Till Balancing

This screen is used display, print, adjust and clear balances. For background information see Concepts|Tills.

Summary: How to clear the till

1. if necessary press Select to select the required till
2. if business needs to continue, press Start Clear to freeze this till balance and let a new one start so that business can continue
3. press Print to get the Till Balance Report
4. count the till and compare with the report
5. if necessary make corrections (see below) and go back to step 3
6. when it all matches, press Clear

Initially the screen shows the current uncleared balance of the default till for the current location. The following shows a till with very little activity - normally there will be far more transactions.

The top half of the screen works as a standard select screen to select and display the Till Balance records for the selected till. The bottom half shows the payments making up the selected Till Balance.

If the till displayed is not the one you want, press the Select button to select the required till.

The columns in the top half of the screen are as follows:

Date - this shows the date of the first payment made after the till was previously cleared, ie it will have the same date as the earliest payment in the set shown at the bottom of the screen.
Type - this always shows as 'Till Balance'
Status - will be either Cleared or Uncleared. These should be only one line with status Uncleared, but this will not appear until the first payment is made following the till being cleared.
Amount - this shows the total of the payments received since the till was last cleared.  It will always be negative because OpenVPMS treats amounts that the customer owes us as positive, and the amounts they pay as negative. NOTE that this amount does not represent the total of the cash money in the physical till. When you need to see the cash total, use the Print button to print the Till Balance Report.
Description - always blank

The fields in the bottom half of the screen are as follows:
Start Time - the date of the first payment in this till balance
End Time - blank if this till balance has not been cleared, else shows the date on which the till was cleared
Amount - the sum of all the payments shown in the columns below
Cash Float - the amount of cash left in the till each time it is cleared so as to give some money for change.
Printed - set when the till balance is printed
Status - shows Cleared or Uncleared

The columns in the bottom half are as follows:
Date - the date of the transaction
Type - the transaction type, normally Payment but also can be Refund or Cash Float Adjustment
Customer - the customer's name, or if this was a payment for an OTC sale, the name of the OTC account. Note that this is a link so you can click it to jump to the customer.
Amount - the amount of the payment
Description - almost always blank

Buttons - the buttons are as follows:

Start Clear - starts clearing the till. This changes the status of the current till balance to Clear In Progress, so that new payments and refunds don't impact it while it is in the process of being cleared. This can be used in practices that want to perform intra-day till clearing without suspending payments and refunds.
Clear - clears the till. Don't use this until you have checked the amount of cash in the till against the Till Balance Report.
Print - initiates the printing of the Till Balance Report for the selected Till Balance. You will need to print the report so that you can check that the amount in the till matches what the system thinks it is and that the other appropriate documents (eg cheques, credit card clips, etc) are present.
Mail - email the Till Balance Report for the selected Till Balance.
Adjust - generate an adjustment transaction to correct the cash amount in the till.
Edit - edit adjustments and payments. Editing of payments is available to administrators and can be used to correct payment types.
If a payment type is changed (e.g., an EFT replaced with Cash), this will be displayed in an Audit field on the payment, including the time and user name of the person who made the change.
Reverse - (only appears if till status is Clear In Progress, and a Payment or Refund transaction is currently selected) - reverses the currently selected transaction.
New - (only appears if till status is Clear In Progress) - allows you to create a new Payment or Refund.
Transfer - (only appears if the till status is Uncleared and when one of the payments is selected) - transfer the payment to another Till. When you press the button, a confirmation window will appear allowing you to choose the till.
Open Drawer - open the till's cash drawer. This button is only displayed if the Printer Name and Drawer Command for the till have been configured.

 

Making Corrections

The following table lists the possible errors and their corrective actions.

Error	Action (if Start Clear has been pressed and status is Clear in progress)	Action (if status Uncleared)
Cash amount less than shown on print	Use Adjust to insert an adjustment transaction with description ‘Cash amount less than on print’, the amount equal to difference, and the Credit box unticked	Same
Cash amount more than shown on print	Use Adjust to insert an adjustment transaction with description ‘Cash amount more than on print’ and amount equal to difference, and the Credit box ticked	Same
Print shows payment (cheque, credit card or EFT), but document (ie cheque/credit card slip/EFT record) not found	Select the payment and use Edit to edit it to correct the payment item type.	Same
Print shows payment (cheque, credit card or EFT), but document in till has a different amount	Use Reverse to reverse the payment, then use New to create the correct payment	Use Customers|Account|Reverse to reverse the payment, then use Payments|New to create the correct payment
Print shows payment (cheque, credit card or EFT) but details are incorrect	Use Reverse to reverse the payment, then use New to create the correct payment	Use Customers|Account|Reverse to reverse the payment, then use Payments|New to create the correct payment
Payment has wrong customer (ie payment is for Smith but should be for Smyth)	Use Reverse to reverse the payment, then use New to create the payment for the correct customer	Use Customers|Account|Reverse to reverse the payment, then select the correct customers and use Payments|New to create the correct payment
Have evidence of payment (ie Cheque or credit card slip or EFT details or even cash) but no matching customer payment recorded	Either use New to create the matching payment, or alternatively, move evidence to new current till contents and create matching payment using Customers|Payments|New	Create matching payment using Customers|Payments|New

 

Deposits

This screen is used to manage deposits from tills into deposit accounts. 

