Balance the Books Daily and You’ll Be a Happy Manager at End-of-Month
Are you finding it difficult to balance your Accounts Receivable at the end of the month?
Finding inconsistencies at the end of the month can cause unnecessary headaches. It can become an arduous task if you are not balancing your A/R daily, so we suggest that you enforce a protocol with your staff to balance the accounts at the end of every work day from the front office to the back office. All should be accountable for monies collected and posted into your practice management system. For this to happen, your office should have a policy in place for each staff member that requires them to account for the money collected and posted at the end of their work day. DuxWare provides two reports designed to be run on a daily basis that can assist you with this task.
Reconciliation Daysheet Report:
The Reconciliation Daysheet Report is designed to give the user a detailed, line item recap of transactions within a specified date or date range. It is used to close out and balance the day’s work. This report can be filtered by check number in addition to the default filter set. The report can also be ordered by Account Number, Patient Name, Superbill Number, Claim Number, Item Number or by Date in order of entry. Data contained in the report is divided into two sections. The top portion reconciles all payments and adjustments and is used to match the daily bank deposit. The lower portion outputs all of the transaction detail according to the filter set.
Included in the report is the transaction Entry Date/Time, Claim Number, Patient Name, Superbill Number, Physician, User, Procedure/Payment/Adjustment Code, Modifiers, Transaction Description, Line Item Charges, Units of Service, Payments, Credits and Debits. All Columns are recapped and Grand Totaled at the bottom.
As a general rule, we all want our daily bank deposit and daily reconciliation report to match perfectly. If possible, reconciliation should be done every day to ensure the financial safety of your practice.
Daysheet Report:
The Daysheet Report recaps the day’s work in a clean and concise manner. In addition to the default filter set, the report can also be filtered by Payer Group. Data included is Entry Date, Service Date, Claim Number, Patient Account Number and Name, Procedure/Payment/Adjustment Code, Modifiers, Service Description, Charge/Payment Adjustment Amount, Payer Name, Facility and User. All transactions are in Line Item Details and printed by physician and location. The last page of the report breaks practice summaries: Selection Totals, Charge Totals, Payment Totals, Credit Totals, and Debit Totals.
Note: It is good accounting procedure to have more than one person involved with the flow of money through the office. The person taking the money and posting payments into DuxWare should not be the person balancing the practice’s receipts and prepating the bank deposits. Read more about this in the section on Segregation of Duties in the article on Internal Controls for the Physician-owned Practice.