Update: On June 15, 2020 we released an updated pre-payment workflow that will no longer generate an invoice if a pre-payment or deposit booking policy is enabled. The change resolves an issue where the payment would have previously been added to an un-arrived invoice on the patient’s account. It is now added as a payment in a new “pending” state, with a credit for the same amount being added to the patient’s account. Any payments made as part of a pre-payment policy prior to June 15, 2020 will not be in a pending state and will instead be applied to an un-arrived invoice on the patient’s account.
A pre-payment policy for your clinic means that a patient will need to pay the full amount or partial amount for the appointment when they book in. This can be customized to apply to all appointments, or for only first-time appointments. When a payment is made for an appointment as part of a pre-payment policy, it is added as a “pending” payment and the same amount is added as a credit on the patient’s account.
Enabling a partial or full pre-payment policy for your clinic may be a good idea if you have a high cancellation rate from your patients, or you just want that extra security to be able to cover any costs associated with late cancellations.
Setting up a pre-payment policy
To setup a pre-payment policy for your clinic, first navigate to the Online Booking section in your clinic Settings. Scroll down to the Payment Policy section to change the pre-payment policy at the clinic. This can be changed by any full-access user at the clinic.
To make the first-visit policy different for patients, you can change the “First Visit Payment Policy” setting directly below the Payment Policy setting to be different.
Viewing Pre-payments
To view a pre-payment on an account, navigate to the profile in Jane and select the Billing Tab. From there, select the “Payments” tab to see all of the patient’s payments. Any payments marked as “pending” are pre-payments, and have not yet been applied to an invoice.
By clicking the View button, you’ll be able to remove this payment’s association with the booked appointment, or view it in the schedule.
Note: Removing pre-paid appointments cannot be undone. It is not possible to set up prepaid appointments on the administrative side.
When pre-payments are enabled, there are a few different types of values that you should become familiar with when you’re viewing a payment that was pre-paid: total applied, balance remaining and available to apply.
- Total Applied = Amount applied to invoice
- Balance Remaining = Total Credit (Intended Credit + Available Credit)
- Available to Apply = Available Credit (appears when there is available credit)
Note: If the No-show button is selected the pending amount is removed and resides in credit. If you would like to use that payment to apply it towards the no-show, you can do so using the receive payment button.