Category: Billing

Using Payment Vouchers

Posted on | by sos documentation

Every payment, whether cash, check, credit card, electronic funds transfer (EFT), or “Other”, must be associated with a Voucher. The Voucher includes:

  • The date of the payment.
  • The amount of the payment.
  • The identity of the payer, be it an insurance company, the patient herself, or some other non-insurance payer.
  • A description of the payment.
  • A list of specific patient credits made from the payment. (A voucher could be for a large payment that you then split among any number of patient accounts.)
  • A list of any portions of the payment that were refunded to the payer.
  • [Checks only] Check number.
  • [EFT only] EFT Number.

For your convenience, when you enter a new Credit to the Daysheet, you can add a new Voucher on the fly, or you can apply an amount from a previously entered Voucher. If there are existing Vouchers that have not been fully distributed, you will see a reminder on the Credit screen as soon as you select the Payer. Just select the desired Credit Type to view and select an undistributed Voucher to apply. You can, of course, apply any amount up to the entire undistributed amount shown on the Voucher.

This notification was displayed as soon as the payer was selected. In this (unlikely) example, there are Vouchers with undistributed amounts among the payer’s checks, cash payments, credit card payments, and EFT’s and even Other Vouchers. (You would have to click in the notification field and scroll right to see them all.)
In this example, we have selected Credit Card as the Credit Type, then we clicked in the Credit Card Voucher field to show available Vouchers. We can now select an existing Voucher, or click the New button in the lower right to create a new Credit Card Voucher.

Viewing Existing Vouchers

If you should want to review existing Vouchers, remember that Vouchers belong to Payers, not Patients. The most direct way to access them is to start from the Payer that owns them. From the main navigation panel, open Billing Lookups, then the appropriate Payer List: Insurance Carriers, Patient (Self) Payers, or Private Payers (that is, Payers that are neither Insurance Carriers nor Patient Payers.

Select the desired Payer from the list. At the top of the Payer detail screen, you will see tabs that include the various types of Vouchers:

Just click the type in which you are interested to see a list of specific Vouchers. Below is shown a list of existing Check Vouchers for Patient Payer Donna Bailey. Double-click one to view or edit :

Note that you cannot change the amount of a voucher to less than the amount that has already been applied. For example, if you have a voucher of amount $100, and you have already applied $75, you cannot change the amount of the voucher to less than $75.

How to Refresh the Payer List on a Charge Entry

Posted on | by sos documentation

If new payers are added to a patient, or details such as insurance policy coverage dates are added or changed, the payers listed on a charge may not automatically update to reflect those changes. In that event, you can force an update to the Charge payer list by clicking the Refresh Splits icon in the toolbar above the Charge window.

After clicking the Refresh Splits icon, the list of two payers gains a third payer.

See related article:

Transferring or Changing Payment Responsibility for a Charge Entry

How to Enter a Large, Multi-patient Insurance Payment

Posted on | by sos documentation

Normally every patient who receives payment from a single carrier-payer will have Insurance Plans and Policies that are linked to that single insurance carrier in SOS. See the article Understanding Insurance Carriers, Plans, and Policies. When that is true, making bulk payments is pretty painless. You enter the check, or EFT voucher, with its full amount for the first payment. When you complete the first patient’s payment, you select another patient related to the carrier, apply more of the same check or EFT voucher, and so on until the entire payment has been applied.

Manually splitting a single check across more than one SOS carrier

Nevertheless, mistakes in configuration can result in more than one of your SOS carriers in your list conveying payments in a single check or EFT. In that event, posting a payment will be a more tedious process of breaking up an EOB or EFT report into two or more groups to match the carriers used in your SOS data, entering a separate check voucher for each group, selecting the appropriate check voucher for each patient’s payments, and finally adjusting the voucher amounts to match the payments for all related payments.

There are several variations you can use to manually enter these cross-carrier payments accurately, but here is one procedure recommended by the SOS Support Team:

  1. Starting with the first patient on the EOB or EFT report, Open a new credit entry in the current daysheet.
  2. Select the Patient and the Payer, then select Check or EFT as the Credit Type.
  3. The next step, as usual, is to select an existing check or EFT voucher or to create a new voucher. As we are still working on the first patient, there will be no relevant voucher available, so create a new one by clicking the New button in the lower right corner of the voucher list.


    In the Amount field of the voucher, enter the full amount of the check or EFT.
  4. Upon saving the voucher, you will find yourself back on the Credit entry screen, and the full amount of the voucher will appear in the Credit Amount field. Jot down the name of the payer for which you entered the voucher.
  5. Confirm that the selection for the If Any Unappled Amount field is set to “Keep the unapplied amount on this Check/Voucher” as shown here:
  6. Highlight a charge in the lower area of the Credit screen and click the Apply Credit button.
  7. The Credit Split window will pop up, with the appropriate information for the charge you had highlighted when you clicked the Apply Credit button. SOS will assume that you are paying the outstanding balance for the charge, but if the payment is a lesser amount, change the value in the Amount To Apply field. If you are paying less than the full balance and would like to adjust or transfer a portion of the balance, you can also do that here. When done, click the Save and Close button to return to the Credit entry.
  8. If the EOB or EFT is paying any other charges for this patient, just repeat Steps 5 through 7 until you are ready to go on to the next patient. If there are no more charges for this patient, click Save and Close in the top toolbar to return to the Daysheet list.
  9. Now we are ready to enter a payment from the same EOB or EFT for the next patient, so create a new Credit, select the next patient and select the appropriate payer. If this new patient’s list of payers includes the same one used previously, the voucher you entered before will be available to select. Do so and loop through Steps 5 through 7 until finished with payments for this patient. If this new patient has a related, but different payer, proceed to the next step. Otherwise skip to Step 11.
  10. If there is no relevant voucher present to select, then you will have to enter a new voucher as in Step 3 above. As before, you will enter the full amount of the check or EFT for the voucher amount. Confirm the unapplied option with Step 5, jot down the name of the payer, then loop through Steps 6 and 7 until finished with payments for this patient.
  11. If there are no more patients left on the EOB or EFT, all that is left is to adjust the amount on each of the vouchers you created. Find that paper on which you jotted down the names of the insurance payers for which you created the vouchers for the EOB or EFT. (Tip: If you can’t find it, you can go to the Daysheet and recreate the list by looking in the Description column of each of the Credits you just entered.)
  12. In the main program navigation bar (usually on the left side of the screen, click Billing Lookups, then Insurance Carriers. Double-click the first payer on your list, the select either the Check Vouchers or EFT Vouchers tab, depending on whether you were paying from a check or from an EFT.
  13. Double-click the voucher that you created in the steps above. Now change the value in the Amount field to the actual amount you distributed while applying payments from this voucher. That corrected amount can be calculated two ways:
  14. Continue down your list of payers until you have adjusted the amount for every voucher you created during this procedure.