How To Summary:

1. if necessary, press Select to select the account
2. press Find to find the undeposited amounts
3. press Print to print the deposit slip
4. press Deposit to do the deposit

Having done steps 1 & 2 the screen will look like the one below. Note however that here we have set the Status to 'All' to show the Deposited amounts as well - the default is 'Undeposited' and this will show only one item (or none if there have been no till clearances since the last deposit).

The top half of the screen works as a standard select screen to select and display the Bank Deposit records for the selected account. The bottom half shows the payments making up the selected Till Balance.

If the Deposit Account displayed is not the one you want, press the Select button to select the required account.

The Status can be set to All, Deposited or Undeposited.

The columns in the top half of the screen are as follows:
Date - this shows the date of the first till balance made after the last deposit was made, ie it will have the same date as the earliest till balance in the set shown at the bottom of the screen.
Type - this always shows as 'Bank Deposit'
Status - will be either Deposited or Undeposited. These should be only one line with status Undeposited, but this will not appear until the first till balances is done following the last deposit.
Amount - this shows the total of the till balances that are part of this deposit.  It will always be negative because OpenVPMS treats amounts that the customer owes us a positive, and the amounts they pay as negative.
Description - always blank

The fields in the top of bottom half of the screen are as follows:
Start Time - the date of the first till balance in this deposit
End Time - blank if this deposit is still undeposited, else shows the date on which the deposit was done. (Note that because of a current bug, this field is always blank.)
Amount - the sum of all the amounts in the till balances shown in the columns below
Printed - this is set if the deposit has been printed
Status - shows Deposited or Undeposited

The columns in the bottom half for the Till Balance records are as follows:
Date - the date of the till balance
Type - the transaction type, always Till Balance
Amount - the amount of the till balance
Description - almost blank

If you select a Till Balance record, its details are shown (as they are in the above screen shot). For further information see Reporting|Till Balancing.

Buttons - the buttons are as follows:
Deposit - initiates the deposit (there will be a confirmation window). This button will not be present if there is no Undeposited item.
Print - initiates the printing of the Deposit Report for the selected Deposit Account. This will be useful when you go to the bank.
Mail - email the Deposit Report for the selected Deposit Account

Debtors

The Debtors screen is used to manage debtors. You can:

• display customer balance information with various selection options and print the results
• print a current or prior statement for a selected customer
• do the end-of-period processing at the end of the accounting period
• generate the statements at the end of the accounting period
• re-print previously generated statements

For background information, see Concepts|Accounting. See also the note on statement detail at the bottom of this page.

How to summary:

• for month (or accounting period) end processingfor debtor management
  • set the Statement Date to the end of the period (eg end of previous month)
  • press the End Period button to do the period end processing for all customers
  • press the Send All button to generate the statements for the selected customers
  • if you did select customers (say those with 60 days overdue balances so that you can include a payment request note in the envelope with their statement), then clear the selection conditions and press Send All again to process the other customers. The 60 day overdue customers' statements will not be reprinted (unless you use the reprint option).
  • Note that you do not have to generate statements for all customers. If say you have two customer account types, Normal and Staff, you could choose to only print statements each month for Normal customers and never for Staff.
  • set the Statement Date to the required date
  • enter the other selection criteria
  • press the Find button
  • optionally press the Report button
• for account enquiries (if a customer wants a current statement)
  • set the Statement Date to today
  • set the Customer From and To to minimise the number of customers selected (ie 'sm' to 'smz' if the customer is named Smith)
  • press the Find button
  • click the line containing the customer and press the Print button
  • Note that the resulting statement will only include finalised transactions prior to the statement date - ie it will not show today's finalised invoice.
• for account enquiries (if a customer wants a statement for a prior period)
  • set the Statement Date to the end of the required period
  • set the Customer From and To to minimise the number of customers selected (ie 'sm' to 'smz' if the customer is named Smith)
  • press the Find button
  • click the line containing the customer and press the Print button
  • Note that the resulting statement will show transactions from the Opening Balance transaction prior to the specified statement date up to the specified statement date.

