MedLook Weekly Tip For 09/05/2005

The Daily Ledger Report is a very important report that is often overlooked in many offices. The purpose of the daily ledger is to provide a check or "posting" on the days activities in regards to financial transactions. In a nutshell it reports all charges, debits, payments and credits along with the starting and ending balances for the day (or since the last posting). The results on this report should not be posted blindly. Each transaction should be reviewed carefully.

Some offices may not review this report on a daily basis but instead do it on a weekly basis. That's fine, just so long as it is done and done properly. This report is to ensure the accuracy of your financial activity (charges and payments).

The report itself can be generated for any grouping of doctor's (single, multiple or all) or for any selection of users (i.e. staff members making payments and charges). The report can be sorted by account #, patient name, DOS, order of entry (chronological order), doctor, or user.

The report contains four basic sections: Procedures Entered Since Last Posting, Payments Entered Since Last Posting, Credits (write-offs, corrections, etc.), and the Daily Ledger Totals. Each of the first three sections contain essentially the same details: Account #, DOS, Doctor, Amount, Patient Name, Insurance for Procedures or Method for Payments, and an Explanation. The last section gives the accounts receivable at the end of the last posting, the totals for all new charges, payments, adjustments (credits and write-offs), and debits, and the new accounts receivable.

After viewing the report you are prompted to accept the posting or not. If there was something incorrect it should be fixed before accepting the report.

Any ledger report previously posted can be easily accessed by date using the History command. All posted ledgers are stored in the database folder.

If the starting accounts receivable does not match that from the last posting a warning message will be displayed. This is usually caused by editing a posted transaction or deleting either a patient account or a transaction. Keep in mind that the accounts receivable will always reflect what is current in the system (sum of all charges and debits less all payments and credits).

Transactions that are posted can and should NOT be deleted at a later time. Therefore if you try to delete a posted transaction or change a transaction that has been fully applied the system will not let you make the edit. However, there are always a few ways around the system but that generally would require a support phone call - and sometimes, but rarely, this is necessary. Usually a mistake can easily be fixed using a credit or a debit with an appropriate comment.

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