MP Payments - Installment Plans
- Dylan Nigh
On the Account Tab in the Patients Ability, we have a new sub-tab called Installment Plans. This is where you can add and discontinue an Account's payment plans.
An Account can only have one Active Plan at any given time. If you want to activate a second Installment Plan, you must discontinue the currently Active Plan.
In the Actions pull down, we have a number of options that will assist clients in managing Installment Plans on an Account.
The options available in the Actions Drop Down are:
Open Installment Plan: This option allows you to open up an existing Installment Plan. You can edit the Payment Type associated with new plan payments, or the reference number by doing this, but cannot edit other details. You can select this option when you have selected an existing Installment Plan.
Discontinue Installment Plan: This option allows you to discontinue a Installment Plan if it is no longer necessary or you need to adjust the Installment Plan, as you cannot edit them once created.
New Installment Plan: This option allows you to create a new Installment Plan that can use a Card on File from the Account's Wallet.
Go to Installment Manager: This option will take you to the Installment Manager, located in the Accounting Ability.
Creating A Installment Plan
To create a new Installment Plan, users will go to the Actions pull down and click New Installment Plan. This will bring up the Installment Plan window.
The Created Date will be today's date, and uneditable. The First Payment Date will default to today's date and can be changed to another date.
Next, you'll want to select the Payment Type to be used for incoming Installments. These will pull from the Payment Types defined in your References Ability.
You can also enter a reference number, much like the Reference Number field in the Payment Window of the Ledger when creating a new Payment.
Only one card can be associated with a single Installment Plan.
If only one account is entered in the Accounts Tab > Wallets for Credit Card, it will be the only option available to choose on that tab.
Total Payment Amount and Frequency
Once an account has been selected, the user will enter the total amount of the Payment Plan and select to calculate the Payment Schedule based on a specific payment amount or number of payments.
Next, you'll choose the Frequency which the payments will be deducted from the patient’s card. The options that can be chosen for a payment schedule are Weekly, Every Other Week, Twice Per Month (1st/15th), Monthly, Yearly, Weekly - Custom and Monthly - Custom.
Weekly - Custom will allow the user to specify the day of the week that the user would like to have the payments processed on. Multiple days can also be selected here each week.
Monthly - Custom will allow the user to specify which months to process the payments over the course of the year(s).
Calculating Payment Schedule
Once you have filled in all required information and set the desired frequency, you'll click the Calculate Payment Schedule button to populate the information in the Payment Schedule Panel.
You can also print the Payment Schedule by pressing Command-P on your keyboard. This will simply print the payment schedule as it appears on the right panel, but this functionality may change in the future.
When calculating the final payment, keep in mind that not all schedules will have even amounts. There could be instances where final payments are pennies while other final payments are remainders of the amount left. In MacPractice, we will handle final payment calculations in a couple of ways depending on whether you have selected a specific number of payments vs. a specific payment amount:
If you select a specific number of payments, we will add the remainder of the total payment amount to the last payment amount.
Example: If a user has a $100 total broken out into 3 payments, the first two payments will calculate to 33.33 and the final payment will be 33.34.
If you select a specific payment amount until it is paid off, we will ensure that the last payment is not more than the payment amount - we will add another payment to the plan to process this payment.
Example: If a user has a $100 total broken out into payments of 33.33, the first three payments will be 33.33 (equaling a total of 99.99) and a final payment of .01
When are Installments processed?
Once a Installment Plan has been completed, MacPractice will check every hour to determine if a Installment needs to be issued based on the schedule.
Installments will be posted onto the Account's ledger, viewable on all patients on the account as an unapplied payment with "Recurring", the Reference Number you set when creating the Installment Plan, and the amount of the payment in the description of the payment.
Installments cannot be voided or refunded if they are part of an Active Installment Plan. The Payment Plan MUST be discontinued prior to voiding or refunding payments.
Installments Manager
In the Accounting Ability under the Card Transactions node, we have added a new manager called Installments Manager. You can also navigate to the Installments Manager from within the Actions pull down in the Installment Plans sub-tab in the Account Tab of the Patients Ability.
You can filter Installments received by the posted date of the payment - the posted date of the payment is the date the payment is received from Valpay in MacPractice.