This is a standard select screen. The selection fields are:
Customer Account Type - this allows you to select customers by their account type
Overdue From & To - use these to select overdue accounts. They are entered as the number of days after the statement date, ie 30 and 60 will select accounts that are between 30 and 60 days overdue. They are both optional. If you enter bad data, it is ignored. Hence:

From	To	Meaning
		all
30		more that 30 days overdue
30	xxx	same as above (bad To value ignored)
	60	up to 60 days overdue
xxx	60	same as above (bad From value ignored)

Customer From & To - this allows you to select customers by name. For this to work as expected you need to set both the From and To entries and the To value must be greater than the From.  If you get this wrong, eg search from 't' to 't', no error will be reported, you will just get 'No results to display'.
Statement Date - the date of the end of the accounting period. Normally this will be the last day in the previous month if you are doing end-of-period and statement printing. However, if you are doing debtors management, then this should be set to the current date so that you can see the current situation.
Balances - you can select All, Current or Overdue. 'Current' selects those customers who do not have an overdue balance, 'Overdue' just those who do have an overdue balance.
Exclude Credit - uncheck the box if you also want to include customers with credit balances. Note that irrespective of any of the selection settings, customers with zero balances are never displayed.
Customer Location can be used to filter customers using their preferred practice location, to support location specific content. Selecting:

• a practice location, returns customers that have the location set as their Practice Location.
• None - selects all customers that don't have a Practice Location
• All - returns customers for all practice locations

The column headings are:
Customer Name - the customers' names - each is a link to the customer.
Balance - the balance of the account as at the Statement Date.
Overdue Balance - the overdue balance, see below
Credit Balance - if the account is in credit the amount will be shown here (as well as in the Balance column)
Unbilled - the amount that is unbilled, ie the total of any in-progress, on-hold, or completed transactions
Last Payment Date & Amount - the date and amount of the last payment
Last Invoice Date - the date of the last invoice

The Buttons are:
Send All - generates the statements for the selected customers.  This will display a confirmation window - which will also allow you to request the reprint of statements of previously printed statements (which would otherwise not be reprinted).
Note that you normally use Send All only after you have used End Period, and you should keep the same Statement Date for both.
The statements generated will be emailed to the customer (rather than printed) if the customer has an email address with the purpose 'Billing'.
The document template used for the statements will be that with the type 'Customer Statement' - and this MUST have an Email Template specified - see Administration|Templates.

Print - prints a statement for the currently selected customer

Report - prints a Debtors report for the accounts of the customers shown on the screen - ie only those customers who match the current selection criteria. Note that this report does not show the selection critera. The document template used for the Debtors report will be that with the type 'Customer Account Balance'.

End Period - initiates the end-of-period processing for all customers (not just those selected). A confirmation window will be displayed. It has a 'Finalise Completed Invoices' checkbox - you should normally leave this ticked. However, if your practice has a policy that all invoices should be manually finalised by the accounts department, then you should untick this. In this case the completed/not finalised ones will be held over and not included in the closing balance.
Note that you use End Period before you have used Send All, and you should keep the same Statement Date for both.

 

Overdue calculation
The overdue date, ie the date at which an account becomes overdue is calculated as:
   overdue date = statement date - customer's account type payment terms

If the customer doesn't have an account type, then the overdue date is the statement date.

A balance is overdue if it's unpaid or part paid, and has been so since prior to the overdue date.

 

Statement Detail
The standard statements generated by the system use a document template that is written so that whether or not the statement contains line item detail depends on the Line Item Print option in the Letterhead that is being used. The options are Always, Never, and 'Not Printed'. If the latter, then the line items are shown if the invoice's Print flag is not set. (This flag is set when the finalised invoice is printed - emailing or previewing does not set the flag.)

 

Emailed Statements

When statements are emailed, the From address will be set to:

• the Billing email contact associated with the customer's Practice Location; or
• the Practice's Billing email contact, if the  customer doesn't have a Practice Location, or the Practice Location doesn't have a Billing email contact; or
• the Practice's preferred email contact, if there is no Billing email contact

 

Location Specific Statements

Location specific statement content can be supported by:

• filtering by Customer Location, and using the appropriate letterhead
• examining the customer's Practice Location within the statement template

Charges

The Charges workspace provides support to:

• display Work In Progress charges
• search charges by customer, identifier, or amount

Reminders

Reporting - Reminders is used to:

• Send queued reminders
• Review and correct errors
• Resend reminders

Reports

This window is used to run reports.  For background information, see Introduction|Reports.

This works like a standard select screen.

The column headings are:

Id - the Id number of the report
Name - the name of the template - see Administration|Templates
Description - its description
Report Type - its report type
Run Level - its run level. Note that you will not be shown any reports with a run level higher than your own. Your run level is set using Administration|Users

Press the Run button to run the report.

