How to process a payment | Dentally Help Centre

From a patient’s 'Account' tab you can see invoices and payments.

There are two stages to taking a payment:

Take the payment
Explain the payment against an invoice

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How do I take a payment?

To make a payment, click on the ‘Take payment’ button and enter the payment information.

To pay - enter the amount of payment. If there is an outstanding amount on the account, the full amount will automatically be filled in on this field (only on balances of less than £1000). You can change the amount by typing it in the field.
Payment Method - choose the payment type the patient will use.
Date - the date will automatically be today's date. If the payment was taken on another date, change the date here to the correct one.
Location - if your practice has multiple sites, select the site where the payment was taken.
Transaction Number - usually used for inputting a credit card transaction reference in (eg the number printed on a receipt). You can leave blank if not applicable.

Please note 💡: for some users who aren't currently making use of the Payment Allocations feature, you may also see a 'Practitioner' field. Select the practitioner you wish to allocate the payment to or click the 'X' to leave the field empty if you don't wish to allocate it to anyone.

How do I explain the payment?

Dentally needs to know what this payment relates to. It will automatically allocate the payment to any outstanding invoices for that patient. It will aim to allocate the payment to any invoice which matches the amount being taken - otherwise, it will automatically allocate to the oldest unpaid invoices.

In Dentally, we call this ‘explaining’ the payment. You will be shown details of any explanations, grouped together with the invoice numbers they have been explained against.

If you wish to stop automatic explanation of payments, do this in 'Settings' > 'Practice Settings' > 'Other' > 'Payments'.

If there are no outstanding invoices to explain the payment against, it will remain unexplained. The summary will say 'This payment needs explaining', with an orange question mark to the right of the total amount, and the patient will be credited.

When an invoice is raised for the patient, any unexplained payments will be allocated to it in the same manner as above.

Unexplained payments

If you have any unexplained payments that you need to explain against an invoice, you can do this manually.

Click on the orange question mark by the payment.
In the box that appears, confirm the amount of the payment you wish to explain, then use the dropdown to select which invoice to assign it to.
Add any notes if you wish.
The payment will now show as explained in the list of payments.

Please note: It is not possible to transfer a payment from one patient to another. If a payment has been taken on the wrong patient file, you will need to remove the payment from the incorrect patient and enter the payment again on the correct patient.