Patients

•How do I work with households?

•What can I do with an invoice?

Patient - Households

Overview

Households are a useful concept, when you have someone on the line who wants to book multiple appointments for members of their family, or generally are looking for information about others that they are responsible for.

Connecting Households

It used to be that the members were linked together if they shared the same home phone number, but with the advent of cell phones, this is not always a reliable method.

Instead, members have to be linked without the use of the home phone number. Now, members of a household can have different (or even blank) home phone numbers, but remain linked together.

We added a feature by which if a patient changes (or has added) the home phone number, the system will prompt the user to see if the patient should be added to the household of any patients that already have that home phone number (assuming the patient is not already in their household).

We made changes to support adding a new patient to the household of another new patient that has not yet been saved.

Now, when creating a new patient, the user will be able to add household members to that new patient. The system will save the initial patient for them.

We’ve also added right-click and Tool menu option to attach an existing Patient to the current household.

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Invoice Actions

Overview

Many actions can be taken against an invoice, but only at certain points in the invoice’s life cycle. This document helps understand what you can do, and when, with an invoice.

Actions

Pay

For invoices that have an outstanding balance, payments can be made at any time.

Void

If you need to roll back an invoice, and the invoice has not been posted, then you can simply void the invoice.

Voiding an invoice means that the invoice should be disregarded, possibly because it was created in error, or the customer changed their mind while still in the office. It wipes out the purchase, leaving a record in the patient’s history, and it will show on the end of day.

Again, once the invoice has been posted, you can no longer void it.

Reverse

Once the invoice has been posted, you have to ask yourself, “Has the invoice been paid in full?”

If the invoice has been posted, but not paid in full, you can reverse the invoice. This will create reversal entries - negative amount on the original invoice - to cancel out the original purchases.

If any payments have been made on the invoice, they will also be reversed. Negative amounts will be made against the same payment type as the original payment.

Refund

If an invoice has been posted, and has been paid in full, then you need to do a refund.

This leaves the original invoice intact, and creates a new invoice containing the negative purchases, and negative payment.

You would use this when a customer has returned or cancelled their purchase on a subsequent day, when the invoice has already been paid in full.

Write-off

Until an invoice is paid in full, the outstanding balance will show up in the Accounts Receivable, and there is an indicator ($) attached to the patient’s record.

If you’ve tried to collect, and have decided to forego any further collection activities, you can write-off an invoice.
•Removes the amount from Accounts Receivable.
•Leaves the indicator ($) on the patient’s record.

The assumption is if there is any future contact with the patient, that an attempt to collect the balance owing would be made.

Cancel

Cancelling an invoice is similar to writing one off. The only noticeable difference, is that with a cancel, the dollar sign is removed from the patient's record. Just like a write-off, however, the outstanding balance is removed from the Accounts Receivable. You would use this when it is no longer appropriate to collect the balance owing. For example, if a patient comes in and pays you a deposit, but never comes in to pick up their purchase or get their money back, then you would cancel the invoice. It is not appropriate to write it off, as it is not bad debt since you did not lose inventory. But it is also not appropriate to collect more money from this patient, as nothing was sold to them.

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