You should enter a credit to:

• Record a payment.
• Adjust (write off) a balance. Adjustments are also used to record discounts.
• Record payment denials received (if desired)

SOS is an open-item receivables accounting system, which means that you must apply credits to individual charges rather than to an overall balance. When entering a credit, you will specify the patient and the payer. SOS will then display all the matching charge splits that are still “open”, that is, those that still have a balance to be paid. You will then apply the credit to one or more of the open charge split items. Charge splits may be paid in part or in full. If not paid in full, each remains open until subsequent credits (payments or adjustments) bring the balance for that split to zero.

To access the Credit Form:

1. Open the Billing section of the navigation bar, then click Daysheet.
   
2. Click the New Credit (dollar sign) button on the main menu toolbar, or the New Credit option on the Daysheet’s right-click menu.
   
3. The Credit form will open.
   
4. To start, select a patient by clicking the Patient field.
5. Select the payer for this credit. The correct payer will be the party…
   * From whom the payment was received,
   * From whom the payment denial was received, or
   * To whom you want to apply an adjustment.
   The drop list for this field contains only those payers (both private and insurance) that you have previously configured for this patient, less any for whom you have set the Do not show in transaction payer list option. SOS uses distinct highlight colors to differentiate between the types of payers in the list:
   
   As soon as you choose one of the payers, the open charge splits (charge splits that still show a balance due) for that payer will appear in the Charge Splits list box in the bottom section of this screen.
6.  Now indicate the type of credit you want to apply:  Adjustment, Cash, Credit Card, Check, Denied, Electronic Funds Transfer, or Other. If you select Check you can choose a previously entered check with available funds, or you can add a new check entry using the New button in the lower right corner of the list window. If the latter, SOS will prompt you for the details of the check, including the date, number, and amount. Note that the check amount can be larger than the amount you want to apply to this patient account. The next time you want to apply some of the remaining amount of this check to any patient account linked to the payer, the check already will have been recorded and it will appear in the Checks list for selection. The process for the other types of credits, even Cash, work in a similar manner, though the specifics vary for each type. Please see Qualifying Your Credit Type Selection for Payments and Adjustments for more details, if needed.
7. SOS automatically inserts the current date as the Credit Date but you can change it to a different date, if necessary. Note that if you change the date, the date you insert will appear as the default in the next credit you enter.
8. Next, review, and adjust if necessary, the Credit Amount (the amount of the payment or adjustment) that you want to apply to this patient. If you apply less than the entire amount, the remainder will be saved as undistributed funds and available to apply to this or a different patient account in the future.
9. Reviewing the rows in the Charge Splits list in the next panel of the screen, highlight the first one you want to pay or adjust, then click the Apply Credit button below the Charge Splits list.
   
10. A Credit Split window will appear. The amount available to be applied to the Charge Split balance automatically appears in the Amount to Apply field. If desired, you can reduce the amount. In addition, you can change the Date Applied, if you like, but it must be the same or more recent than the Credit Date.
11. The Credit Split form also contains an option to create an adjustment to reduce the remaining balance of the Charge Split even further. You also may indicate an amount to be transferred from insurance responsibility to the non-insurance payer(s) on the account. So you can do all three — pay, adjust, and transfer — on one Credit Split screen. (Note that if this were a non-insurance credit, you would be able to transfer to insurance responsibility instead.)
    
12. To save this Credit Split and return to the Credit screen, click the Save and Close button on the toolbar at the top of the window, or press <Ctrl><Enter> on your keyboard.
13. If the Credit you are entering covers more than one charge item, just repeat the apply process until the entire credit amount for this patient has been applied.
    Note that if the payment or any portion of it is not applied, the unapplied portion will remain in the system as a pre-pay and can be applied to future charge items as they are entered on the daysheet.
14. If you would like to record some comments or additional description for this entry, you can do so on the second tab of this form, Additional.
15. Add any desired information on the User Defined Fields tab, if you have configured user-defined fields for credit entries.Save your entry with one of the Save Options buttons: Save (saves, but stays on the current screen), Save and Close, or Save and New Credit (saves the current credit, then clears the form to prepare for a new credit entry). Pressing <Ctrl><Enter> on the keyboard does the same thing as the Save and Close button.

________________________

Other Credit Entry Topics:

Using Auto-Apply – The Quick and Easy Way to Record Non-Insurance Payments

Handling Deductibles and Insurance Denials

Entering Advance Payments

Handling Larger than Expected Payments

Printing a Deposit Reconciliation Report

How to Apply a Single Payment to Multiple Accounts

Overview

You should enter a charge whenever an encounter with a patient results in a fee or an amount that you will want to bill and track, or when you have rendered a service to be recorded in the patient’s ledger. Typically, a service will be rendered and a fee will be charged. In many cases, the responsibility for paying that fee will fall on the patient — or on another responsible party — and one or more insurance companies. As you enter the charge for the service, you can divide the amount due among the responsible parties. In most cases a portion of the charge will be “split” to the patient, and the rest will be “split” to the primary insurance carrier. Later, when payments are received, you can assign the remaining balance to the available payers on the account. For example, if insurance denies a claim, you can move responsibility back to the patient, or perhaps to a secondary insurance payer.

Manual Charge Entry

1. To enter a charge, begin by opening the Daysheet screen. Expand Billing in the navigation bar, then click Daysheet.
   
2. From there, open the Charge Entry form by clicking the left-most icon on the toolbar, or by right-clicking anywhere in the daysheet list area and selecting the top option, New Charge.
   
