Unallocated Balances
There’s so much confusion about the unallocated amounts, and for GOOD REASON! Not only is this not designed well, SP’s implementation was akin to throwing us into the deep end of the pool and saying, “good luck!”
A few key points to understand:
Invoices are the backbone to client billing, reporting, and payroll. Essentially, if it’s not on an invoice, it almost like it didn’t happen. This incudes charges AND payments. This is why we have to use them, and this is why SP wants to bring unallocated amounts to our attention.
Payments are initiated by the clinician and must be collected AND assigned to an invoice (allocated). This was instituted so we could apply partial amounts to invoices. There was a lot of complaining about lack of that back in the day! I think this is also paving the way for clients to be able to make partial payments in the portal, but we’ll see.
Unallocated amounts happen for the following two reasons:
Payment was collected but not assigned, so it’s in limbo (unallocated)
Payment was assigned but then the invoice was deleted/recreated. The payment become unassigned and went back into limbo (unallocated).
If there is an unallocated NUMBER (like: (13)) but the amount is $0 —>IGNORE IT! This means that there were transactions that occurred that aren’t attached to invoices. This is not a problem because there’s no actual money in limbo. Many of these numbers are from the older billing process. But it can also happen from refunds.
Keep it Neat!
The way to keep your accounts as tidy as possible is to keep your invoices as tidy as possible. Follow the clean up steps on this blog post if you already have a mess.
Use the Appointment Status Report in the client’s account for a quick birds-eye view of all charges. This is a very underutilized report in my experience with many, many SP users.
Use a statement to understand a client’s balance/credit. This ONLY works if invoices are cleaned up as per the blog post listed above.
Put the right copay in as soon as possible. The MINUTE you know the copay, get that changed in the client’s settings. Don’t keep allowing the system to create adjustment invoices. It’s not wrong it’s just messy and confusing!
I know this system is confusing, but with some education and practice, it’s completely functional. Could it be better, yes! And maybe they’ll make it better. But in the meantime, clean up the messes with help, which will help you learn how it works. Once you “get it”, it will no longer be so intimidating or confusing.
Are you seeing something I didn’t address here? Let me know so I can add more detail to this post!