FINANCE CHARGES

There are two locations in which finance charges may be setup. Which you use will depend on whether you are setting up finance charges for your patients (patient outstanding balances only) or insurance carriers (carrier outstanding balances only).

Patient Finance Charges

There are a couple of steps to setup your finance charges. Your first step is to go to Business Information. You will see 4 fields dealing with finance charges --

Finance Charge Description This field allows you to change the description if you wish. In some areas, medical facilities cannot use the term “finance charge”. You may change it here.

Annual Finance Charge % You put in the percentage you will be charged, based on the annual amount. For example, 1% per month would mean you would type in 12% in this field.

Finance Charge Days The entry for this field is the number of days outstanding before a service receives a finance charge. Since finance charges are posted during a month end process, you should make this number a multiple of 30.

Finance Charge Min. Amt If you have a minimum fee (some offices use $1.00) you will fill it in here, if you don't require a minimum fee, just the finance percentage, leave this blank.

Please Note, if you have been using the TPS! program and are just now entering a finance charge, your existing patients will not be automatically setup to receive a finance charge. You have the ability to turn off or set special conditions (i.e. if your finance charge days is 30, but you have a hardship case you might want to set the days for this patient only to 90) at the patient level, go to the Additional Information Tab. The field Finance Charges Days will indicate when this patient's outstanding balance will accrue a finance charge. If it is set to 0, the finance charge for this patient has been turned off. In other words, they will not receive a finance charge on any outstanding patient amounts.

Carrier Finance Charge

If you will charging some or all of your insurance carriers finance charges on unpaid balances over so many days, you will set this up in the Carrier Master Entry. From the open file folder click on Carrier Master Entry. When you enter this area the first carrier you will see is CASH. Use the icon to Select Records and pull up the first carrier that will be charged finance charges.

Finance Charge % You put in the percentage you will be charged, based on the annual amount. For example, 1.5% per month would mean you would type in 18% in this field.

Days The entry for this field is the number of days outstanding before a service receives a finance charge. Since finance charges are posted during a month end process, you should make this number a multiple of 30.

Minimum Amount If you have a minimum fee (some offices use $1.00) you will fill it in here, if you don't require a minimum fee, just the finance percentage, leave this blank.

Once you are done with this carrier, click on the Disk Icon to save this record, but remain on the Carrier Master Entry Screen. Now again use the icon for Select Records and find the next carrier for whom this finance charge is applicable and repeat the steps above.

The next time you say YES to End of Month, finance charges will be added to the appropriate ledgers.

WARNING: If you utilize both patient and carrier finance charges, you may see more than one finance charge line in the patient’s ledger. You will see one for that patient finance amount, and one for the carrier finance amount. Additionally, if there is more than one business, you may see finance lines for each business as well.