Setting up your pad

The best-looking pad is one you design yourself. Design the whole page in Canva, upload it as a Letterhead file, then set the top and bottom margins so RxKite prints in the white middle. Your own pad design, made in Canva shows how, step by step. The rest of this guide covers everything else a pad can do.

Open Pad & printing in the sidebar. A pad is one printing layout. Most doctors need only one; if you practise at two places or print on both A5 and A4, make one pad for each (paid plans allow up to five). Working at several clinics, you can also list them all on one pad (see Several clinics below). The pad marked Default is used unless you pick another in the prescription.

Every change shows immediately in the preview on the right, filled with a sample patient. Press Save when it looks right.

#1. What do you print on?

For a pre-printed pad, follow Pre-printed pads to line the print up with the blank area.

For a letterhead file, press Upload under Your letterhead file. A PDF works best; a photo or scan works if it is straight and well lit. Then raise the header and footer heights until the sample prescription in the preview sits in the white middle of your letterhead. See Your own pad design, made in Canva.

#2. Paper size

Choose A4 (new pads start on it), A5 (148 × 210 mm, the usual Indian pad), Letter, Half letter, or Custom and type the width and height in millimetres. Measure your pad with a ruler if you are unsure.

#3. Margins, or header and footer heights

On plain paper these are ordinary margins: the empty space around the edge. Most printers need at least 5 mm.

On a pre-printed pad or letterhead they become Header height and Footer height: how much of the page your printed design takes at the top and bottom. Two dotted lines on the preview mark them: drag each to where your design ends at the top and starts at the bottom, and its height shows in centimetres. The Writing area line tells you the space that is left.

#4. Your name, degrees, logo and own text (plain paper)

• Your name: write it as you want it printed, shorter or with Dr. or Prof., and choose its size (small, medium or large) and colour: the pad's colour, one of eight that print well, or any colour from the picker at the end. Left empty, it prints the name in Settings.
• Your degrees: write them as you want them printed, such as MBBS (Gold Medalist), a line for each line, with their size, bold and colour. Left empty, they print the degrees in Settings.
• Under your signature, your name and degrees always print as they are in Settings.
• Logo (JPG, PNG, WEBP, AVIF or SVG): upload it and set its height. The same logo is in Settings → Signature, stamp & logo.
• Your specialty and your Reg. No.: each on its own, in your own words if you like, such as Consultant Physician & Diabetologist or Regd. No. 12345 (WBMC). The Reg. No. line must have your number in it; without it, the usual Reg. No. line prints, since every prescription must carry it.
• Font, italic and bold: your name, degrees, specialty, Reg. No. and each of your texts can have a font of their own, in italic or bold, such as your name in Playfair Display italic while the rest stays in the pad's font.
• Your own text: as many as six text fields, such as a motto, Complimentary, your timings or a line in your language. Each has its own size (small, medium or large), font, bold, italic and colour. Add another text field puts a new one in the top middle of the header, and you move it from there in the next step.

#5. Arrange your pad

Drag and drop to arrange the pad, and watch the preview change:

• Header and footer (plain paper): drag Name, Degrees, Specialty, Reg. No., Clinic & contact, Clinic address line, Logo and each of your texts to the left, middle or right of a line of the header or footer, one under another, or to Not printed. For example, logo on the left, your name on the right and Complimentary in the middle, with the address line and your timings along the foot.
• Several clinics: if you work at more than one clinic (Settings → Clinics), Clinic & contact and Clinic address line print the clinic each prescription is written at. To print all your clinics on one pad, drag All clinics to the top or bottom: they print side by side across a whole line, or one under another in a narrow column. Tick the clinics it lists if you want only some. For a separate pad for each clinic, make the pads, then choose each clinic's pad under Settings → Clinics.
• More lines: Add a line to the header (or footer) for another row under the first, up to three each. Remove line moves its parts into the line above.
• Column widths: slide the two handles under a line to set where its columns divide, for example a wide left column for a long clinic address. Fit automatically goes back to sizing them to what they hold.
• Prescription, top to bottom: drag vitals, complaints, diagnosis, investigations, medicines, advice, follow-up, Referred from and Referred to into the order you write them. The patient's details always print first, and your signature and the QR code last.

