The Payment menu is primarily used to add Patient and Insurance payments to a patient's ledger. You can also add Co-Pays and EFTs to a ledger, as well as create custom Patient and Insurance payment types. 

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Patient Payments & Co-Pays

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To the right of the Amount field you will see a number labeled Remaining. This is how much of your payment is unapplied.

The Provider and Office determine which provider will get credit for the payment on the deposit slip and a few other reports. For more information about provider associations, please click here.

If the payment is an electronic transfer, meaning your office will not be physically depositing the money into your account, check the Electronic Funds Transfer checkbox. On your deposit slip, you can choose to exclude EFT payments.

If you wish to attach a file to the payment (for example, a scan of the patient's check, a coupon, or the credit card imprint), click the Attach File button. A window will open, and you can select the file you wish to attach. You cannot scan an attachment directly into the payment window; the file must exist before you click Attach File. Once a file has been attached, the button will change to a menu. Select this menu to open, delete, export, or replace the attached file. Payment attachments can only be accessed via the payment window; they cannot be accessed via the Attachments or Images ability.

Once you have entered all the necessary information for the payment, you can apply it to charges. Click the Apply to All button to apply the payment to the oldest available charges. If you check Apply to Patient Portion Only, the payment will only be applied up to the amount that is currently allocated to the patient portion. This is particularly useful if you are using Insurance Estimating.

When you have a procedure selected, the Apply to All button becomes an Apply to Selected button. Click this button to apply the payment to the selected procedure, up to the amount of the payment or the unpaid amount, whichever is lesser.

You can also apply the payment manually, by selecting the procedure you wish to apply the payment to, then clicking in the Payment field, and entering the amount you wish to associate to the payment.

You can choose to leave the payment unapplied, and apply it at a later date (for example, if the patient is pre-paying for services).

Click Save when you have finished entering your payment information. 

Insurance Payments

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When entering an insurance payment, choose New Insurance Payment from the Payment menu. In the payment window, enter your Check Number and the Amount of the payment. To the right of the Amount field you will see a number labeled Remaining. This is how much of your payment is unapplied.

To the right of these fields is the Payment From menu. Select the insurance company making the payment from this list. Generally, this will be the same company that you sent the outstanding claim to, but if there is a discrepancy, MacPractice will automatically create a crossover claim on the ledger.

The Incident menu will filter the list of claims in the Outstanding Claims menu to show only claims associated with that incident. This can be useful if there are many outstanding claims on the patient's account. The Outstanding Claims menu will list the date and insurance company associated with all open claims on the account (any status besides Paid/Closed is considered outstanding). When you select a claim, the list of procedures in the payment window will change to display the procedures on that claim. Insurance payments can only be applied to charges on the claim they are tied to. If you wish to apply an insurance payment across multiple claims, you will need to use our Bulk Insurance Manager.

To the right of this field is the Proc Date field. This will default to today's date, but can be manually overridden. For more information on procedure dates, please click here.

The Provider and Office determine which provider will get credit for the payment on the deposit slip and a few other reports. For more information about provider associations, please click here.

If the payment is an electronic transfer, meaning your office will not be physically depositing the money into your account, check the Electronic Funds Transfer checkbox. On your deposit slip, you can choose to exclude EFT payments.

Check Use EOB Columns to add additional fields to the payment window. These fields are generally used on primary payments, before sending secondary eClaims. For more information about secondary eClaims and the EOB Columns in the payment window, click here.

If you wish to attach a file to the payment (for example, a scan of the EOB), click the Attach File button. A window will open, and you can select the file you wish to attach. You cannot scan an attachment directly into the payment window; the file must exist before you click Attach File. Once a file has been attached, the button will change to a menu. Select this menu to open, delete, export, or replace the attached file.

Once you have entered all the necessary information for the payment, you can apply it to charges. The Apply to All button may apply the payment to the oldest available charges, but this does not always function as expected with insurance payments. When you have a procedure selected, the Apply to All button becomes an Apply to Selected button. Click this button to apply the payment to the selected procedure, up to the amount of the payment or the unpaid amount, whichever is lesser.

You can also apply the payment manually, by selecting the procedure you wish to apply the payment to, then clicking in the Payment field, and entering the amount you wish to associate to the payment.

You can choose to leave the payment unapplied, and apply it at a later date (for example, if the patient is pre-paying for services).

Click Save when you have finished entering your payment information.

If an Insurance payment is posted after a patient payment has already been posted to the same charge, post the full insurance payment by manually entering the amount in the Payment field of the Insurance Payment window. Save the payment and the amount that was overpaid by the patient will automatically be unapplied.

Insurance Write-Offs

This amount is written off and not charged to a patient, usually because the provider participates in the insurance plan and agrees to the allowed amounts. If you participate with a plan, the write-off is included in the Insurance Portion when Insurance Estimating is turned on. If you do not participate in the plan, it will be put in the patient portion. Write-offs are always calculated from the fee minus the allowed amount. 

Unapplied Payments

In MacPractice, a payment is considered Unapplied if its credit has not been specifically allocated to debits on the patient's account. Unapplied payments are displayed in red text. This document will show you how to apply unapplied patient payments. If you wish to apply an unapplied insurance payment, and the charges on the claim it is tied to are already fully paid, please click here to reference our Insurance Overpayment documentation.

An unapplied payment will appear in all incidents and patients on an account. The payment is not duplicated, this is simply to indicate there is an unapplied credit available that can be applied to the account balance.

To apply an unapplied amount, simply select the payment, then double-click the line item to open the payment window (you may also use the Command-O keyboard shortcut). In the payment window, you will see the open charges on the patient's account. The payment can be applied as it would if it were a new payment.

You may also refund an unapplied amount, if you wish.