BARTER AS A PAYMENT TYPE

Many offices work with patients through trade or barter of services. There is something you need to keep in mind, everything is a form of trade. Cash is just universally excepted. All amounts received, whether by cash, check , credit card or barter are subject to income tax.

With that in mind, we suggest you setup BARTER as a payment type in the registry. Then, when you enter an amount from traded services, you would select BARTER as the payment type. During your closing process, these amounts will appear in the Credit Card field.

Since you do not physically have any cash, etc. for these amounts, balancing could be a problem. One suggestion would be to keep slips of paper by the cash drawer. When a patient presents an invoice, etc. as a trade, fill out one of these slips and (if you have an invoice attach to the slip for your records) place it in the cash drawer so remember to account for this amount during your balancing process.

To setup BARTER as a payment type, click on the Registry icon.

From the pull down menu, select “Credit Card Master”. This will bring up the list for the payment methods. You have two columns here, code and name/description. The code MUST be numeric.

WARNING: Do not change the first four listings you find here. These are coded specifically for program needs.

The following screen will display an example of this area.

Click on [Add a new entry]. Select a number that is not already in use, for the code. Hit the TAB key and type in the Name/Description you wish to see (i.e. TRADE or BARTER).

When done, click on [Exit]. This will make this payment type available when entering payments.