Payment Batch

• Ensure that your athenaOne manual deposit batches and payment batches are opened for the correct amount.
• Complete all fields accurately (bank account, deposit date, etc.). Do not select "Unknown" as the bank account when creating a deposit batch if at all possible.
• Do not use manual batches to collect patient money — instead, please use the Collect Payment time-of-service money workflow for this purpose.
• Financial actions in a payment batch should be tied to an athenaOne deposit batch, which in turn should be tied to true bank account activity for those transactions (financial actions are items such as refunds, payment posting, and payment voids).
• Create a manual payment batch each day to post transfers, adjustments, or insurance refunds, and close the payment batch at the end of that day.
  Note: A nightly script automatically closes manual payment batches with $0 target amounts that are in balance and were opened within the last 30 days. This feature does not apply to time-of-service payment batches.
• Do not change or void athenahealth posting. If you do, you assume full responsibility for the posting. If additional remittance is obtained from the payer or the posting needs to be changed, athenahealth may not take into consideration your posting changes. If you have posted or voided transactions, athenahealth will hold the claim and will not post until you restore the claim to its original state. athenahealth does not reconcile manual payment batches that you create.
  Note: Manual payment batches that you create are not included in the minimum service commitment (MSC).

Tip: You can download and view a .pdf copy of the paper Explanation of Benefits (EOB) on the Edit Payment Batch page. If a payment batch has a paper EOB attached to it, View attached paper (pdf) appears in the Actions field.

If you have a payment batch already open, the batch information appears in the fields at the top of the page, and the Payment Batch Detail view appears at the bottom of the page, showing any items posted or recorded in the batch.

The list of pre-prepared payment batches includes only batches with a payment batch processing route of "Manual." This prevents you from accidentally selecting a payment batch that should be processed by athenahealth staff.

This page view also provides:

• Link to Record a capitation payment in this payment batch (appears only if your practice has at least one capitation policy defined — refer to the Capitation Wizard page for information about capitation policies)
• Link to edit capitation payments included in this payment batch (appears only if the payment batch includes one or more capitation payments — refer to the Capitation Payments page for details)

Note: If you want to apply unapplied balance amounts to a patient balance, open a payment batch with a $0 target amount (because the net effect of the transaction is $0).

When a standard (non-TOS) payment batch is created, you must make the decision to associate or not associate the payment batch to a deposit batch. After you select a deposit batch for a payment batch — or decide not to select a deposit batch for a payment batch — you cannot change the payment batch's deposit batch association.

For time of service (TOS) deposit batches, the deposit batch/payment batch association is created automatically. (See Managing Time of Service Money for more information about the association of TOS deposit batches and payment batches.)

Use these guidelines for creating deposit batch/payment batch pairs.

• If you issue patient or insurance refunds, create a deposit batch/payment batch pair for each individual refund transaction.
• Create $0 payment batches only for corrections (voiding and re-posting dollar amounts).
• Before voiding a transaction that will not be re-posted or posting new transactions in athenaOne, create a deposit batch/payment batch pair.