Aging Accounts or Accounts Receivable
This procedure is necessary, and should be done often, (about every 30 days is average) in order to notify patients and carriers of outstanding account balances. Doing so will also keep your accounting system up to date for record keeping and reporting  functions. This section has the following topics:

• What happens when you age accounts
• Reports using defined ranges
• Specific Insurance only reports
• Table format
• Find Last Aged
• How to use the reports
  

Click the Age Accounts tab to get one of the dialogs below. If you aged your accounts within the last 30 days you will get the second dialog box below!


If you click Re-Age, aging of the accounts will be recalculated but no additional functions will be performed.  If you click Screen you will be taken to the Aging screen for other reporting options that you can perform as seen below. Clicking Cancel leaves you at the Menu itself.

What happens when you age accounts
All unpaid invoices are instantly found. Then, one at a time, each invoice is checked to see what further action needs to be taken.

• If you use finance charges, all open invoices that have been assigned to patients will be assessed a finance charge. (The finance charge is setup in the Billing Prefs of Preferences (also called 1.Office Startup.)
• Any insurance claims that need to be resubmitted will be flagged (Batch checked) based on your preset instructions in the Insurances module.

When these actions are completed the Aging screen appears for you to select the type of Aging Report you want.  There are many variables that go into making the report that you want.

Reports Using Defined Ranges
These reports allow you to view either Insurance or Patient accounts in list format. Table format is selected in a different section.

• If you want Totals only then check its box!  This is available on Insurance reports only!
• You can sort by Age or Patient
• If you want the report subsorted by doctor (each doctor is separated on different pages) then check Subsort by Doctor.  This is available on both insurance and patient reports.
• In Aging Range select from the pop-up menu what range of ages you want in your report.  Invoices are aged in months old not days!
• If you want the report can be for one Single Office Doctor.

The field Last Age & Rebill Date is the last time the full aging and rebilling process was done. The field Invoice Age Date shows you the last time the current invoice was aged! It is this last field, when subtracted from the Billing Date field, that gives the age of the invoice in months!

Specific Insurance Only
 If you want to create a report about one specific carrier, select it from the pop-up list of all insurances in your database. If you have assigned insurance codes so that the ones you want all have the first three letters, such as "AET" for Aetna, then manually type in "AET".

The Aging Range selected in the left section will be used and all invoices will be listed! After making your selection click the Create Report for this Carrier button.

Table Format
The accountants just love this kind of stuff.  This report shows just columns with no invoice listing.  It gives a complete overview of where your money is (and isn't in your pocket).  With this information you can then select specific insurance reports to generate. A similar report is shown for patients, too.


Find Last Aged Invoices for...
This will find the invoices that were used to create the most recent aging report for either insurances or patients.  You can go to the Payments or Administrator’s screen to review these invoices.

How to use the reports 
Below are sample AR list reports for both insurances and patient. Immediately after you print out an AR report, you can navigate to either the Payments or Admin screen and act on the invoices on the print out. The database remains sorted to match the current printed output.

• Along the left side of the report, each record is numbered sequentially. This way you can quickly Goto that record by clicking the Goto Record button, entering the Seq# for that record and clicking OK.

• Each insurance has its own heading that total ARs and the phone number so you can call the insurance carrier to complain. Below this heading the outstanding invoices are sorted by months old 1,2,3, etc.).
  
• The column Last Dates Print ECS shows you the last time this invoice was printed or sent electronically. 
• The field next to the date may have a B in it to signify that the claim has been batched so that the next time you sent claims it will be in that batch.

In the patient AR report below, the Status of Batch means that invoice is flagged for single printing.




Last Update 8/30/2004