AngelTrack has an invoicing system allowing you to create, edit, print, send, and process invoices for amounts due from facilities, from affiliates, and from patients.
Each invoice is a list of dispatches. For each dispatch, the invoice contains a quoted price and an amount invoiced. The quoted price is calculated during invoice generation, based on the pricing schedule used; the amount invoiced, meanwhile, is calculated by subtracting any payments received from the quoted price.
An invoice will include all dispatches for which the balance due is not zero, which means it will also include dispatches for which a refund is owed.
If you are a QuickBooks user, you are probably in the habit of creating an invoice for everything. In QuickBooks, most every transaction must be associated with an invoice... and with that invoice's ID.
AngelTrack is not like that. In AngelTrack, invoices are optional. Their purpose is to automate the creation of payment events... but only where you see fit. You can create a payment event at any time without using an invoice at all.
Try to think of invoices as a tool, rather than as a requirement.
For example, suppose you receive a cash payment for a wheelchair transport. You can record it as a payment event (using Record a Payment Event page), and subsequently push that dispatch all the way to Finished , without ever creating an invoice.
So create invoices as you need them... don't create them because you think that AngelTrack needs them.
Invoices are complex, journalled, active entities, meant to form part of a rebilling cycle. As such, they do not always include all of a client's current receivables, and they should not be generated casually.
If you wish to print just a quick statement for a client, showing every receivable regardless of the invoice workflow, then invoices are not the answer. Instead, use the quick statement printer. Its icon appears in all of the following places:
Before performing any invoicing, make sure you are familiar with the following:
Feel free to create invoices any time you see a need to group together some receivable dispatches in a nice report, to be sent to a customer or just for internal use.
Invoices are not payment events, and so creating one does not, itself, alter the balance due. A receivable (i.e. a dispatch) could be included in five different invoices, and still have just one balance due. You can therefore create invoices as often as you wish without perturbing the balances still owing.
An invoice can affect your workflow, and possibly alter the balance due, only during the following events:
In other words, you could create an invoice, preview it, add some explanatory comments, add and remove dispatches from it, export it to PDF, and then cancel the invoice... all without creating any payment event or altering any balance due.
Invoices are created by the various Invoice Generators. There is an Invoice Generator for facilities, for affiliates, and for patients. Each one can hunt down all dispatches that are ready to be invoiced to that particular party, and produce a nicely formatted bill showing all services rendered and the amounts owing.
To learn how to use an Invoice Generator, refer to the Invoice Generator guide.
You can also create an empty invoice with the Invoice Generator, and then manually add dispatches to it afterward.
AngelTrack's Invoice Generators offer you a choice of four invoice types: differential, complete, collections, or custom. To learn what each of these is for, read the Invoice Types guide.
Dispatches that are parked will never be picked up by an invoice generator.
However, if a dispatch already belonged to an invoice at the time it was parked, it remains in that invoice and will be included in printouts. In other words, the only effect of parking is to prevent the dispatch from being included in any future invoices.
When you are certain that an invoice is complete and correct, click the "Commit" button to commit it.
Committing an invoice does all of the following to each included dispatch:
Move forward in the postprocess workflow from "Billing office to Awaiting payment . The affected dispatches will then disappear from the queue of those awaiting invoicing (as shown in the Postprocess Status Report), because they are no longer waiting on anyone in the Billing office.
Any dispatch still in QA will remain there. Upon graduation from QA, the dispatch will automatically move to Awaiting payment , joining the other dispatches in the invoice.
Set the Price Quote, if not already quoted, or if the invoice is configured to override existing price quotes.
Remember, AngelTrack uses "lazy price quoting", where price quotes are not determined until graduation from QA. Because an invoice is generated using a pricing schedule, any included dispatch that does not already have a price quote can now receive one. (Refer to the Pricing guide to learn more about price quotes.)
The Invoice Generator offers a button to commit the invoice immediately after it is generated. There are also 'Commit' buttons shown in the Invoices page, allowing you to commit an invoice at any time.
An invoice needs to be committed only once, in order to set price quotes for all of its dispatches and advance all of them to Awaiting payment . So, once you click the "Commit" button, the button greys out.
Likewise if you wait until later to commit, and then do so in the Invoices list: once you click the "Commit" button that appears in the grid, the button disappears. No need to commit twice.
Occasionally the button will reappear as "Re-Commit". This happens when an invoice needs to be committed again as a result of something happening to one of its dispatches. For example, if someone pushes a dispatch back to Billing office for whatever reason, then the "Re-Commit" button will appear in order to push the dispatch forward to Awaiting payment again. Likewise if someone deletes a price quote, requiring it to be set again (using the invoice's pricing schedule).
