NextGen Knowledge Center

Practice Preferences for Patient Payments

You can set patient payments that are processed electronically in NextGen® Enterprise PM, similar to an ERA 835 file. The electronic file comes from a bank instead of a payer.

You can set this up for your practice through your financial institution. Patients who owe balances would send their payments to the bank instead of to your practice. The bank would then deposit the money into the practice's account and send the practice a file that you can import into NextGen® Enterprise PM, just as an ERA file is imported. A transaction batch is automatically created when the file is imported, and a report similar to the ERA Import Posting report is generated.

The table describes the preferences that you can set for patient pay in your practice.

Patient Pay ImportDescription
Default Transaction CodeYou can select the default transaction code to be used during Patient Pay Import.
Do not post to encounters in a bad debt statusSelect this option to stop patient payments from posting automatically during Patient Pay Import to encounters that are in the bad debt status. If all encounters of a patient are in the bad debt status, the payment is treated as an account unapplied payment.
Do not post to accounts on a budgetSelect this option to stop patient payments from posting automatically during Patient Pay Import to encounters that are included on a budget plan for an account.
Include tracking description in Import Posting ReportSelect this option to do the following:
  • Append tracking descriptions of transactions during Patient Pay Import. The tracking description includes credit card information when present in the electronic file.
  • Allow credit card transaction code fields.
Visa / MasterCard / American Express / Discover / Other / CheckSelect a source that is a patient transaction code for each payment method. The transaction codes override the Default Transaction Code during Patient Pay Import for patient credit card payments. Credit card information is included in the tracking description of each transaction.
Allow Unapplied Payment to postSelect this option to post unapplied payments as an account credit. If you do not select this option, a message appears on the Import Posting Report, that an unapplied payment was not posted, as the user does not have the rights to post unapplied payments.
Practice Preferences for Patient Payments