Billing Your Patients

This resource outlines how to use patient billing accounts to bill your patients.

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Billing Account Basics

When you open a patient's billing account, you will see several tabs where you can view different pieces of financial information. The Statement and Invoices tabs are the two we will cover in this resource as they'll be the tabs where you record payments and invoice patients. To kick us off, here are a few common questions we hear:

How do charges make their way to a billing account?

• A therapist completes their treatment note for a Private Pay patient. 
• An adjudicated claim with patient responsibility is finalized to the patient account.
• A charge is manually added to the billing account.

What's the difference between the Statement and Invoices tabs?

The Statement tab shows a complete running list of all charges and payments for the selected patient. The Invoices tab is where you will create invoices and allocate charges, payments, and credits to them.

Should I bill using statements or invoices?

This is a matter of preference! Statements are great because they show a complete list of all charges and credits along with the overall patient balance. However, it can be hard for patients to understand everything they are seeing if you do not keep their billing account well organized and notated. Invoices are fantastic for grouping together dates of service for easy patient viewing and can easily be emailed. However, they do require more management to keep accurate.

3 Options for Creating Invoices

Manually Create an Invoice

Manually creating invoices allows you to review exactly what is being invoiced for each patient before it is sent out. To manually create an invoice:

1. Navigate to the patient’s billing account.
2. Click the + Invoice button in the bottom right.
3. Select any number of charges, payments, or credits from the list of uninvoiced items.
4. Click the Create Invoice button.

Generate Invoices in Bulk

Generating invoices in bulk is useful if each charge, payment, and credit is being billed with no exceptions. To generate invoices in bulk at any time:

1. Navigate to the Billing tab.
2. Select Billing Accounts in the left sidebar.
3. Click the Generate Invoices button in the lower right and adjust the date as needed. 

Generate Invoices in Bulk on the 1st of the month.

Automatically generating invoices on the first of each month is useful if you're billing each line item with no exceptions and are billing on the first of the month. To set up automatic invoicing, an admin will need to:

1. Navigate to the Admin tab.
2. Select Clinic Options in the left sidebar.
3. Click the Edit Invoice Settings button on the right.
4. Change the Auto-Generate Invoices drop-down to Yes, create invoices automatically each month.

Mark Invoices as Paid

Invoices are automatically marked as paid when the charges, credits, and payments equal $0. If a patient pays during a visit for an invoiced amount, you will want to apply that payment to the invoice. Occasionally you will have a patient pay for multiple invoices at once and you'll need to split those payments across multiple invoices. Here are the steps:

1. Link the payment to the first invoice.
2. In that same invoice, click the line you want to split and change the Invoiced Amount to the amount you want to be allocated to this invoice.
3. Click the Save Invoiced Amount button.

Manage Multiple Invoices

Remember, charges, payments, and credits can only be present on one invoice at a time. If a patient does not make a payment for a period of time, you may be left with several invoices to manage. Here are a few ways to manage multiple invoices:

1. Print or email multiple invoices to the patient and track them separately. When the patient pays, you can apply payments to the oldest invoice first and work your way towards the most recent until all invoices have been paid. This is the most accurate method but will take more time. 
2. Add new charges, payments, and credits to the original invoice. This will allow you to keep the original date that the invoice was sent out for aging reporting purposes.
3. Delete the original invoice or remove any lines that were not paid and create a new invoice. You will lose the ability to track aging accurately, but you will have fewer invoices to manage.

Helpful Resources

We have several helpful articles around patient billing accounts that you may find useful! Here are several we recommend:

• Print a Statement
• Create an Invoice
• Split a Line Across Invoices
• Print the Invoice Summary
• Add a Note to a Billing Account