How to Record a Refund

Posted on | by sos documentation | 2 Comments on How to Record a Refund

You may refund undistributed amounts to any payer.

Start by checking to see if the amount you want to refund is available in the system as undistributed funds — that is, funds that have not been distributed to specific patient accounts in the form of a credit entry and have not been applied to any specific charges. If the amount that you want to refund has already been applied, you can reverse the payment to convert the amount to undistributed, making it refundable. See How to Reverse a Credit Entry, Bounced Check, or Over-Payment for the details.

  1. In the Navigation Bar on the left side of the screen, click the type of payer (Insurance Carrier, Private Payer, or Patient (Self) Payer) you want to review. Look for non-zero amounts in the Total Undistributed Amount column. (Tip: Use the filter row just beneath the Undistributed column heading to change the column filter to “>”, then and type in a zero. Remember to clear the filter when you are done, using the same drop list.)


  2. When you find the desired payer in the appropriate Payer list, confirm that the undistributed amount is at least as much as you intend to refund.

  3. Open the Payer by double-clicking or by selecting the row and clicking the Edit (pencil) button on the tool bar.
  4. Now look through the various Voucher tabs to locate the undistributed amount(s) that you want to refund.

  5. To do the refund, open the detail view (Edit) the Voucher, and select the Refunds tab in the list box at the bottom.

  6. Click the New button to record the amount to be refunded and the date, then save and exit on this screen as well as on the Voucher.

  7. Notice that the undistributed amount on the Voucher and the Payer will now be reduced by the amount of your refund.
  • Start by checking to see if the amount you want to refund is available in the system as undistributed funds — that is, funds that have not been distributed to specific patient accounts in the form of a credit entry and have not been applied to any specific charges.
    • In the Navigation Bar on the left side of the screen, click the type of payer (Insurance Carrier, Private Payer, or Patient (Self) Payer) you want to review. Look for non-zero amounts in the Undistributed column. (Tip: Use the filter row just beneath the Undistributed column heading to change the column filter to “>”, then and type in a zero. Remember to clear the filter when you are done.)


Generating Patient Statements

Posted on | by sos documentation

Most organizations generate patient statements monthly, but you can do them any time you please, with many filter options and other options to customize the accounts and specifics included in the output. SOS offers three very different kinds of statements:

  • The Standard Statement is similar to bank and credit card statements in that it includes an itemized listing of the activity (charges and credits) on an account during a specified date range.
  • The Open Item Statement is quite different in that it is not restricted to a date range and lists only items that still have an open balance, that is, those account charges that have not been fully paid or resolved by applying adjustments of some sort. The date of the charge entry is irrelevant.
  • The Alternate Statement By Charge is similar to the Open Item statement, but you can specify a date range and the output includes all charge entries within the range, whether there is a remaining balance or not.

If you are not already familiar with these statement options from previous versions of SOS, it is a good idea to run a sample of each one using your own data so that you can compare the types and select the one you think would work best for your organization.

To run a statement, you start at the Statements section of the Navigation bar, in which you will find Create Statements.

From there, highlight the desired statement selection on the right and click Print Report in the toolbar at the top.

If you choose Standard Statement the options page that appears will offer numerous filter and content options as well as several Type of Statement variations (All payer summary, All payer details, Payer specific details). Each of the variations provides a different level of detail. SOS recommends that you run a sample of each one, using your own data, to compare the options. You should then be able to make the best choice for your organization.

The Open Item Statement has fewer filter and content options. You may want to run a sample, especially if you are still not altogether clear about the difference between Standard and Open Item billing.

The setup for Alternate Statement By Charge is similar to that of the Open Item type, with the addition of the date range.

Note that all statement approaches allow you to include a section that prints the account aging information. Aging tells the payer exactly how much is still owed on charges that were due 30, 60, 90, or 120 days before the current billing was generated. Among the options available in each case is one to recalculate aging to be sure that it matches the dates covered by the statement.

Standard Statement Options. Adjust the options as desired, then click OK to continue.
Open Item Statement Options. Adjust options as desired, then click OK to continue.
Alternate Statement By Charge Options. Adjust options as desired, then click OK to continue.

Next, you will see your statement batch appear in the report preview window. From here you can scroll through or use the Search feature to locate a particular statement you may want to examine. Once satisfied, you can print or export the results. If you export, some of the formats (such as PDF) will offer you yet more options.

Open Item batch shown in the report preview window.