Invoicing Overview
Invoicing is the process of documenting the sale of goods and services performed on a patient and requesting payment from a client. It’s used for record-keeping, accounting and taxation purposes. During the invoice process, Cornerstone updates the reminder information and the patient’s medical file. It also generates any departing instructions, special actions linked to the invoice items, and prompts for call back note entries.
Important!
- Once posted, invoices cannot be modified.
- Reminders are updated and departing instructions display in history once an invoice is saved or posted.
- An invoice can only be accessed by one workstation at a time.
- You must have at least one invoice item on an invoice to save or post it.
- Address all messages that pop up during invoicing to ensure charges are not missed and patient care is not impacted. This includes:
- Item transfers from the patient visit list (PVL).
- Resolving not requested diagnostic results. Note: Unresolved results do not display in the patient history.
- Checking out patients from their boarding reservation.
- You can invoice an inactive client, but a written off client cannot be invoiced. Reinstatement is required, with security access.
Starting an invoice
Navigate to an invoice using any of the following:
- Patient Clipboard > right-click client or patient > Invoice
- Patient Clipboard > right-click patient > Patient Visit List > Invoice
- Toolbar > Client Account > Invoice
- Toolbar > Daily Planner > Patient Visit List tab > select a Patient Visit List (PVL) > Invoice
For detailed information on creating and managing invoices, click here.
Invoice Actions
Open invoice actions
From the invoice, the following actions are available.
- Transfer Patient Visit List (PVL) items for all patients of the client. The prompt type is based on the invoice defaults.
- Apply or remove taxes or discounts for specific invoice items or apply a discount to the entire invoice.
- View Petly Plans status and apply plan discounts to available plan items.
- Generate designated check out documents.
- Enter a call back note or other action.
Note: A message displays asking the action be completed, if it exists. - Create a prescription label.
- Perform special actions: Mark As Deceased, Vaccine Tag, print document, etc.
- Modify or add additional departing instructions.
- Access Veterinary Pharmacy Reference. Subscription is required.
- Make an appointment.
- Open a travel sheet to select items to add to the invoice.
- Copy items to another of the client’s patients.
- Apply payments or send an online payment request.
- Print or email the invoice.
When you click Post
- Cornerstone performs a final sweep check for the following. If any of these exist, the user will be prompted to complete the action or confirm it.
- Incomplete actions
Examples: Prescription label, lab requests - Pending and potential charges
Examples: Patient Visit Lists (PVLs), not requested lab results or images, whiteboard patients not ready to go (RTG), checked in boarding reservations - Applied discounts on available Petly plan items.
- Incomplete actions
- After the sweep is performed, the invoice closes and these procedures automatically occur:
- Adds the invoice total to the practice sales totals for End of Day, End of Month and End of Year processing
- Checks out patients/generates patient census report data and changes appt status to ‘O’
- Generates invoice and patient visit counts and sales tax amounts on end of period reports
- Updates the client’s balance
- Deducts invoiced quantities from inventory
.
Additional information
Invoicing
- Manage saved (open) invoices from the Daily Planner Invoice tab or use the Patient Visit List (PVL) tab to review charges and initiate and invoice from the PVL window.
- Reminders are updated and departing instructions display in history once an invoice is saved or posted.
- Removing an item from a saved invoice with an associated reminder will require manual update to reset reminders and will display a message.
- If invoicing a deceased patient, you are prompted to change the patient status. Click Yes or No accordingly. Click No to proceed invoicing with patient’s original status.
- Clicking Yes opens a Modify Patient Status window.
- Update status to inactive or active,
- Modify the date as needed and click OK.
- You can continue to invoice with a deceased or inactive patient, if appropriate. A final message displays at post. Click OK.
- Clicking Yes opens a Modify Patient Status window.
- Charges for multiple patients are clearly separated on the invoice, per patient. If the patient has a picture, it will print on the invoice, if the default is set.
- The invoice header can be customized in defaults to include the practice logo.
Related Reports
These Cornerstone reports provide information from the actions outlined in this article. Each report has its own security access under the Reports tab of the Security Setup window.
Reports with invoice IDs:
- Clients With Open Invoices reports: Daily, monthly yearly
- Daily Invoicing Entries: Daily
Invoice Register – Closed Invoices: Daily - Invoice Register – Open Invoices: Daily
- Itemized Audit Trail: Daily
- Monthly Invoices and Statements
- Split Invoices report
- Voided Invoices reports: Daily, monthly, yearly
- Treatment report:
- Located under equine reports
- The date range filter is based on the invoice item’s date and will only list items per invoice that match the criteria.
- Includes saved and posted invoices