As discussed in greater detail in the Invoice Generator guide, an invoice can include dispatches that are still in QA. This is definitely atypical, because the QA process can change the mileage and the actual service level... but if you are sure, then you can force AngelTrack to include such dispatches in an invoice.
You may be forced to do this by a customer who requests an invoice on March 5th for all February activity... even though some February activity is still making its way through QA.
To direct the Invoice Generator to do so, change the invoice type to "Custom", and then make your selections from the various steps of the workflow:
For example, to include dispatches still in QA, tick the ☑ Awaiting QA review and ☑ Awaiting corrections boxes.
Remember that when an invoice is committed, all of its items are moved forward from Billing office to Awaiting payment ... but any dispatches still in QA are left there so they can finish QA properly. When they eventually graduate QA, instead of moving forward to Billing office as usual, they automatically go straight to Awaiting payment , joining up with the rest of the dispatches in the invoice.
It is normal and reasonable to have overlapping invoices, where a single dispatch belongs to several different invoices. This happens when an older invoice is not paid in full, or at all, and so its dispatches must be invoiced again and again.
AngelTrack does not mind when this happens. Every payment applied to every dispatch is tracked separately, regardless of which invoice is involved. Therefore, if an under- or overpayment occurs, the affected dispatches will automatically appear in the next invoice as debits or credits... and this will continue until all balances reach zero, or until a Biller makes the conscious decision to write them off.
If a facility or affiliate has a ledger balance, the Invoice Generator will prompt the user to include that balance in their next invoice. In this manner, AngelTrack constantly tries to settle all outstanding ledger balances.
The charge (or credit) to settle a ledger balance is saved with the invoice, and can be edited independently of the invoice's other contents. Modifying it does not also modify the facility's (or affiliate's) actual ledger balance. The only time an invoice can alter a facility's or affiliate's ledger balance is when the invoice is paid. Underpayments and overpayments are applied to the appropriate ledger, and carried forward to the next month's invoice.
AngelTrack's Stripe integration provides you with a Customer Self-Pay Portal. Your customers can visit the portal online to pay their invoice, with credit card or ACH, without ever calling your office.
When that feature is active, AngelTrack will automatically print the self-pay instructions and self-pay code on each invoice. No action is required on your part.
The Invoices page shows the list of open invoices -- and also closed invoices if you uncheck the appropriate box. From this page you can edit an invoice's name, custom ID number, the amount of the charge/credit for ledger balance, and the ☑ Price Override checkbox.
Every invoice has a journal, showing every change made to it. To view the journal, open the Invoice Edit page and then select the "Journal" tab.
You may add additional dispatches to an invoice at any time, even after it is committed.
To add a dispatch to an invoice, open its Dispatch Edit page and select the 'Invoices' tab. You will then see a grid of invoices that the dispatch currently belongs to, if any. Click the icon at the upper right to add the dispatch to another invoice. You can do this even if the dispatch is currently parked.
A popup window will appear, offering a list of invoices that the dispatch does not yet belong to. You can select any invoice you wish. You must also provide a price quote if the dispatch does not yet have one.
If the selected invoice has already been committed, then adding another dispatch to it will require committing that dispatch too. The two checkboxes become available if you choose a committed invoice; the checkboxes correspond to the very same checkboxes used when committing an invoice in the usual way.
After saving your work, you will then see the new invoice listed on the dispatch's "Invoices" tab. From there you can view and print it.
From the list in the Invoices page, click the invoice's ID to open the Invoice Edit page. The "Dispatches" tab shows the invoice's contents. Each item has a 'Detach' button on the right-hand side; click the button to remove the item from the invoice. Your changes take effect immediately; you will see your changes when you reprint the invoice.
If the invoice has been committed, the removed item will then be un-committed (i.e. sent back to Billing office for re-invoicing) if it does not belong to any other committed invoices.
From the list in the Invoices page, click an invoice's ID to view its contents. Each item has several editable items:
Your changes take effect immediately; you will see them when you reprint the invoice.
Note that changes to the transport distance or to the standby minutes are not automatically reflected in the price or in the amount due; you must recalculate the price change yourself.
Also note that any change to the price invoiced has an accompanying checkbox: ☑ Also update the underlying price quote. When that checkbox is ticked, your new price will also be saved back to the underlying dispatch record so as to make it permanent. It will thereafter be carried into all future invoices, and will alter the balance due.
Each item in the invoice is accompanied by a chart showing its payment activity, including claims, denials, approvals, appeals, and payments. If applicable, there will also be a note indicating the name of the person who signed the 'Non-Covered Destination' acknowledgement form.
