Payments

Open Payments in the clinical workspace sidebar. One segment shows at a time: Today, Banking, Owed, Claims (United States) or NHS claims (United Kingdom), Deposits and, for owners and managers, Associate pay. The page's address names the segment, so a link or a refresh opens the same one.

You see the segments your role can use: Today with the till or the day's takings, Banking with the till, Owed with access to patient accounts, the claims of your practice's country with access to them, and Deposits with access to deposit requests. A practice outside the United States and the United Kingdom has no claims segment.

When the practice has more than one location, the location picker beside the segments narrows Today, Owed, the claims and Deposits to one site. Banking is always one site's: pick it first.

Today

Taken today lists what was taken today, by payment method, with how many payments each, and the day's refunds — the same figures as the Day sheet & takings report for the practice's today. A payment with no method of its own, such as an insurer's payment or a deposit paid online, counts under Other. A card reader payment counts once Stripe confirms it; one that was declined, cancelled or is still unconfirmed shows only on the patient's Account › Ledger, under Card reader payments. A balance payment made in the patient portal counts once Stripe confirms it; refund it from Online payments.

Beside it is the Till — the Cash drawer in a practice in the United States. There is one for each location:

With more than one location, pick one to open its till. Sessions lists every session, newest first, with its state, times, references and how the count came out; click one to see its cash entries. Narrow it to Open, Closed or Reconciled, or by the days the sessions opened with From and To, and click Load more to continue. If the sessions can't be read, the list says so with Retry; a failed read never shows as an empty list, and when a refresh fails the sessions already shown stay, marked as possibly out of date.

Second-person review

When your practice switches on Till reconciliation needs a second person (see Practice details), whoever closed a till can't reconcile it. They see Waiting for review on the session, and anyone else with access to the till reconciles it. A session with no recorded closer shows Closer not recorded: only an owner or manager can reconcile it, with a note saying how it was checked.

If a closed till doesn't add up, click Query on the session instead, say what doesn't add up, and click Send query. The person who closed the till gets a Till queried task in To do, and the query shows on the session for everyone. A closer who has left or been suspended, or one who wasn't recorded, can't take the task: it waits unassigned, where the team sees it. The till stays closed until someone reconciles it, and a reconciled till can't be queried.

Banking

Banking takes a site's cash and cheques to the bank. A deposit groups individual receipts — cash and cheque payments, insurance payments and refunds — rather than whole till sessions, so cheques and cash taken with no till open are banked too.

Start banking at a site

The first time you open Banking for a site, it asks up to which day the site's cash and cheques were banked outside Smileline. Choose the date under Banked outside Smileline up to and click Start banking. Nothing dated up to that day is ever offered for banking. The date can't be earlier than the last till at the site that was given a bank deposit reference, and it can't be in the future.

Make a deposit

When a deposit holds all the cash of one or more closed tills, it says so, with whether those tills were over or short. With second-person review switched on, whoever prepared a deposit sees Waiting for someone else to confirm: someone else records the bank's figure. A deposit whose preparer wasn't recorded is confirmed by an owner or manager, with a note.

Deposits lists every deposit, newest first, with its state, date, what it holds and its total; click Load more to continue. Patients' names show only to people who can see patients; everyone else sees Patient. An erased patient's receipt keeps its amount, shown as Erased patient.

Corrections to banked receipts

A receipt that's reversed or revised after it was banked — by a correction in the ledger or by your practice management system — is never banked again by itself. It waits under Corrections to banked receipts, which says whether it corrects a banked receipt or one banked before Smileline. A correction made after banking started always waits here, even when it carries an earlier date: your practice management system dates the reversal of a payment with the payment's own date.

To bank it, open a draft deposit, write Why it's added beside it and click Add to this deposit. A correction comes with the rest of its family — a revision with the reversal of the payment it replaces — so the deposit's total moves by exactly the change: an unchanged revision and its reversal cancel out, and a revision that lowered a payment by £10 lowers the total by £10.

