoices.
Contract Renewal Date: Knowing when your contract is up for renewal allows you to run reports and stay ahead of expiration dates.
Quickbooks Customer ID: Only for users who plan on integrating their Beacon account with their Quickbooks account. Read more about how to find this here.
2. Inventory Par Levels
If you plan to keep "Shelf Stock" at a facility, you need to define your Facility Par Levels. This allows Beacon to tell you exactly when you are running low so you can anticipate replenishment needs. If you're not ready to set these up, you can always circle back and update this later in the Facility Detail screen.
Using Par Levels required you and your users to assign all inventory stored at this facility a Location when it is transferred or stored there. Be sure to remember this when training your users. If locations are not kept up, then Par Levels alerts will be inaccurate as the inventory data associated with the facility will not be up to date.
Note on Par Levels: Adding Par Levels requires the inventory catalog to already be populated. Please check out the DIY Guide for Inventory Setup for more information.
Manufacturer & Catalog Number: Which specific items are being held at this location?
Minimum Quantity: What is the "Floor" for this item? (e.g., "We must always have at least 5 of this screw on the shelf").
Associated Custom Location: In Beacon, you will link these par levels to a "Location" record for that facility to track geographic movement.
3. Facility-Specific Pricing
Uploading contract pricing is a critical step, and ensures all pricing information populates automatically when inventory is added to a case. Beacon will automatically apply the price for each item at that Facility, so make sure to enter complete pricing!
You have two ways to set up pricing, each Facility individually may receive a price list or you may set up reusable price lists to apply to many facilities.
Price List: Assemble a list of catalog numbers and the specific prices negotiated for this facility.
Global vs. Facility Pricing: While you can set "Global Pricing" for your organization, entering facility-specific prices ensures that when a rep marks an item as used, the correct price populates automatically on the Sales Order.
4. Pro-Tip: Use the Integration Tool
If you have a large list of facilities (e.g., in a spreadsheet or a CRM like Salesforce), you don't have to enter them one by one. Beacon’s Integrations feature allows you to map columns from a Google Sheet or CSV directly to the Beacon Directory fields, importing your entire customer base in minutes.
Next Steps: Once you have assembled this data, navigate to Directory > Facilities in the Beacon console and click the "+" button to begin your setup!
5. User Assignments
In Beacon, Facilities must be assigned to the users who will be doing business with them in order to be available and active for them to use in their cases. This ensures users can easily select from a short list of their facilities that are relevant to them, and gives you permission-level control over who does business with which customers.
It's a good idea at this stage to create a list of the users who will need access to each facility, so it's easy to set up and all users have what they need.
Physicians
Physicians
To effectively manage your surgical cases and track surgeon-specific data, you must gather the following specific information for each physician record. In Beacon, physicians are the central link between facilities, procedures, and inventory preference cards.
1. Identity & Classification
This data is required to identify the physician throughout the scheduling and billing process.
Full Legal Name: The physician's formal name as it should appear on Bill Sheets and Sales Orders.
Unique Search Tags: You may set up Identifier tags to help you search and filter through your Physicians (e.g., "Northwestern Residency," "Fellowship-Trained," or specific hospital affiliations). Create Physician tags for any purpose you like.
Street Address: The physician's primary office address; Beacon uses a "Type-ahead" feature to verify these locations via the Google Maps API.
2. Clinical & Operational Associations
Linking a physician to their specific scope of work narrows down options during case creation and prevents scheduling errors.
Associated Facilities: A list of the specific hospitals or surgery centers where this physician is credentialed and performs surgery.
Procedure Specialties: The specific surgical procedures the physician performs (e.g., "Total Hip Arthroplasty" or "Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion").
Assigned Product Lines: The specific brands or product families from your inventory that this physician is authorized or trained to use.
4. User Access Assignments
In Beacon, directory records are not visible to everyone by default. You must define who can interact with this physician record. This ensures users can easily select from a short list of their physicians that are relevant to them, and gives you permission-level control over who does business with which Doctors.
Assigned Sales Reps/Distributors: A list of the specific Beacon users (Sales Reps or Distributors) who do business with this physician. You must manually assign the physician to each user's account for them to see the record in their mobile or web app.
Procedures
Procedures
Set up all of your Procedures, these are your surgeries and procedures which will be selected when a Case is entered.
1. Procedure Identity
This is the baseline naming used for scheduling cases and searching for procedures within the app.
Standardized Procedure Name: The formal name of the surgery as it should appear on all documentation.
Procedure Type: The high-level classification used for organizational filtering and reporting.
2. Operational Associations
Linking these fields ensures that when a user selects this procedure, the system automatically narrows down the relevant inventory and options.
Associated Product Lines: A list of the specific brand families or product groups that are used for this procedure.