On a phone, drag by the grip (⋮⋮) at the left of each item. Every item also has arrow buttons, and moves with the arrow keys once selected. Reset puts things back as they started.

#6. Choose your style for the medicines

Pictures of the ways the medicines can print: three columns, or compact a line each. Turn on Medicines as a table for the tables instead: with a Qty column worked out for you, with the dose beside the 1-0-1, with Route and Timing columns, or the Boxed table, every cell in thin lines under a heading row, as on a printed form. Pick one, then change any switch under it. Lines round every cell boxes either table.

Choose Separate dose and frequency to print Medicine | Dose | When | Timing | Days. The amount, such as 1 tablet or 2.5 ml, is bold in its own column. Dose amounts and meal instructions always stay on this style. Under Frequency on print, keep 1-0-1, add words such as “Morning, Night”, or use words for recognised patterns. The words can be in English, Hindi or Bengali. Fractional or unequal patterns and other instructions such as SOS stay as written, so no dose or schedule is guessed. This changes printing only; the medicine you enter is unchanged. Other styles and already-signed original PDFs stay as they were.

#7. What to print

Turn parts of the prescription on or off:

• Doctor & clinic header and Footer: only on plain paper. They are always off on a pre-printed pad, because your pad already has them.
• Patient details: name, age and sex, patient ID, date and allergies.
• Vitals: only the values you filled in are printed.
• Complaints, history & examination: turn off to print only the diagnosis and treatment.
• Prescription number.
• Name & Reg. No. under the signature: turn off if your pad already has them printed at the bottom. Once you upload a stamp they are left off while it prints, but only on plain paper with your name in the header, so your Reg. No. still prints there; turn them on here to print both. Every prescription must carry your Reg. No., so make sure your stamp shows it too.
• Verification QR code: pharmacists can scan it to check that the prescription is genuine and has not been voided.
• Patient's mobile number: off by default, for privacy.
• Medicine names in CAPITALS: on by default, as NMC guidance recommends for legibility.
• Watermark (under Look): a faint image behind the writing on every page. Choose Clinic logo, or Its own image and upload one, such as your clinic's emblem; then set its size and strength. Keep it light so the prescription stays easy to read.
• Compositions: on by default. A medicine with a composition in Library → Your medicines prints it in brackets under its name, on paper and in the PDF sent by WhatsApp or email. The preview's sample shows three.
• Prescription validity: off by default. Pick 1, 2, 3, 7 or 15 days, or type any number up to 365, and every prescription on this pad prints Valid till with the last day just under the follow-up, in the pad's highlight colour so it stands out, such as 2 November 2026 (7 days). The day it is written counts as the first, so a prescription of 27 October valid for 7 days is valid till 2 November, and one valid for 1 day is valid that day only. A blank pad for handwriting prints Valid for 7 days under the date. You can change it on any prescription, under Follow-up.

#8. Look

Pick a colour (eight combinations, including black and white for laser printers, or Your own colours: any two), a highlight colour for Valid till and a highlighted note (red to start with, or your pad's colour, green, orange, black or any colour), on a pale band or as coloured text only, a font and the text size. Every colour choice opens the same colour picker, which says if a colour may print too light. The fonts are Plex Sans, the one RxKite has always printed in; Arial style and Times style, which look like Arial and Times New Roman; Source Serif, Garamond, Montserrat and Poppins. Each is part of the PDF, so it looks the same on every phone and printer. Indian languages print in Google's Noto Sans faces with any of them: Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Assamese, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

#9. Note at the bottom of every page

Add a line such as In an emergency, go to the nearest hospital at once, Not valid for medico-legal purposes or your clinic timings. It prints at the foot of every page on any paper: on a pre-printed pad or letterhead, just above your printed footer. Turn on Highlight it to print it bold in a coloured band, so patients notice it.

#Using more than one pad

In a prescription, the Pad menu at the top chooses the layout for that print. The print window also lets you switch pads, so you can print the same prescription on A5 for the patient and A4 for a file copy.

#Blank pads for writing by hand

For a power cut, a home visit or a day the printer fails, Download blank pads to write by hand (under the test page button) gives you a PDF of this layout with your header and empty sections for the patient's name, date and prescription. Print a small stack and keep it in the drawer.