A deposit can't be prepared while a correction of one of its receipts is waiting — for example, a receipt reversed after the draft took it. Prepare then says so: add the correction, or leave the receipt out.

Void a deposit

To undo a deposit at any stage, write the Reason to void and click Void, then Confirm void. The deposit stays in the history with its receipts and the reason, and its receipts are free to go into a new deposit.

Owed

Owed lists the accounts that owe money, largest first: each account's balance — every charge less every payment, money paid in advance included — with the date of its oldest unpaid charge. An account whose payments already cover its charges is not listed. Narrow it by how long that charge has waited: All, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 90 days or Over 90 days. The list shows a page at a time; Load more continues until it ends.

The account of a patient whose record was erased stays listed as Erased patient, with what it owes and since when, so its money never drops off the list; it can't be opened and offers no actions.

A family account is one row, titled with the account's name — such as Mark Doe family — under the patient who pays; when the payer isn't a patient, under the member through whom they pay. A balance carried in from an earlier account counts as owed at its own location, from the date it was first owed.

With a location chosen, an account that also has charges or payments at another location reads Couldn't check instead of an amount: payments and credit are shared across locations, so its balance is never split by guesswork.

Click a name to open the patient panel. Each row offers:

• Take payment — reads the account, then opens the payment naming the patient, with the amount filled in at what they owe now: the balance, less anything waiting for insurance. Change it if they pay something else; see Take a payment. If the account shows that the insurer's part can no longer be told, no payment opens: the row reads Couldn't check with Retry.
• A balance left on an account closed before Smileline kept track of where its money went stays listed, but cannot be taken here: it is moved first. Owners, managers and agency staff see Move to current account or Choose where it goes on the row; others see Ask a manager to move it. The same accounts are in To do → Money on closed accounts, credit included.
• Generate statement — files a statement for the account, exactly as on the Account tab (see Statements).

In a practice in the United States, a row shows what the patient owes: the account's balance less the part still waiting for the insurer. That part shows apart, as Waiting for insurance $80.00, and is never counted as the patient's debt — an account whose balance is all waiting for insurance stays listed with only that pill. While nobody can tell an account's insurer part yet, its amount reads Couldn't check and there is no Take payment: estimate the treatment first (see Waiting for insurance).

Claims

The claims to chase, oldest first, each with the patient, what came back, the date and the clinician:

• Claims (United States) — insurance claims sent to the clearinghouse more than three days ago with neither a 999 nor a 277CA answer yet, with the amount billed. Chase them before the payer's filing deadline; see Insurance claims.
• NHS claims (United Kingdom) — FP17 claims that came back queried, or rejected as error or invalid. Record the outcome or queue the claim again from the patient's Account › NHS; see FP17 claims.

Deposits

Deposits lists every booking-deposit request, newest first, a page at a time with Load more. Narrow it to Awaiting payment, No-show review — paid deposits held after a missed consultation, waiting for a manager to refund or forfeit them — or Paid, or show All.

Each row names the patient with their date of birth, then the amount, the deposit's state and what happens next. Its buttons are the ones the patient's deposit block offers, each to the roles that hold it: Re-send link, Copy link, Paid at practice and Cancel while it waits for payment; Refund, and after a no-show Forfeit, once it is paid. See Request and track deposits.

Every deposit request belongs to a location: the one its payment is recorded at (see Which location a deposit belongs to). Each row names its location, also one since closed, unless it is the practice's only location. With more than one location, a location chosen in the picker keeps that location's requests on every page and with every filter.

Month end

Owners and managers see Month end beside the segments:

• Lock entries up to… closes a location's ledger up to a date you choose. No entry can be posted into a closed period; corrections after that go into the open period as reversals. Once you choose the location and the date, it lists the tills there that are closed but not yet reconciled. This is a warning: you can still close the period.
• Associate pay statements opens the Associate pay segment: each clinician's pay for a month under their contract, which you approve once the month has ended. See Associate pay statements.
• Associate pay opens the Associate pay report, the gross figures per practitioner.