When a patient pre-pays for an appointment online, it gets stored as a Voucher. Redeeming the Voucher is required
- to provide the patient a paid invoice with their actual appointment date to pass on to their health fund.
- to keep an audit trail of when patients had their actual appointment and used the prepayment (for auditing purposes and in case a patient queries an outstanding credit).
To prevent doubling-up of payments in the reports, the Business Setup -> Report Settings also needs updating, to change the Hide Vouchers in Sales Reports setting to "Yes".
Why is this important? When the pre-payment from the online booking is recorded against the patient file, it will be added into your sales report as your earnings for the day. When the patient comes in and the invoice is created and you apply the Voucher, we don't want that same amount being added into your sales report because you have only received that payment ONCE.
Booking is made
Step 1: The patient books an appointment online and prepays -> a voucher will be created on their patient file for this amount. You will be able to see this:
- under the patient record on the vouchers tab
- whenever you open a new invoice for that patient, it will show as a blue notification in the payments section
Redeem the Voucher
On the day of the consultation, anytime after the patient has attended, an invoice needs to be created to redeem that voucher.
Step 2: Go to the diary -> open the appointment (that has been prepaid)-> select 'Invoice' -> this will open a new invoice (as below) that shows the consult price and that the patient has a voucher owing (in blue).
Step 3. To redeem the voucher -> click on the blue + button in the Payments section -> select the Credit Voucher from the Payment Method drop down (as below) -> OK
Step 4. Go to the top of the invoice and select 'Hide Invoice' This is to avoid a double up of income being recorded.
This will also flow through to Xero if you have this connected.
Step 5. Email this to your patient if they need a copy to claim private health, NDIS etc.
If your patient wants to buy supplements -> you will need to create a separate invoice just for the products. You cannot have voucher redemptions and product sales on the same invoice as this invoice will be hidden from your reporting.