You can also filter by the status of the payment - All Payments, Fully Applied Payments, Partially Applied Payments and Unapplied Payments. You can populate these results by clicking the Apply button. This is useful to ensure that all your received payments have been applied appropriately.
When a payment is selected within this Manager, you can interact with the payments in the Actions menu. You can print a receipt, go to the payment in the Ledger and go to the account to interact with the plan and Wallet. Double clicking on the payment will also take them to the payment in the Ledger.
In the table view of the Installments Manager, there are a number of columns that display for each payment. The table can be sorted by any of these columns.
Status: This column displays whether a payment has been applied, partially applied or is currently unapplied.
Has Refund: This column indicates with Yes or No that a refund has or has not been associated with this payment.
Account: This column displays the account number that the payment is associated with.
Primary: This column displays the Primary Account name on the account.
Posted Date: This column displays the date the Installment was posted (corresponds to the date received from Valpay). This could be different from the processed date if the server has been off for a couple of days).
Applied Date: This column displays the posted date or the date that the payment was partially/fully applied on the account.
Description: This column displays the description of the payment from the ledger.
Payment Amount: This column displays the processed payment amount. If a payment was partially approved, this will show a lower amount than what is in the plan. Users will need to communicate with the patient to satisfy the remainder of a payment if it is less than expected from the plan.
Applied Amount: This column displays the amount applied on the payment. If the payment is fully unapplied, it will display $0.00.
Pr/Of: This column displays the Provider/Office the payment is tied to. It will display nothing if it is unapplied though a Provider/Office can be set without applying the payment.
Last Edited By: This column displays the user that last edited the payment.
Declined/Partial Approved Installments
Declined Installments do NOT display in MacPractice. The merchant will receive an email from Valpay if a Installment is declined and they will need to use it in conjunction with the Merchant Center to identify which account this payment belongs to. MacPractice does not have a way to check Valpay for declined Installments. From here you'll will need to reach out to the patient to satisfy the missed payment.
Clients will receive an email from Valpay when a card is declined or if an amount was partially approved. The Customer ID in the email will correspond with the Account ID in MacPractice. When a client receives this email, they will want to go into MacPractice to review the recurring schedule and reach out to the patient to satisfy the declined/partially approved amount.
Declined payments are not taken into consideration when the Installment Plan on the account decrements the Remaining Amount on the plan. Remaining amount is calculated based on the expected date of the payment. Users will need to post new payments in the Ledger unassociated with the payment plan when funds are recouped from the patient.
Online Patient Payments
You can learn more about this feature in this linked article.
Common Error Messages
We never want to see error messages, but they do provide us information regarding any problems we may be facing. This section can help you interpret what these error messages mean. If you are EVER in doubt, contact MacPractice Support and we can assist you.
Common MacPractice Errors:
Unable to parse response from device
Device has sent a response that MacPractice does not expect or is garbled.
Invalid response received from device
Device has sent a response that MacPractice does not expect or is garbled.
Machine Identifier Missing
UUID is somehow missing
These three errors above have to do with the communication being received from the Card Terminal . This may indicate a faulty connection or a malfunctioning Card Terminal. Troubleshooting steps could include unplugging the Card Terminal and re-plugging it in (both power and ethernet connection) and reconnecting the Card Terminal via the MacPractice Payments instructions. If problems persist, please contact TSYS for further information.
Unable to save (card receipt) to database
Unable to save something to the database usually means that there is an connection issue between MacPractice client and MacPractice Server and/or database.
Unable to create ledger item
Unable to create something in the database usually means that there is an connection issue between MacPractice client and MacPractice Server and/or database.
Unable to connect to database to (retrieve connection time, update Card Terminal connection)
Unable to connect to the database usually means that there is an connection issue between MacPractice client and MacPractice Server and/or database.
Unable to retrieve (connection time, card selection type) from database
Unable to retrieve information from the database usually means that there is an connection issue between MacPractice client and MacPractice Server and/or database.
For the above errors, the common thread between them all is a connection problem between a MacPractice Client computer and the MacPractice Server computer. Troubleshooting steps would include confirming the computer you're using is connected to your network, checking to ensure the Server Computer is running with MacPractice started, and restarting your Server and Client computers.