Open Dental Forum

So, I have a question on how to make adjustments to patient's account when we give patients refund check for the amount that's overpaid.

What we've been doing is add "Patient Refund Checks" under the adjustment as a addition to balance out the negative balance on their account. However, we neglected to realize that this way of doing it is showing up as an "income" on our production and income report when we're actually sending out money rather than receiving additional income.

So, please help?

Version 5.1.17

See the bottom of this page: http://www.open-dent.com/manual/reportprodinc.html. Basically, you need to use a negative payment rather than any kind of adjustment.

When we do this, we make the negative payment and enter our check number into the payment window, in the note we type refund for overpayment.

We then make/print out a deposit slip for this single negative payment and attach it to our check stub for the file.

By making the single deposit slip it prevents the negative payment from messing up the total amount for that days deposit.

As we are getting busier our plan is to make refund checks out once per month and will probably enter/print all the refunds out on one deposit slip.

After all the discussion about having the deposit slip (or perhaps better to call it the daily deposit report) categorize and subtotal the types of payments, are these types of negative payments something that would qualify for their own category????

Cheers,
DW

Yes, they will eventually be formalized somehow to be handled differently. But it's a low priority. They can be deselected when printing a deposit slip for the other checks, so they still shouldn't mess up the daily total.

So, patient and insurance refund checks should be as negative payment and created under payment types. What about insufficient fund/Returned check?

What about insurance write off (difference from my UCR fee)? Should I be creating it under adjustment types?

Thanks,

DLS

Yes, insufficient funds would also go in as negative payments.

Insurance writeoffs would only happen with PPOs right? I mean you have to have a contract with the insurance company, or you wouldn't write it off in the first place. Version 5.3 has better handling for writeoffs. Just do it when entering the insurance payment.

Well I have corrected the few patient refunds that we entered incorrectly. We had just made an adjustment to the account initially. I now changed them to a (-)payment.

We just made a new deposit slip today and they now show up on the deposit slip. I did not add them to this latest deposit because they affect the total amount of the deposit. We usually take the printed out slip with us to the bank and deposit the checks. How do I prevent them from being on the next deposit slip and so on. Should I include them on there own deposit slip so they are out of the system?

yes, make a deposit slip first of refunds (if there are any for that day) by clicking it in the box where you choose payment types. That will de-select all the rest and then print your refund deposit slip. Then go back and print out the rest of your regular bank deposit.

I think Jordan has overhauled the deposits in the newest development version, but not for sure on that.

Didn't overhaul the deposit slips; just the daily payment report.