Unallocated funds "solution" is unacceptable.
I have been with SP for years and have voiced few concerns publicly until now.
When we sent a help request to inquire about how to allocate funds to specific invoices, this is the response we received...
I hope your day is going well. I'm happy to help with this.
With our previous billing experience, you couldn’t choose the amount applied to an invoice. With our billing enhancements, you now have the ability to add partial payments to invoices.
Partial payments can only be applied to invoices that were created after our billing updates were enabled in your account. Invoices created before this update can be paid in full or can be deleted and recreated to add a partial payment. If you choose to recreate an invoice, you can edit the Issue Date of the new invoice.
For this client, if you'd like to apply partial payments to Invoice #3708 and Invoice #4311, you can delete and recreate the invoices. You will then be able to apply partial payments to these invoices following this workflow:
- Navigate to the client’s Billing tab
- Click Add Payment
- Select the invoice(s) you’d like to apply the payment to
- Enter the amount of the payment in the Amount field:
- Choose a payment method
- Review the payment summary
- Add the payment
The invoice and the client’s billing summary will reflect the paid and remaining amounts.
For more information, please see Navigating client payments.
Please let me know if you have any questions, as I'm happy to help.
I haven't responded because I am so appalled by this "solution." Delete and recreate invoices??? Why would we need to waste our time doing this? That is unacceptable and a major flaw in the program. Fixing this needs to be at the top of the list of priorities at address, as this is clearly an issue that EVERY provider will run into, and many have already asked for help with it. Additionally, recreating invoices for previous tax years seems like it could have major tax and fraud implications. This "update" was a huge step in the wrong direction, SP.
Unless you are trying to lose customers, please correct this concerning flaw immediately.
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I believe the fundamental error stems from SP trying to adapt the new billing experience to their existing invoicing model. Rather than trying to navigate all of these individual invoices and allocate payments (which you can’t do unless you delete and recreate the invoice) the obvious solution was to overhaul the system and let you apply payments toward individual appointments and each invoice would have respective lines stating previous balance, interim payments, and new charges. The previous invoicing model (and many other aspects of SP’s client billing function) were and remain deeply flawed. Clients are confused by the invoices they receive which often contain misleading information resulting in balance disputes.
As the billing admin for an LCSW, this entire rollout has been a train wreck and has caused significant delays in processing client payments and generating correct invoices. I am hoping that SP recognizes that this update was a total flop and takes customer feedback seriously when they go back to the drawing board. I have received similarly vague and unhelpful answers from support recently that have left me speechless. (One such response was to ask if I had tried the “fix” that I was SPECIFICALLY asking to avoid.)
I’m less and less hopeful that SP is going to turn things around, but I believe that if enough people voice how close they are to leaving SP due to recent changes and lack of help, maybe the financial motivation may spur action.
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this is a nightmare. It's bad enough when billing is going smoothly, but if there are any hiccups with a client that we have to go back and fix, it's impossible. i have no idea why I still use SP and am seriously reconsidering. i don't even use it for the notes, so that makes it even more ridiculous that i would continue with my subscription.
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I just want to add to the discourse here. I've been using Simple Practice for years as well, and this "fund allocation" or whatever it's called is truly a nightmare. It's created so many problem in my billing practices that I can't explain to patients, it's become an unacceptable problem with no solution in sight. I have tried to contact SP representatives for help –which is terribly time consuming because you have to exchange emails and schedule something in my already jam-packed day– but there seem to be so many iterations of problems with "unallocated funds" under patient accounts, I can't get on top of it. I never had any problems whatsover with billing until SP made this change. I would change platforms, but I can't "allocate" the time required for that investment.
SP, if you're reading this, can you simplify the "unallocated funds" feature into something that is more user friendly?
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I am feeling stressed about this! I accept medicare and the secondary coverage comes as a check with multiple patients/sessions assigned to the check. In input the check in the insurance payments area, allocate the funds to the appropriate session/ patient and everything looks like sunshine. Until I open a patient chart and the payment I just put in is "unallocated" and when I try to allocate from the patients chart it well is a hot mess. It shouldn't be this hard nor this redundant. I find myself blocked in trying to correct it because everything is wrong when I got the allocate payments button- it is the wrong dollar amount- for example one case has 126.25 unallocated- I go to allocate and it only shows 101 credit?, I forget in my flustered state what sessions I was doing. its too much.
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