Unbilled Charges v3.14+

Unbilled Charges are the charge balances created in Unprocessed Services that have not yet been billed to a Payer. On the Fiscal Overview screen, Unbilled Charges display as a dollar amount. The Unbilled Charges function leads to the Create Bills process and creates Claims with an Outgoing Charge Status. 

Navigate to Vantage Point>Fiscal Overview and Select Unbilled Charges. The Unbilled Charges function defaults to the CREATE screen when selected.

CREATE

The release of version 3.14 introduced the ability to save the filter setups used in billing for Commercial Payers, allowing the filter combinations used most frequently to be recalled with just a few clicks. When creating Self Pay Payer bills, there is only a Payer drop-down in which selections can be made. The layout of the Create screen was updated to accommodate the changes for saving filters and now displays these filters in a column on the left-hand side. There is no longer an arrow to maximize or minimize the Create Bills job filters.

1. The Create Bills screen displays different options based on the Payer type selected. The COMMERCIAL Payer type is displayed in the image above. A SELF PAY Payer type Create Bills screen is shown below.

2. Saved Filters - Use the drop-down listing to select a previously saved Billing filter setup.

• (a) Use the blue plus "+" sign to Save currently entered filters. 
  • A pop-up box will prompt for a Saved Filter Name and to SAVE or CANCEL
  • 
• (b) Select the ellipsis (three dots) to Update or Delete the Saved Filter
  • 
  • Select update to make changes to an existing Saved Filter. This may include changes to the Filter setting and the Saved Filter name.
  • Select Delete to remove a previously Saved Filter. A Confirm Action pop-up displays with the options to CANCEL or DELETE.

3. Billing Filters - At minimum, a Billing Method and one Payer must be selected before the SEARCH button is enabled. When all desired filters have been populated, select SEARCH to see theresults.

• Billing Method - A Billing Method must be selected and only one Billing Method can be selected at a time. This is a required field.
• Payer - Select a Payer to begin searching for Unbilled Charges to add to the claim file, multiple Payers may be selected. Payer information is maintained in Configuration>Services/Payers>Payers. This is a required field.
• Starte Date and End Date - Enter a Start Date, End Date or both to search a specific date range. These are optional fields.
• Client - Use to limit the Search results to a single Client's charges. Optional 
• Staff - Use to limit the Search results to return on charges associated with the selected Staff. Optional
• Supervisor - Use to limit the Search results to return charges associated with the selected Supervisor. Optional
• Defined Filter - Use to limit the Search results to return charges that meet the Defined Filter settings. Optional.

4. When all desired filters have been populated, select SEARCH to see the results.

5.Check Box - Use the check boxes to select or deselect individual charges to include in the Create Bills job. No selections need to be made if the job will be created with the results of the search.

6. Message - Enter a unique description to identify the job during processing (recommended).

7. CREATE JOB - Select Create Job to add the Unbilled Charges to a batch to be processed for billing.

• If checkbox selections were made, the Create button will display CREATE JOB WITH SELECTION.
• If no boxes were selected, the Create button will display CREATE JOB WITH RESULTS.

HISTORY

1. The display can be filtered by Payer, Start and End dates, User and Status. These are not required selections.

2. Status - Status indicates which stage the selected job is in during processing. 

• Preview indicates the job is ready to Finalize, Retry, or Reverse.
• Pending indicates the job is waiting to be processed.
• In Progress indicates the job is processing.
• Done indicates the processing is complete.
• Reversed indicates the job was previously created but returned to Unbilled Charges state.

3. Charges - The total charges for the batch are listed in the Charges column. 

4. Errors - This indicates the number of Errors in a job. If "0", the job is ready to move on to step 5. If Errors are not 0, proceed to the Error sections for tips on how to make corrections. It is recommended that Errors be corrected early in the process to improve accuracy and decrease payment time.

5. Finalize/Reverse/Retry - The create bills and resulting claim process is not complete until the job without errors is Finalized. The Retry and Reverse are used depending on the types or errors and the corrections required.

• Finalize
  • Moves Preview status services with no errors to Unpaid Balances.
  • Unbilled Charges with errors will not be finalized. The status will be changed to Hold and they will be returned to the Create Unbilled Charges pool until the errors are corrected and included in another batch.
• Retry
  • Re-runs the job to test if corrections fixed the errors (requires the Finalize process to move the job forward). Run as often as necessary to correct all errors.
• Reverse
  • Reverse undoes job creation. The batch will show as Reversed in the HISTORY screen but the charges will be returned to the CREATE screen with an Active Status.

6. Report, 837, and Debug - These icons allow access to the bills or billing file created with resources to help view and/or correct problems.

• Select Report to view a user friendly version of the 837 in this example (see below), the paper CMS-1500, or even Self-Pay statements. The reports icon is available even after the job is Finalized.

• Select 837 to download the read-only 837 file for the job submitted. Receiver electronic analysis of the data contained helps determine claim payment amounts.
• Select Debug to download a more readable version of the 837 file for the job submitted.

ERRORS

1. Select the ERRORS tab to display batches with errors and view more information on the specific errors.

2. Use the drop-down list to select the job to be viewed. By default, only jobs that contain errors are displayed in the drop-down listing. Select the Show all jobs checkbox to include all jobs in the drop-down listing.

3. SHOW/HIDE Filters displays or hides filters that can be used to refine the results in the job drop-down listing.

• (a) Refine the job results by date range using the Start Date, End Date or both.
• (b) Limit the job results to only those created by the currently logged in user by selecting the Created by me checkbox.
• (c) Select the CLEAR JOB FILTERS button to clear the filters and show all Error jobs (default) or All jobs (checkbox).

4. Check the Show all Messages box to list all the charges in the job. Deselect to display only the charges with Errors.

5. Select a row to to display the Errors detail. The vertical orange bar indicates the currently selected row.

6. For each row, the number of errors by level is displayed. See the end of this section for links to more information on the error levels.

7. This is the error detail section for the currently selected row.

8. A blue underlined error message is a clickable link that takes the user to the screen that will address the error. In the example above, the error is Add-on service charge requires the parent service charge to be in the same billing job. Clicking on the link brings the user to the appropriate screen to resolve the error, the Service screen in this example.

After error corrections, return to Unbilled Charges. If the corrected charges are still in Preview status batch on the HISTORY screen, select Retry to try creating the charges again. If error free then choose Finalize. 

Below is a reference for the errors, and tips on resolving them.

INFO

WARNING

ERROR