An unapplied credit or amount is created when the Payment amount is greater than what is applied in the transaction detail for a patient-pay transaction.
When a patient has an encounter scheduled and the insurance requires a $15 co-payment, and the patient wants to pay in advance towards that encounter and any future charges, you can credit the patient with a payment prior to charges being entered.
Note: You can fetch the permitted transaction amounts from the Practice Preference window in NextGen® Enterprise PM.