Simple management of accounts

Eminance handles your point of sale and patient accounts simply. You can even track clinic expenses to make audit time easier.

Eminance is designed to make the payment process seamless. Transition from the appointment calendar through to emailing your patient their receipt with ease.

Handling payments with Eminance is fast and flexible. Create an invoice straight from the appointment, add any products and collect the payment.

All the codes are already loaded and can be updated electronically, minimising any annual disruption.

Easily override prices on each invoice for complete flexibility.

Why simple account management matters in a medical practice

Managing accounts covers everything from the moment you invoice to the moment you are paid: invoices, receipts, statements, medical aid and patient balances, and following up on what is still outstanding. It matters because money that is slow to arrive hurts cash flow, and a large balance of unpaid accounts makes it harder to pay staff and invest in the practice. The American Academy of Family Physicians suggests watching a few simple measures, such as the collection rate, the days it takes to collect and the share of rejected claims that are followed up, using a rolling 12-month average. The MGMA, which represents medical group practices, advises keeping unnecessary write-offs to no more than about 5% of expected collections.

Keeping it simple pays off in several ways. The American Medical Association says that collecting at the point of care can reduce what is owed to the practice, speed up cash flow and cut the cost of billing and chasing payments later. Accurate, complete claims are less likely to be rejected. Looking at your aged debtors regularly, weekly is a common suggestion, catches balances that would otherwise be overlooked, and payment plans set up before an account goes bad help patients to pay. Staff spend less time on paperwork, patients get clear statements, and you can see where the practice stands whenever you need to.

How to put it in place in your practice

Invoice at the time of the visit. Create the invoice from the appointment, add any products and collect the payment while the patient is still with you. Check the medical aid details and benefits first, so you know what the patient owes.
Keep your codes and prices up to date. Work from one current set of tariffs, and decide when a price may be changed for a patient.
Send accurate claims and clear statements promptly. Keep medical aid balances and patient balances apart, so that you know who needs to be followed up.
Look at your aged debtors every week. Follow up early, before invoices get old, with a reminder by SMS or email, and offer payment options or a payment plan when a patient needs one.
Record expenses and match receipts to payments. When the books are in order all year, audit time is easier and your accountant has less to do.

How flexible Eminance keeps it simple

Eminance takes you from the appointment to the receipt in one program. Create the invoice from the appointment, add any products and collect the payment, then email the receipt. Turn a quote into an invoice with one click, enter your usual line items with a macro, and let Eminance allocate a credit on a patient’s account automatically. You can override the price on any invoice, add your own logo to your statements and email them as PDFs.

Medical aid and patient accounts are kept apart, and they are handled to suit each. Eminance tracks payments against the actual transactions, shows at once which balance is the patient’s and which is the medical aid’s, and works out the patient portion of a claim by following each medical aid’s rules. Electronic remittances from the medical aids arrive in the program, and you choose your own switch. Cash practices are catered for as well, with credit card payments, receipts and full financial controls and reconciliations.

Credit control is made easy. One button selects the patients with overdue balances so that you can send them an SMS or email reminder, notes can be added to accounts that need following up, and you can run a full debt-collecting function without printing an age analysis. Your patients can pay on their own through the Patient Portal or with SnapScan, and Nexion, our partner in cash flow management, can help with recovering debt.

You see how the practice is doing, and you can take the figures further. Reports show your revenue broken down by practitioner, you can design your own reports, and expenses are tracked to make audit time easier. Eminance exports directly into Xero, can integrate with other accounting packages, and gives your accounts department access only to what it needs. With Eminance Cloud you can post an invoice or a payment from anywhere, including at a satellite practice.