In a perfect world all patients would pay their invoices upfront and you’d never have to worry about chasing up unpaid invoices. In the real world however that’s very rarely a reality and as such you’ll find yourself needing to chase up unpaid invoices. The Unpaid Invoice report within Genie will simplify this process so you can spend less time chasing up outstanding invoices and more time focusing on what’s important – providing the highest level of care to your patients.
Before you begin
Before running any financial reports in Genie, you should ensure that you have already run a Check Integrity, and that everything balances. For more information, please refer to our Check Integrity article.
What is the Unpaid Invoices report?
The unpaid invoices report shows all invoices that have an outstanding balance. When running the report you will have the option to display all outstanding invoices at once, or divide them by account holder type. In addition you can also select whether you wish to display blacklisted accounts, unprinted invoices and batch processed accounts (e.g. Medicare). The report can be accessed by navigating to File > Maintenance and Reports > Monthly tab and selecting the Unpaid Invoices option.
How can you filter the report?
There are a multitude of ways you can filter the report so that you can obtain the specific information you need. You will notice a number of fields within the 'Invoices Filter' section (i.e Individuals, Organisations, Medicare, and All) that will allow you to filter the report to only produce results for account holders that match the selected criteria. You can also conduct the report for a specific provider if need be by selecting the 'Select' radio button then selecting the relevant provider.
If you would like to see all outstanding invoices relating to the specific filters applied, simply set the ‘Owing for more than’ and ‘Owing for less than’ fields to 0. You will also notice a 'Inclusions' section of this report. Selecting the relevant inclusions will allow you to include invoices in the report that would otherwise not appear.
More information on how this report is structured and what dictates the information that gets reported are given below.
In this section, we are going to have a more detailed look at the options within the 'Invoices Filter' area of this report. The options available to you in here allow you to run more specific searches for certain invoice types. An outline of how each filter affects the results of this report is given below:
All: Selecting this option will filter the report so that it will include invoices of any Account type. Individuals: Selecting this option will filter the report so that only invoices with a patient/non-patient account holder will appear. Non-patient(s), for example, may refer to individuals being parents of the patient(s) but not actual patients within your Genie system. This will be any Invoices for which the Self button in the Invoice has been selected.
Organisations: Selecting this option will filter the report so that only invoices with an "Organisational" account holder will appear within the report (i.e. Health Fund\Insurer or non-patient Account holder).
Medicare: Selecting this option will filter the report so that only invoices with Medicare listed as the account holder will appear within the report
DVA: Selecting this option will filter the report so that only invoices with DVA listed as the account holder will appear within the report.
Provider: Show all providers (including assistants) or a single provider. Note: If your practice is configured to use individual letterheads, this radio button will be unavailable. This is because it’s not possible to bulk print statements and invoices with differing letterheads. Rather you would need to select each provider before utilising the Print Statements and Print Invoices buttons.
Owing for more than, or equal to: 'x' days: The number entered into the 'x' field will determine the most-recent invoice to be included in the report.
Owing for less than, or equal to: 'x' days: The number entered into the 'x' field will determine the oldest invoice to be included in the report.
No reminder sent since 'x': Entering in a date here allows you to exclude any invoices which have had a reminder sent before the specified date.
The next area within this report we are going to talk about is the Inclusions area. The options available to you in here allow you to include specific invoices within the report. An outline of each option and how they work within the report is given below:
Include Blacklisted: Includes invoices for Account Holders who have been blacklisted.
Include Unprinted: Includes invoices which have not yet been printed. Any invoices you're sending through ECLIPSE electronically will be considered Printed; as of Version 8.9.3 of Genie all Bulk Bill and DVA electronic claims are also assigned a print date when sent electronically.
Include Batch Processed: This allows you to show and/or hide invoices under account holders which have been sent in a manual batch (i.e account holders that have the "Batch Process" option ticked within their account holder record). This is not the case for accounts that have Medicare\DVA listed as their account holder.
Show Unprinted Invoices in Date Range: To use this, you must have "Include Unprinted" ticked. Having this inclusion enabled will leave only those invoices which are unpaid and unprinted on display.
The buttons available within this area of the report allow you to print statements, invoices and templates as well navigate to the account holder linked to the invoice and many other options. A description of each button and what it does is given below:
Print Statements: Selecting this button allows you to print a statement for the invoice and it will also affix a Last Sent date to the invoice. However, if the invoice has not previously been printed, printing the statement will not give the invoice a print date. As such it will continue to be displayed in blue text to indicate its unprinted status.
Print Invoices: Selecting this button allows you to print a copy of an invoice and will change an “unprinted” invoices' status to “printed” (i.e. it would no longer appear in blue).
Select Template: This option is actually a drop down menu, not a generic button. This allows you to print out a letter template from within your Merged Letter templates list. To print out multiple letters, hold down shift+click on the invoices to highlight them, then select the relevant template (see figure 2). This can be a useful option if you have a specific template used for chasing up outstanding debt.
For more information on how to create Merged Letter templates, please refer to the Customising Letter Templates article.
Account Holder: Selecting this button will allow you to view the Account Holder record linked to the invoice.
Account Hx: Selecting this button will take you to the Account History record of the account holder linked to the invoice. The Account History window will open to the most recent invoice which may not be the particular unpaid invoice you were viewing. However, you are able to view all outstanding invoices linked to the queried account holder by selecting the ‘Show Outstanding’ button.
Remove Discounts: Selecting this button will automatically delete any discounts that have previously been applied to the invoice.
The Excel icon will product an export of the Unpaid Invoices report.
The Printer icon will print a copy of the Unpaid Invoices report.
Note: Users will be prompted to confirm and acknowledge that this action is not reversible, however it will not prompt you to enter a reason for deletion. The reason for this is because an automatic reason 'Discount Deleted - From Overdue Invoice Window' will be applied for audit purposes.
Account: The information populated into this area of the report lists the Account Holder that is linked to the to the invoice.
Inv No: The figure populated into this section of the report is the invoice number.
Date: The date populated within this section of the report lists the date that the invoice was raised.
Fee: The figures that populate within this section of the report are based upon the total fees of the items billed within the invoice. Please note that these figures do not include GST. If you would like to include GST, simply double click on the invoice and then save out of the invoice window.
Discount: The figures that populate within here are based upon the total amount discounted against the relevant invoice.
Reason: The information entered into this area of the report is the reason why a discount was made against the invoice.
Balance: The total outstanding balance held against an invoice, including GST and taking credits/discounts into account.
Last Sent: The date that populates within here signifies the last date a statement was printed for the relevant invoice.
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