EFTPOS

This window is used to report on EFTPOS transactions.

The query fields are as follow:

Search	Finds transactions by identifier or customer name.
Status	Finds transactions by their status. Use: All to find all transactions. Approved to find transactions that have been approved by the EFTPOS provider. Declined to find transactions that have been declined by the EFTPOS provider. Error to find transactions that have encountered an error. Pending to find transactions that haven't started. In Progress to find transactions that are currently under way. No Terminal to find transactions that were completed without a terminal.
All/Date range	Allows transactions to be found by date, or use All to find transactions for all dates
Location	Finds transactions by the practice location where they were created. Leave blank to find transactions for all locations.

The results table columns are as follows:

Type	The EFTPOS transaction type.
Date	The date when the transaction was done.
Amount	The transaction amount.
Cashout	The cash-out amount.
Message	The message from the EFTPOS provider.
Authorisation Code	The authorisation code for the transaction.
Response Code	The response code for the transaction.
Response	The response for the transaction.
Customer	The customer the transaction is for.
Terminal	The EFTPOS terminal the transaction was done on.
Location	The practice location where the transaction was done.

The buttons are as follows:

Find	Find all transactions matching the search criteria.
Print Last Receipt	Print the last receipt for the selected transaction.

Printing Receipts

If an EFTPOS terminal has Receipt Printer enabled, it is responsible for printing receipts.
However, receipts are also stored with each EFTPOS transaction, and can be printed individually.

An EFTPOS transaction can have multiple receipts (e.g. if a card was declined initially, but the transaction subsequently completed with a different card).

To print a receipt for a transaction, locate it using the search criteria, and click the Print button in the Receipts area.

 

Insurance

This window is used to report on Insurance Claims.

The query fields are as follow:

Id	Finds claims by OpenVPMS identifier, policy number or insurer claim identifier
Status	Finds claims by their status. Use: All to find all claims Incomplete to find claims that haven't been Settled, Declined, or Cancelled. Not Submitted to find claims that are Pending or Finalised Pending to find claims that are still being edited Finalised to find claims that can no longer be changed but haven't been submitted to the insurer Submitted to find claims that have been submitted, but not yet accepted by the insurer Cancelling to find claims that are in the process of being cancelled Cancelled to find claims that have been cancelled Accepted to find claims that the insurer has accepted, but has not yet settled or declined. Settled to find claims that the insurer has settled Declined to find claims that the insurer has rejected
Insurer	Finds claims for the specified insurer. Leave blank to find claims for all insurers.
All/Date range	Allows claims to be found by date, or use All to find claims for all dates.
Gap Claim Status	Finds claims by their gap claim status. Use: All  to find all claims Pending to find gap claims where no Benefit Amount has been determined by the insurer. Received to find gap claims where a Benefit Amount has been received from the insurer. Paid to find gap claims where the claim has been paid, but the insurer has yet to be notified. The insurer must be notified in order for them to reimburse the customer, if full payment was made, or the practice, if gap payment was made. Notified to find gap claims where the insurer has been notified of payment.
Location	Finds claims by the practice location where they were created. Leave blank to find claims for all locations.
Clinician	Finds claims by the clinician responsible for them, or use All to find claims for all clinicians.

The results table columns are as follows:

Id	The OpenVPMS identifier for the claim.
Date	The date the claim was created.
Customer	The customer making the claim.
Patient	The patient the claim is for.
Location	The practice location where the claim was created.
Insurer	The insurer handling the claim.
Policy Number	The policy number.
Claim Number	The claim number.
Claim Status	The claim status.
Amount	The claim amount.
Gap Claim	If selected, indicates the claim is a gap claim.
Gap Claim Status	The gap claim status.
Benefit Amount	The agreed benefit amount, determined by the insurer for a gap claim. If the Gap Claim Status is Pending, the insurer has not yet set the amount.
Clinician	The clinician responsible for the claim.

The buttons are as follows:

Edit	Edit the selected claim.
Delete	Delete the selected claim. Claims that have been submitted cannot be deleted.
Submit	Submits the selected claim to the insurer. Once submitted, the claim cannot be changed
Pay Claim	Pays a gap claim.
Cancel Claim	Cancels the selected claim.
Settle Claim	Mark a claim as being settled by the insurer. This is only applicable to offline claims.
Decline Claim	Mark a claim as being declined by the insurer. This is only applicable to offline claims.
Print	Prints the selected claim.
Report	Generates a report of all claims matching the query criteria.

Report

The Report button displays a window to generate a report of all claims matching the query criteria.

This can be:

• previewed as a PDF
• printed
• emailed as a PDF