3. Selecting a patient. Click anywhere in the Patient field, or <TAB> to the field and press <ENTER> to open the patient list. You can type anything you like for the full text search, including any part of a name or birthdate and the list will be immediately filtered down to just the rows that contain the characters you typed for the search. For example, first name, last name, or birthday (like “4/12”). Note that even matches in the middle of a name or date are included, so in our example below, all patients with birth dates starting with “5/”, as well as those birthdates containing “5/” in the middle, are counted as matches. When you see the desired patient appear in the selection list, click that row, or highlight it using the arrow keys and press <ENTER> to select.Once the patient has been selected, several pieces of information will appear in the charge screen. The patient’s most recently used POS (place of service) code and Sort Code (optional) will appear if there has been a previous charge entry made for this patient. The Provider will be selected based on your preference in Settings > System Options >Transactions > Charge Defaults.If any default values are missing or not correct for the charge you are entering, you can correct each. A little button with a “V” arrow symbol to the right of a field indicates that you can select from a list (or calendar, in the case of a date). To do so, move the mouse cursor over the field and click the field, or the “V” button at the right of the field. Most of the fields on the charge screen are, in fact, selection lists that work just as described above for the Patient list. Once you have selected patient, service, and provider SOS will find the appropriate fee and divide it among the patient’s payors as your various settings dictate. In most cases, that will complete the entry and you will be able to save and continue with additional transactions or other tasks.

You may have some questions about some of the fields on the Charge screen, so let’s take a closer look at those that may be unfamiliar to you:

• Care Episode. The Care Episode can be thought of as an “admission”. If a patient completes or terminates treatment and returns at a later date for more care, you should open a new Care Episode for her and select it as the Active Care Episode. If you do so, it will automatically be inserted into your new charge entries, but you can use select any of the patients other episodes for a particular charge. For more information about Care Episodes, please see the related article.
• Claim Type. Select “None” for non-insurance charge entries. For insurance-billable entries in the Standard Version of SOS, the only other choice for Claim Type is “Professional”. If you are using the Pro Version of SOS, you can choose either “Professional” for billing normal office services that could be filed on a CMS1500 claim form, or “Institutional” if the charge is one that could be filed on a UB claim form.
• Claim Setup. SOS Standard only supports one Claim Setup per Care Episode, so the system will use it automatically. SOS Pro, however, supports an unlimited number of Claim Setups. You could, for example, have one Claims Setup that is right for home visits and a different one for in-office treatment. The right choice will be apparent if you use a good description when you create each of your Claim Setups. For more information about Claim Setups, please see the related article.
• J#. This value is simply a sequential number that the system automatically assigns to every transaction. It can be valuable for reporting and troubleshooting.
• Sort Code. The Sort Code is an arbitrary value that your organization can use to help with unique reporting requirements. When an organization uses Sort Codes, the system administrator will probably have configured the Sort Code field as mandatory. In that case the Sort Code prompt will be colored red and you won’t be able to save your charge entry without selecting a value for that field.
• CPT Modifier. CPT Modifiers further describe the nature of the service being billed. Many services do not require any modifiers, but others won’t be paid without them. You will have to check with your payers to be sure.
• Charge Dx. Each charge submitted to an insurance payer must be accompanied by one or more diagnoses, appropriate for the type of service being billed. The lookup list for the four Dx fields will show all active diagnosis codes that are on the patient’s Care Episode diagnostic list. If the diagnosis you want to use does not appear on the list, you can add it on-the-fly by clicking the NEW button at the bottom of the lookup list.

Prior to saving your charge, be sure to review the panel at the bottom of the charge screen to see how SOS has split the fee among the payers on the account. If you want to change the amount of a split, just double click the row, adjust the amount, and save. In 99% of the cases, you will have to change at least two of the rows to keep the overall fee the same. SOS always adjusts the fee to match the sum of the split amounts, so if you were to increase just one split by $5, the fee will increase by $5 as well. Reduce a different split by $5 to bring the total fee for the service back to the correct amount. If the splits are not correct, your aging reports will not be correct either.

If you find that SOS is not calculating the charge splits the way you think it should be, start by reviewing our article that explains exactly the process in detail.

Tip

You have probably noticed the Copy Previous Service button. Using this button, you can reproduce any previous charge in a patient’s ledger for the current date. For the details, please see this article on the topic.

List View Filter Editor

The SOS G5 List View Filter Editor was created by SOS’s programming tool partner, DevExpress, which has published a good overview of the component on the DevExpress YouTube channel. You will probably find the portion from 30 seconds to 3 minutes to be a valuable introduction.

The following walkthrough is a DevExpress transcript of the two and a half minute portion from 30 seconds to 3 minutes of the video:

Invoking the Filter Editor and Creating Simple Filter Criteria

To invoke the Filter Editor, right-click any column header and select Filter Editor… in the context menu.

By default, the Filter Editor displays filter criteria as a tree where individual nodes represent simple filter conditions. The root node is the logical operator combining all conditions. Any filter condition consists of three parts: a column name, criteria operator and operand value. If the grid’s data is not filtered, the editor contains one incomplete filter condition for the clicked column.

Click the value box and select Medium in the dropdown list.

Click OK to close the editor and apply changes. As a result, the grid displays only records with a priority set to Medium. Now you can invoke the Filter Editor using the Edit Filter button within the Filter Panel.

To add a new filter condition, click the plus button next to the root node. This can also be done by clicking the logical operator and selecting Add Condition.

Select Name in the list of available columns. Then, use the Contains comparison operator and enter the ‘vendor’ string in the value box. Click Apply to filter data without closing the editor.

The grid now displays records with medium priority and names containing ‘vendor’ in them.

Deleting Filter Conditions

Now delete all filter conditions by clicking their buttons or by selecting Clear All in the logical operator’s menu.

Constructing Complex Filter Criteria