You may add your own comments, which will be displayed as additional entries in the chart. To any of the following fields in AngelTrack:
...you may add a !bang comment, which is a line of text that begins with an exclamation point, like this:
To learn more about how !bang comments from dispatchers, billers, and QA reviewers flow automatically into invoices, read the Invoice Comments guide.
You can print many invoices in one shot. Use the selection checkboxes along the left-hand edge of the Invoices grid to select all desired invoices. The "Print..." link will then light up. Clicking that link will open a new browser tab containing all pages of all selected invoices, in sequence.
You can print the entire assembly in one go, right from your browser.
AngelTrack's printed invoices are designed to align correctly with the address window(s) in a standard #10 business envelope.
The invoices normally print in landscape mode so that the line-item grids are not squished, but the cover page of every invoice will rotate itself to portrait mode during printing. In portrait mode, the TO: and FROM: addresses on the cover page will line up with the envelope's windows.
This feature is not available when you export an invoice as a .PDF and then print the .PDF. It is available only when printing invoices from inside your web browser.
If you are not using windowed envelopes, AngelTrack can generate your mailing labels in the standard size: Avery 5160.
After selecting your desired invoices on the Invoices list, click the "Print 5160 labels…" link. A sheet of pre-formatted labels will open in a new tab in your browser, ready for immediate printing. It may be necessary to fiddle with your browser's print settings, or your printer's settings, to get the labels to line up exactly right.
NOTE: For patient invoices, the next-of-kin name and address will be used if it has been provided and if the ☑ Next-of-kin is guarantor checkbox is ticked. If a patient record has no mailing address or next-of-kin address, then the patient's residence facility (if any) will be used instead.
If you do not wish to use the Avery 5160 size address labels, then you can print custom-sized mailing labels using a mail merge in your word processor.
From the Invoices list use the grid export feature to dump the Invoices grid to a .CSV document. That document can then be imported by your word processor as a mail merge. All necessary fields for mailing labels are present; the data is drawn from the respective patient, facility, and affiliate records.
For reference, the relevant field names are:
You may customize the invoice's cover page in the following ways:
AngelTrack fills out the an invoice's FROM section using data from your Billing Configuration and Business Identification, available under Settings. It automatically decides whether to add a D/B/A or O/B/O, as necessary.
To override this, visit the Billing Configuration and fill out the "Override invoice letterhead" section.
In the Business Information page under Settings, you may specify the http URL to a company logo image. The image will thereafter appear on the upper-right corner of every invoice's cover page.
AngelTrack allows you to configure a large logo image which will be shown to your employees on the login page, and also a small logo image which will be included on the cover page of each invoice.
To avoid causing your users' browsers to display warning messages, your logo images must be served from a secure (https:) webserver. If you do not have a secure webserver to host your images, then your AngelTrack cloud server can host them for you. Simply email the current URL to your logo to AngelTrack Support. They will retrieve the logo image, resize it if necessary, upload it to your cloud server, and then configure the URLs in your Settings page.
There is a Document Template for each payor: for facilities, for affiliates, and for patients. These templates specify the boilerplate text that appears on an invoice's cover page, with company information automatically injected. To edit the text, visit the Settings page and click on the "Document Templates" item.
By default, the patients template and the affiliates template simply say:
Payable upon receipt.
The facilities template, by contrast, contains additional verbiage:
Payable upon receipt.
Cost Reporting Entities are obligated to report discounts and/or rebates upon request by HHS.
If you require additional information to fulfill your annual cost report, please contact us.
The additional verbiage is there in order to help qualify the EMS company for the Regulatory Discount Safe Harbor 42 C.F.R. § 1001.952(h). To learn more about the safe harbor and the Anti-Kickback Statute, and what AngelTrack does to protect you, read the Anti-Kickback Statute guide.
You can specify additional text for the cover sheet, which will appear directly underneath the boilerplate text. This is useful for adding a PO number or a vendor number to an invoice.
Cover sheet text is created by writing !bang comments in the invoice's "Notes" field.
If you are performing weekly/monthly invoice cycling, then AngelTrack will automatically add a collections warning to any invoice that contains trips for which there are two previous invoices in a row that are marked 'unpaid'.
If you wish to remove this warning, then untick the relevant checkbox from the "Billing" section of the Preferences page under Settings.
At any time, you can export an invoice to Excel, using the "Excel…" and "PDF…" links on the Invoices and Invoice Edit pages.
PDF exports look like the normal printed invoice, and contain exactly the same information. However, they do not automatically rotate the cover sheet to portrait mode, for proper alignment in a windowed #10 envelope.
