This is an area where it’s important to understand the affects of deleting a payment on your reporting. Deleting a payment may seem like the easiest way to fix something, but while it may look right on the screen in front of you, the reports (especially the Compensation Report) will also be changed.
Oops - Deleting a Payment that was Received Today
The most basic case is if you received a payment today and you want to delete it today (because you were under the wrong profile, or for some reason a payment was recorded twice for example).
To delete a payment you received or recorded in error, here are the steps you’d take:
First we need to open up the invoice with the erroneous payment. You can get there by going under Patients > Billing > Purchases, OR by going to Billing > Claim Submissions or Billing > Insurer Invoices. When you find your invoice, click the blue Insurer Invoice text in the middle column of the purchases.
In the invoice window that opens, look down to the Payment History, and click on the blue Payment # text to open up the payment details
In the payment window that opens, click on the trash-can icon on the top right side to delete the payment:
💡 Jane tip: Want to see an insurer payment you’ve deleted? Just head to Billing on the top bar and select the insurer’s name on the left panel. Next, click Payments and filter for Deleted Payments.
Deleting a Payment from a Previous Date
This is where it gets trickier. First of all - only those with FULL ACCESS accounts can delete past payments.
If you delete a past payment you have two options. One will record the deletion on the dates you make the changes and the other will remove it completely from Jane as if it never happened.
Reverse and Delete
This is what we call the “safe” method. It will reverse the payment as of today’s date (when you delete it). So Jane will pull the money off of the invoice and it will be reflected as a negative payment on the staff’s compensation report for today.
This will account for the fact that you paid them back in January but you are now reversing that payment and returning that payment to the clinic.
If you run the report for the 10th, then the original payment will still show there so no past reporting has been changed.
Delete Completely
This one we call the “dangerous” method. And it can make book keepers a little crazy as it will affect your past compensation reports. This option will delete the payment completely as if it never happened. So it will not show up on any reports for today’s date AND it will no longer show up on the original compensation report if you run it again. The payment just disappears.
The Dangers:
So while the staff was potentially already paid back in January, the amount will not be deducted in the current date but the invoice will return to outstanding. If that patient then comes back in to pay for that outstanding amount, the new payment will be recorded on that date and the staff could be paid a second time.
Or if you delete the invoice/appointment then the staff were paid for an appointment/service that did not occur.
If you use this option and we go back and run the January 10th compensation report, you will see that the Easton Bayer payment has just disappeared.
But there’s no record of the deleted payment on today’s reports. So no reversal.
Summary
So I think what we’re trying to say is Be Careful :) If you want to go through this with your own data, just let us know and we can help ensure you’re recording things in the most appropriate way.