Invoiced items & Service "Split invoices"

[sacha]

Hi, On running a report to show invoiced items & services, “split” invoices now appear where they haven’t previously. For eg: if i create an invoice to an insurance company, this invoice will show in that months invoice report. However, if for some reason it transpires that the patient is liable to pay this invoice, then at a later date this invoice will be “Split” across to the patients account. This invoice is not new, it already exists on the system it has just been reassigned to another account, but now these “split” invoices are appearing in the report like new – so my figures are showing this invoice in two sets of totals. Please can you explain how I can eliminate these from invoice reports to show true totals. Thanks

[Mat Larkin]

Hi Sacha,

Thanks for your post.

Just to confirm – If the invoice was originally for the Insurance company but needs to then go to the Patient, the invoice shouldn’t be split, just re-assigned.

The Split function should be used if more than one person is paying i.e. an invoice of £50.00 is created – Fred pays £25.00 and Dave pays £25.00. So you would split the invoice – 1 x £25.00 for Fred and 1 x £25.00 for Dave. The invoice amount stays the same, just has more than one recipient.

If you are splitting the full amount of the invoice from Insurance company to Patient then the other invoice should be set to £0.00 and not affect any figures.

Can you please email a screenshot of these split invoices on your report to support@pioneersoftware.co.uk

Someone can take a look back here in more detail to see what’s happening and hopefully we can get to the bottom of it.

Thanks.

[sacha]

Hi Mat, Thanks for your reply.

It was actually one of your colleagues a few years ago that suggested I split invoices from an insurance company to the patient in order to maintain the paper trail reflecting the reality that the invoice was originally allocated to an insurance company. In my understanding, once an invoice is reallocated to a patient, there is no evidence of who it was originally invoiced to. Some invoices will be actually split, where the insurance company will pay some of the invoice and the patient pays the rest.EG: when an insurance company pays all invoices except an excess charge which is owed by the patient such as £100, so invoices amounting to the excess charge will be split across to the patients account.

My finances must be seen to reflect reality. So if you can show me another way to do this that maintains the full account of what has occurred, I will be most happy to learn it.

I understand that the annual totals of invoices may not change, but when running totals on a month by month basis it means that an invoice generated in one month will obviously be included there, and if it is then split across during another month it will then be counted in that month too, thus meaning the total for the original month will now be wrong if that invoice is retrospectively changed to zero. It is this retrospective change that is causing calculation errors in my accounts, as it means that in order to ensure figures remain correct I will have to go back and re-run all the reports for previous months to account for these changes.

When the time span over which these invoices are created runs over the tax year end, I will already have submitted figures to my accountant incurring tax charges on generated invoices, and then run the risk of paying tax on these invoices again, as instead of transferring the information, the report shows the split invoices now appear in the new month total as if the invoice has only just been generated.

I hope this helps you understand my concerns better. I will try to find time to send you a screen shot of the report information so that you can see my dilemma.

Kind regards,
Sacha

[William]

Hi Sacha

Apologies for the misunderstanding. If you have to keep the record of the original invoice and thus do a 100% split to the patient from the insurance company, this acceptable practice. As you rightly pointed out, it does have the downside of potentially being counted twice if you do run an invoice based report at the end of each month. This is why my colleague suggested the alternative.

The only work around that I can think of is to use the option in the Split Invoice screen which says “Use the same date as the original invoice”. This way the invoice amount will still remain in the same month. By zero rating the first invoice you have in effect voided it and so the original date could be used as that is when the original invoice was for and probably when the original appointment was on. There would be no change to the overall amount for that month as the first invoice is now set to zero.

Hope this is of some assistance.

[sacha]

OK, thanks William, that will resolve the issue in the future =D> , I will have to manually correct all the other monthly totals then to correct the issue ](*,)

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