Monthly

Assess Finance Charges
Finance charges can be individually assessed for each patients per a flag in the patient screen.  The percentage and minimum is user-defined in the company screen. When finance charges are assessed, a charge is automatically posted to each invoice for which the patient is flagged for allowing finance charges.

Move Old Invoices To Collections
This is a way to globally transfer old invoices to collection status.   However,  since computers cannot necessarily read between the lines and evaluate invoices that are old and unpaid to make a determination that this is no fault of the patient.  Therefore, you should review these "global" changes.   When this menu option is selected, you will have certain criteria to enter before the program executes, as shown below.

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Your selections are displayed for review prior to execution.  After execution, a list of invoices transferred to collections is printed, after which you SHOULD review each to determine is sure enough, each invoice needs to be on collections.

Writeoff Old Invoices
Globally write off invoices by category, with a selection criteria nearly identical to the previous menu selection, and shown below as follows:

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During execution, each qualifying invoice has a writeoff automatically posted such that the invoice balance is zero, the same as if you had manually posted writeoff (payments).   If you choose to review the invoices written off, print the report PRINT/Reports/Payments By Date

Close Out Month
This selection does all the things necessary for proper accounting, plus generating historical, year to date, etc. databases.  In addition, the accounting period (month) is advanced. It is not necessary to have exact end of month information entered (payments, charges, runs, etc.) because this is not always practical.  You should close the month near the last day of the month.  You will have the following prompt messages.

This backup diskette is the only record that freezes the transactions for the current operating month.  You should have already done this backup before getting to this point, and this is simply a reminder for something you should have already done per the billing procedures -- Appendix A.

The monthly expenses are not always known, and usually the zero amount is accepted.   This figure is used for certain report calculations such as cost per call, etc -- see PRINT/Reports/Operations Report.

Close Out Year
If after closing the month, this is the last month of your fiscal year, then close out the year--simple as that.

Clean Up Data Files
Certain file maintenance functions are performed, as detailed in screens below.   In order to prevent your databases to continue to grow out of reason with old paid up invoices, patients who are no longer transported, etc., each month, the program will delete certain records in certain databases.  The company screen allows a user-defined time after an invoice is paid up before deleting the invoice (and associated charges and payments).  Since you made a monthly backup prior to getting to this point, this data is not lost, but simply archived on floppy diskette for future recall if necessary.  The first end-of-month cleanup after a patient has no active invoices, the patient status is changed from active to inactive; the next month changed from active to delete, and the following month is deleted.  If this patient is transported during this time, the status is automatically changed back to active, and the process repeats.  From this it can be seen that if you have a cleanup time of 90 days for invoices in the company scrreen, most likely the invoice will average around 6 months from date of service until it is deleted, and then the patient is deleted another 3 months later.  Patients, invoices, charges, and payments are the only files deleted; all other files (doctors, insurance companies, etc.) are transferred to inactive status, unless you specifically edit the record and manually transfer to delete status.  Even then, cleanup will not delete the records if there is some link to an existing invoice, but instead will automatically transfer the record back to active status. 

During cleanup, the screen displays will show the action taking place, as shown below.

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This is the screen that is displayed after completion of cleanup.