User Guide — Managing Time-of-Service Money

Manage Time-of-Service Money user permissions

A permission called "Manage TOS Money: Reconcile Payments" is used to control access to the Reconcile Payments tab of the Manage Time-of-Service Money page. This permission is included in roles that have the "Batch Header" permission, including:

*Receptionist
*Receptionist: No Double-Booking
Receptionist: Patient Workflow
*Practice Superuser

A permission called "*Void Own TOS Payments" allows users to void time-of-service payments or unapplieds that they created themselves, but not those created by any other user.

To access all the tabs on the Manage Time-of-Service Money page, you must have one of these user permissions (both permissions incorporate the Manage TOS Money: Reconcile Payments permission):

Billing Admin: TOS Deposit/Payment Batches
Billing Admin: Deposit/Payment Batches

Note: The Practice Superuser and Billing Admin roles include these two permissions.

Tabs on the Manage Time-of-Service Money page

The Manage Time-of-Service Money page has these tabs:

Best practices

When you collect money at check-in or checkout time or from the Collect Payment page, athenaOne automatically selects the appropriate payment batch based on the user, post date, department, and bank deposit type. If you do not have an open TOS batch, athenaOne creates one for you automatically (user specific) for the post date, department, and bank deposit type specified. When you record funds collected at the front desk, athenaOne automatically places the money in the correct payment batch for you.

Users who collect time-of-service payments should reconcile their drawer. Users at the front desk should, at the end of every day or shift, total the amount of cash, checks, MC/Visa receipts, American Express receipts, and Discover receipts (totals by payment method) collected in the cash drawer, and reconcile these totals with athenaOne totals.

If you use a non-CCP POS device to process electronic payments, you should:

Print out a batch summary from each device at the end of every day. The batch summary from each device shows totals by Visa/MC, American Express, and Discover payments that were processed through the device for that day.
Compare and verify that these totals equal the electronic payment batch totals recorded in athenaOne.

Practice managers should create TOS deposit batches daily, or as often as they go to the bank or batch out their non-CCP POS devices. Each deposit slip given to the bank should represent one deposit batch in athenaOne. Creating TOS deposit batches is a necessary step for monthly reconciliation of athenaOne with your TOS bank statement.

Practice managers can view TOS deposit batches created by athenahealth for transactions through Credit Card Plus. Funds are deposited directly to your U.S. Bank account and athenaOne automatically creates the deposit batches as a record. These Deposit Batches are available to view in Manage Time-of-Service Money: View Deposits Created by athenaOne.

Manage Time-of-Service Money setup: Bank Deposit Types

Each payment method is mapped to a bank deposit type. The bank deposit type determines how deposits appear on your bank statement. When you collect a TOS payment, you select a payment method. The bank deposit type that is mapped to the payment method automatically determines the TOS payment batch assignment. This automatic assignment allows you to create deposit batches of the appropriate category and include only payment batches of that bank deposit type in the deposit batch.

To ensure that the TOS batch assignment feature works correctly for your practice, practice managers must verify and update the mappings that athenahealth created for you on the Payment Methods page.

Bank deposit types

Bank deposit types are maintained by athenahealth. They are as follows:

Cash & Checks
MasterCard & Visa
American Express
Discover
Electronic Check
Other

Payment methods for credit cards

If you have only one payment method for all credit cards, use the Payment Methods page to create a separate payment method for each type of credit card that you accept. You may need two or three payment methods for credit cards:

MasterCard and Visa
American Express
Discover

Health Savings Account (HSA) cards should have a bank deposit type that represents the vendor that will clear the payment.

Note: When you collect a time-of-service payment and you select a payment method that is mapped to the "Other" bank deposit type, the payment appears on the View Deposits Created by athenaOne tab of the Manage Time-of-Service Money page.

For example, if you accept cash, checks, MC/Visa, American Express, Discover, and Health Savings Accounts cleared through the MC/Visa or American Express networks, you should create the following payment methods:

Payment Method	Bank Deposit Type
Cash	Cash & Checks
Check	Cash & Checks
MC/Visa	MasterCard & Visa
AmEx	American Express
Discover	Discover
HSA MC/Visa	MasterCard & Visa
HSA American Express	American Express

Electronic check conversion

Electronic check conversion is a technology that converts paper checks to electronic transactions, so that payments reach your bank account faster and check acceptance risks are minimized. Vendors that offer electronic check processing solutions include TeleCheck and EnCircle.

To support electronic check processing, create an e‑check payment method with "Electronic Check" as the bank deposit type. Any payment method with the Electronic Check bank deposit type automatically creates an Electronic Check payment batch, which you can add to an Electronic Check deposit batch.

To process a check electronically, you must run the check through a machine. After the check is swiped, most machines indicate whether the check was accepted electronically, denied due to a known bad check writer, or whether it needs to be deposited physically at the local bank (for example, some foreign checks).

Because some checks cannot be processed electronically, you should have both a regular check payment method that maps to Cash & Checks and an e‑check payment method that maps to Electronic Checks. Your list of payment methods may look similar to this one.

Payment Method	Bank Deposit Type
Cash	Cash & Checks
Check	Cash & Checks
E-check	Electronic Check
MC/Visa	MasterCard & Visa
AmEx	American Express
Discover	Discover
HSA MC/Visa	MasterCard & Visa
HSA American Express	American Express

Issuing patient refunds

To issue a patient refund, use the Issue Patient Refund page.

For refunds with a payment method type of Check, athenaOne automatically opens and closes a new payment batch and deposit batch for the one refund for the bank account specified. This is done because each check will clear separately on the bank statement.

For refunds with any other payment method, athenaOne records the refund within the appropriate payment batch based on the bank deposit type. For example, if you refund the patient on their MC/Visa credit card, that refund is then reflected in your MC/Visa totals and bank deposit amount for the day.