Procedure Modifiers: Specific addendum tags that provide extra context (e.g., "Left," "Right," "Revision," or "Robotic") about the procedure.
Manufacturers
Manufacturers
To set up the Manufacturers section of your directory, you must identify both your own organization and the third-party suppliers you work with, along with their contact info. This ensures that inventory ownership, supplier ordering, and billing logic are handled correctly.
1. Your Primary Organization
When you first access the Manufacturers list, you will notice one entry with a Primary Org Account label. This is your Account Organization. You may create inventory using this as the manufacturer, or you may create inventory manufactured by other suppliers under other manufacturer records. This is also the contact data that will appear on your sales orders and invoices.
What it is: This represents your specific company.
Why it matters: This is the "Parent" entity that typically appears on the letterhead of your sales orders and invoices.
Setup: Ensure your brand information, contact details, and quality system document numbers (like Sales Order form numbers) are updated in Settings > Organization to reflect this identity.
2. Third-Party Suppliers
You must create individual manufacturer records for every company from which you source products.
Manual Entry: You can enter the name and contact information for a supplier manually.
FDA Database Search: To ensure accuracy, you can search the FDA's database within Beacon to automatically pull official contact information for a manufacturer.
Label Scanning: You can scan a product label to instantly identify and enter a manufacturer record.
3. "Billed as Org" Logic (Financial Routing)
This is a critical setting for manufacturers that are not your own company but whose products you own or "white-label". Set this up for manufacturers whose inventory you would like to create with them as the manufacturer, but you want your Organization to receive payment for the inventory.
The Problem: Normally, if you sell a supplier's item, the supplier’s name appears on the invoice.
The Solution: By marking a manufacturer to be Billed as your Organization, you tell Beacon that even though the inventory is made by a supplier, the financial responsibility belongs to you.
Use Cases: Use this for inventory you purchased outright (rather than consignment) or for white-labeled products where you want your company's name on the billing documents instead of the supplier's.
Supplier Orders: Even when this is turned on, the manufacturer record remains attached to the inventory, allowing you to still generate accurate supplier orders for replenishment.
Preference Cards (Optional)
Preference Cards (Optional)
Creating Preference Cards allows you to automate inventory requests and case scheduling by pre-linking a physician to the specific items they need for a given procedure. This prevents "forgetting" items and speeds up the workflow for sales reps in the field.
1. Preference Card Identity
Start by defining what this card represents. A common naming convention is Physician Name + Procedure Name.
Physician Assignment: Select the specific doctor from your directory.
Procedure Assignment: Link the card to a specific surgical procedure type.
Surgical Notes: Enter specific surgeon habits or requirements, such as "Prefers size 4.0 screws on standby" or specific instrument placement.
Global Visibility: Decide if this card should be private to you or available for other users in your organization to use for their cases.
2. Inventory Requirements
There are two primary ways to add inventory to a preference card.
Option A: Manual Selection
Option A: Manual Selection
Manufacturer & Product Line: Filter your search by the manufacturer and the specific product family.
Item Selection: Add individual loose devices or entire product lines.
Quantities: Specify exactly how many of each item the surgeon requires as their standard "par" for this case.
Option B: Bill of Materials (BOM) Import
Option B: Bill of Materials (BOM) Import
Container Link: If you already use Bills of Materials to manage your custom sets or trays, you can build a preference card directly from a BOM.
Automatic Loading: This will automatically pull every item on that BOM into the preference card.
Customization: After importing the BOM, you can still add extra "off-tray" items that the surgeon frequently requests.
3. Post-Setup Assignments
Once the card is created, you must ensure the right people can see it.
Automatic Ownership: The card is automatically assigned to the user who created it.
User Assignments: If the card was not made "Global," you must manually go to other users' pages to assign the card if they need to use it for their own case scheduling.
Regions (Optional)
Regions (Optional)
You'll only need to set these up if you plan to have Regional Manager users overseeing the activity of your distributors and sales users.
1. Defining the Region
A Region in Beacon is a geographic grouping of states that allows for high-level sales and case oversight.
Region Name: Choose a standard naming convention (e.g., "Northeast," "Great Lakes," or "Western US").
State Grouping: Identify exactly which states fall under each region's jurisdiction.
2. The Regional Manager Role
Before creating regions, you must understand the Regional Manager user role.
Scope of Authority: Regional Managers do not own inventory or perform cases themselves.
Purview: They are granted "purview" over cases, meaning they can view and track sales activity for every facility and user assigned to their specific region.
Hierarchy: In the system hierarchy, they sit directly above the Distributor role.
3. Assignment & Logic
Regions only function once they are linked to the appropriate users.
Linking to Managers: Once a region is created, you must assign it to a user with the "Regional Manager" role to give them access to that data.
Case Tracking: When a case is performed at a facility within an assigned state, that case data automatically rolls up into the Regional Manager’s dashboard for reporting.