Sometimes a patient may not be able to pay their complete balance owed all at once, and ask to pay off their balance over time with installments. You can accommodate these patients by setting up a Payment Agreement. Using a Payment Agreement, you can track payment amounts, due dates, print payment coupons, and apply interest terms. After you have set up agreements in individual ledgers, use the Payment Agreement Manager to manage and track those agreements and to post payments from a single location for multiple accounts.
Watch the following video to learn how to set up a payment agreement. (Duration 2:17)
Additional Tips
- A Payment Agreement pertains to a single Family File; in other words, you cannot have an agreement for every member of one Family File — only one agreement per file.
- If you enter a Payment Amount, Dentrix calculates the number of payments and enters it in the # of Payments field; conversely, if you enter a # of Payments, Dentrix calculates the payment amount and enters it in the Payment Amount
- If a patient does not have a payment agreement, the Ledger’s Billing/Payment Agreement button and the Payment Agreement Summary are grayed out. Once a patient has an agreement, the button and the summary are no longer grayed out, and the summary displays data for the patient’s payment agreement.
- Applying a template to an agreement also applies the terms of the template’s agreement to the data fields in the dialog box.
- The Payment Agreement Manager allows you to view all of your patients that have a payment agreement.
- The Print button in the Billing/Payment Agreement dialog box can be used to print a Truth in Lending Statement, an Amortization of Payments and Finance Charges report, and/or a Coupon Book for Scheduled Payments.
- You can also set up a payment agreement from the Collections Manager List by double-clicking a patient’s name. If no agreement exists, a message appears asking if you’d like to create one.
- To learn more about dunning messages used in payment agreements, read Dunning Messages in Dentrix Help.
- To learn more about setting up a payment agreement, read Creating Payment Agreements in Dentrix Help.
Check Your Knowledge
If you have access to Dentrix, check your knowledge with this exercise.
- Switch to the Dentrix demo database.
(Skip this step if you are using the Dentrix Learning Edition software.) - Use the following information to set up a payment agreement for Brent Crosby:
- Billing Type: 6: Payment Plan – finance charges
- Agreement Template: Standard Agreement
- Interval: Monthly
- Total Agreed Amount: Patient’ current account balance
- First Payment Due: the 1st of next month