How to Set Up and Use Practice Administrative Fees

Sensei Cloud gives you the ability to apply administrative fees for billing statement processing. You can set up a fee amount that is automatically applied to billing statements upon generating them. You also have the flexibility to waive the fee on a case-by-case basis. 

Administrative fees for statements are displayed as line items in the Patient Ledger, with the fee label of your choice included in the Description field (e.g., Billing Administration Fee). 

See the following setup instructions for more information.

Setting Up Administrative Fees

You can set up administrative fees for your practice from the Financial Rules window (Administration > Practice Settings > Financial Rules). 

To set up administrative fees for your practice:

1. From the Administration tab, select Practice Settings > Financial Rules.
2. Under Actions, click Edit Financial Rules.
3. Scroll to the Administrative Fees section.
4. If you want to charge administrative fees for billing/statement processing, select Yes next to this option. Further options are expanded when Practice Charges Administrative Fees for Billing/Statement Processing is enabled:
   -- Administrative Billing Fee Amount: Enter the amount of the fee to be applied when processing statements.
   -- Billing Fee Label: You can select Billing Administration Fee or create your own custom label. Fee labels are used whenever these fees are assessed as charges (i.e., upon statement generation) and are appended to the transaction description to clearly distinguish them from all of the other ledger transactions. The selected fee label is automatically used whenever these fees are assessed until it is changed. See Managing Fee Labels for more information.
5. Click Save.

Managing Fee Labels

Click Edit next to Billing Fee Label to open the Manage Administrative Payment Fees window and add or edit fee labels. 

To add a new fee label:

1. From the Administration tab, select Practice Settings > Financial Rules.
2. Under Actions, click Edit Financial Rules.
3. Scroll to the Administrative Fees section.
4. If not already enabled, set one or both of the Administrative Fee settings to Yes.
5. Next to the Billing Fee Label option, click Edit. The Manage Administrative Payment Fees window is displayed.
   
6. Click Add New.
7. Enter a name for the label.
8. Click the Checkmark icon to save the label. The label is now available for selection from the Billing Fee Label options.

Note: 
-- You can edit the label name from the same window by clicking the Pencil icon. You can change the name or update the status (active/inactive). 
-- The standard Billing Administration Fee and Payment Administration Fee labels cannot be edited or deactivated. 
-- If an existing Fee Label (name) is changed, then this change is automatically updated in any existing Administrative Fee transactions that have already been posted.
 

Using Administrative Fees

When you have enabled Administrative Fees from the Financial Rules window, the fees are automatically applied moving forward.

Individual Patient Billing Statements

When you have enabled administrative fees for billing statements, the fee amount is automatically applied when you generate/print an individual billing statement for a patient from their ledger (Patient > Financials > Ledger > Actions menu > Print Billing Statement).

Note: You can generate one-off statements from other areas in the software as well, such as via the Accounts Receivable worklist, etc..

To waive the fee, select Yes next to the Waive Administrative Billing Fee option from the Statement Print Options window.

Note: An administrative fee is charged every time you click to Print a billing statement unless you select to waive the fee.

See How to Print a Patient Billing Statement for more information.

Statement Worklist (Bulk Statements)

From the Location Home or All Locations > Home, select To Do > Statement Worklist. The Statement Worklist is displayed, and you can click Generate New Statement Batch from the Actions menu to select the statement criteria and generate a new batch. For example, you might want to create a batch of statements only for patients who are past due.

See How to Generate Bulk Statements for more information.

When you generate a new statement batch and billing administrative fees are enabled, each statement in the list includes a green dollar sign icon (US) or pound sign icon (UK) in the Actions column to indicate that an administrative fee is going to be applied. 

You can control which statements include an administrative charge as follows:

• Click the icon to waive the fee for an individual statement in the batch. When clicked, the icon turns red to indicate the statement is not set to be charged an administrative fee.
• When the guarantor has connected patients, you can disable the billing administrative fee for all of the patients by clicking the icon in the Guarantor line item. The icon next to the Guarantor as well as the icons next to each connected patient name are changed to red.
  
• Click the main Guarantor line item to access the expanded view which includes all of the connected patients. From the Connected Patient Overview, click the icon next to any or all of the connected patient names to remove the fee from the statements for these individual patients, without impacting the fee for the Guarantor.
  

The fee is charged to the applicable statements in the batch when they are printed.

Note: When a Guarantor-based batch is generated and used, the assessment of fees depends on the style of statements that are generated in the end:
-- For group-based statements, if any of the patients in the Guarantor's group (that are included in the batch output) do not have the fee waived, then a single fee is assessed to one of the group member's ledgers (i.e., not one fee per group member, as only a single statement is generated for the whole group). See How to Print a Group Billing Statement for more information.
-- For individual statements, a statement is generated for each patient in the Guarantor's group (that hasn't been manually excluded from the batch) and the fee is assessed based on that patient's fee waive status.