Raising Credit
There are 2 main methods of raising credit. Either you bill out using the intended items (i.e. for upcoming procedures), or you use a miscellaneous item to represent the prepayment (i.e. call the item PREPAY or something). There are pros and cons to each approach, we will use the real item number method below.
Bring up the patient on screen and go to Reception Menu >> Prepay Account.
Type in the items and the planned date of service - as if you were billing it as an invoice.
You will then be taken through the standard payment screen, after which a receipt will print and you will see the credit available on the patient's account.
Applying Credit
Later after the patient actually has the procedure you need to bill it out and apply the credit.
Do the billing as a standard invoice, and untick the claiming options.
This will now print out an invoice. While it will say that it's an unpaid invoice, it can be submitted as a Medicare claim when combined with the prepayment receipt from earlier (provided it has the same item and service date).
Now you need to apply the credit to the invoice. Go in to the receipting screen of Medilink, highlight the item, and click Credit:
This will reprint a receipt which can also be used for manual Medicare claiming in lieu of the two page unpaid invoice and prepayment receipt.
Apply Partial Credit
There is no way to apply partial credit. Unfortunately the system isn't very flexible in this respect.
There is a way around the problem but it is kind of messy.
First you have to refund the credit in full. Then straight afterwards do a receipt for the amount you want, then recreate the leftover credit as another prepayment.
It sometimes helps to visualise a scenario. Imagine a patient has given you $1000 in credit. You are effectively taking that $1000 back out of your till (a refund), but then immediately putting it back in as two separate transactions, a $200 payment and an $800 prepayment.
Claiming with Credits
Alternatively, if you have Medilink 2016 R1, you can submit the claim via Medicare Online. Open the Copies screen, highlight the invoice lines and click Submit Claim:
Refunding Credit
Credit can be refunded via Reception Menu >> Refund Credit. Take note of how you want the refund to appear on your banking (i.e. many practices would probably refund via the same method as the original payment type, but others might use a cheque instead).
Fix Credits
If the amount credits attributed to an account is wrong, you can use Tools Menu >> Fix Account Credits and Medilink will recalculate the credits for that account. If the problem remains, contact [email protected]
Unapply Credits
Sometimes you might want to reverse a credit that you have applied so that you can refund it. You have to use a utility to do this, called Unapply Credits. It is available from the Medilink Launcher screen in Medilink 2015 R3 onwards, or as a separate download: http://www.medilink.com.au/Unapply Credit.zip
Search for the patient, then highlight the applied credits that you want to reverse, then click Unapply credit.
Sharing Credits
In some cases you will get an error message "This credit cannot be shared!".
This means that the provider & practice of the service that you are trying to apply a credit to is not the same provider & practice where the credit was raised.
One solution is to refund the credit for the original provider (Reception Menu >> Refund Credit), then use that money instantly. That will properly reflect the refund (negative) on the banking, then the positive payment.
Alternatively, you can turn on Share Credits. Do this via File Menu >> Change Details >> Provider Details, then press the plus + next to each provider, highlight a practice, click Edit Practice, turn on the Share Credits tick, then repeat for each provider & practice combination.
A word of warning with sharing credits, applied credits do not show up on the banking. This is because the funds were previously banked. It's important to be aware of this depending on how your doctors are paid, because one may have been paid for the credit when it was raised by looking at the banking report, but it may have been 'shared' to another doctor.