Payments, Receipts, and Escrow Overview

Payments, Receipts, and Escrow Overview

Receipt vs. Payment information

The System is an Encounter/Charge based Accounting System. Receipts and Payments are fundamentally different.

  • The Receipt holds the details of the money received, who the Payer is, how much was deposited in the bank.
  • A Payment is the application of the money against an open balance, and can be in a different Reference Batch and/or Reporting Period than the Receipt.

Unless the Payments are completely applied within the same time frame as the Receipts, the Receipt & Payment totals will not match across the same time range.

  • For example, the Receipt was entered on May 30, but some of the payments were posted in June.
  • The May Receipt and Payment totals will not tie out.
  • If the Receipt Reference Batch and the Payment Reference Batch have May 30 as the Reference Batch Date, Payments posted in June will report in May.
  • This is helpful with balancing at the end of the month.
  • There are also Disbursements, Refunds, Collections Payments, and Reversed Encounters to consider that could make the Receipt Date different than the Posted Payment Date.

Escrow

Escrow is money that has been entered into the system on a Receipt but has not yet been applied to a service. It is used as a temporary holding place until the Payment is posted in full.
  1. Example: A Patient Copay is collected at Check-in. Since there is not yet a Charge for this visit, the Copay on the Receipt sits in Escrow until the Charge is posted and the Copay is applied.
All money that is manually added to the System sits in Escrow for at least a short time.
  1. Example: A Receipt is added for an Insurance check. The Payments are posted one by one to the applicable Encounters which, ultimately, reduces the Escrow to zero.

Disbursements

On the Receipt, the Disbursed field can be used to flag items that do not belong in the System, such as, Old System Payments. It can be used in scenarios where some or all of the Receipt funds are not to be posted in the System. Disbursements are in a category of their own and does not affect A/R in the System. The funds are removed from Escrow.

System Delivered Disbursement Codes

  1. O: Disburses funds that will be posted in your Legacy (old) System (most commonly used).
  1. This code is especially useful when transitioning PM systems.
  2. Scenario: An ERA is received with payments for Charges from legacy PM. Our system auto-generates a receipt and marks it as 'Disbursed in Other PM' so the end user is able to post it into the legacy PM. The ERA Dashboard displays the amount to be posted into the legacy PM.
  1. E: Error Correction
  2. CP: Capitation Plan. If you do not wish to post the Payment into the System, the Receipt can be keyed and Disbursed using this code.
  3. V: Void
Disbursement Codes can be added by Users who have the permission to Modify a Receipt. The Receipts Management Report has filters to view Disbursed Receipts.
​

Learn More

  1. Create a Patient Receipt

  2. Post a Patient Payment

  3. Create an Insurance Receipt

  4. Post an Insurance Payment

  5. Post Insurance Payment by ERA

  6. Delete or Modify a Receipt

  7. Manually Post a Secondary Payment like a Primary Payment

  8. Manually Post a Secondary Payment before the Primary Payment

 


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