You will want to know how to match a payment to an invoice so that your patients' accounts are up to date and you know which practitioner to allocate the invoice to.
What you want is for an invoice number to match a payment summary and for that invoice to show as having been paid, or part-paid.
As a default setting, Dentally will automatically explain new payments against invoices or explaining existing payments to newly created invoices when the treatments are charged. If the option to automatically explain payments is disabled, or the automatic allocation needs to be overridden you will need to manually explain these payments to ensure that invoices are marked as paid. We'll show you how to enable or disable the option to automatically allocate payments later in this article.
Manually match payment to invoice
To manually match a payment to an unpaid invoice,
First take the payment.
Complete the fields
Save the payment
If the payment has NOT been automatically explained against the correct invoice:
click on the orange question mark next to the payment.
The Explain Payment dialogue box opens.
Here you can choose how much of this payment you want to allocate to an invoice and then choose the correct invoice while adding any notes required.
If the patient has more than one outstanding invoice, they will be displayed in a dropdown list.
Select the correct invoice
Save the payment explanation
Any notes you make will show in the Summary. If you want to write a payment note, make sure you include the invoice number in the notes.
Automatic Payment Explanation
If you have automatic payment explanation set up in Settings > Practice Settings > Other tab > Payments, then once a payment has been taken, it will automatically be matched to or explained against, an invoice of the same amount, or will be used to take a part payment from a larger invoice amount - payments will be automatically allocated to the oldest invoices first if the payment amount does not match an invoice balance exactly.
Amending Explanations
You can change this automatic explanation if you wish to.
If a payment or part of a payment is explained against the wrong invoice, you can remove this explanation and return the invoice status to unpaid without removing the payment. Just click the 'unlink' icon by the green ticked payment explanation. This will leave the payment unexplained and free to be used against another invoice.