Excel exports, on the other hand, contain a great deal more information. AngelTrack creates an Excel workbook containing many worksheets: a cover worksheet, a rates worksheet, a summary worksheet, and a worksheet for each service (wheelchair, BLS, ALS, labs, telemedicine) included in the invoice.
AngelTrack's Excel exports are rendered in Excel XML, a format supported by all versions of Microsoft Office since 2003. When your web browser prompts you for what to do with the XML file sent by AngelTrack, you can open it right in the Excel application.
If your customer requires invoices with only one trip apiece, you can accommodate them without the hassle of actually creating a bunch of separate invoices. Instead, create one combined invoice as usual, then use the "Print as Singletons" option.
AngelTrack will print the combined invoice as one separate sub-invoice per trip. The sub-invoices will be numbered like this: "InvoiceID-DispatchID". For example, if invoice 42 contains dispatches 1070, 1073, and 1084, then AngelTrack will print them as invoices 42-1070, 42-1073, and 42-1084. That allows you to manage them as a group, even though your customer will see them as separate IDs.
Another way of printing your invoices is the "Compact" format, which is intended for patient statements where there is no need for the large amount of information displayed in the standard format.
(Remember that you do not have to commit yourself to any particular invoice format; any AngelTrack invoice can be freely printed in any format.)
The compact invoice format shows only the basic information about each trip. It contains a tear-off payment coupon, with mailing addresses populated from your business settings and from the counterparty (patient, facility, or affiliate) record in AngelTrack.
If you use BillFlash to print and mail your invoices, AngelTrack can easily export your invoices in the BillFlash format for quick import into their system.
To learn how that works, and what the limitations are, read the BillFlash guide.
You can export AngelTrack's invoices in various third-party formats. To learn more, read the Invoice Export guide.
If an invoice contains significant errors, just cancel it and generate it again. Cancellation is done by clicking the "Close" link from the Invoices page. The Invoice Close page opens. Selected "Cancelled" and then click "Save".
If the cancelled invoice was committed, its dispatches will be un-committed (i.e. sent back to Billing office for re-invoicing) if they do not belong to another committed invoice.
When you receive payment for an invoice, click the 'Close' link to open the Invoice Close page. Record the date and amount of payment, make selections for how over- and under-payment is handled, and then click "Pay".
When paying off an invoice, AngelTrack attempts to square all balances owed across all dispatches in the invoice. Usually this is simple: the invoiced amount is equal the current price quotes of all included items, and the payment amount is also the same. The payment will neatly pay off all items in the invoice, and AngelTrack will therefore move them all to Finished and then mark the invoice Paid .
...but sometimes the situation is more complicated. Here are some complex situations you might encounter:
Suppose you invoice a customer for $1000. Two weeks later the check for $1000 arrives, but in the meantime you discovered a mistake in one of the items: it was billed for $75 but should've been billed at $25. You corrected the mistake, leaving a total balance owed of $950. The customer has therefore overpaid by $50.
In this situation, AngelTrack will apply the $1000 to the $950 worth of items in the invoice, leaving $50. What happens next is up to you (the biller), whose choices are described in the Underpayment and Overpayment guide.
It is common for nursing homes to refuse to pay for certain trips on the invoice. They will say "We aren't paying for these, you must invoice the patient directly", or such like. The facility will send back the invoice with the objectionable items crossed out, and a check for the remainder.
In that situation, you must detach the objected trips from the invoice before you pay it. This is done using the "Dispatches" tab of the Invoice Edit page. As you detach each item, AngelTrack will prompt you to change the Payor, in case you wish to move the detached items from the facility's invoice over to a patient invoice.
As you detach each item, AngelTrack will check to see if it belongs to any other committed invoices. If it doesn't, then AngelTrack will automatically send it back to Billing office so that it can be picked up in the next round of invoices.
Suppose the customer only pays half of a $1000 invoice. In this situation, you must decide whether to close the invoice (partially paid), or else leave it open in anticipation of additional payments.
You should select ☑ Leave the invoice open, awaiting additional payments or credits if:
In all other circumstances, you should select ☑ Close the invoice. The oldest items in the invoice will be paid and advanced to Finished , meanwhile the unpaid and underpaid items will go back to Billing office to be reinvoiced during the next invoicing cycle.
Remember that AngelTrack tracks balances on a dispatch-by-dispatch basis, so it does not matter if an invoice is only partially paid, or closed unpaid, or cancelled, or edited. Every dispatch record has its own price and payment events that solely determine the balance due; invoices are just a convenience towards this end.
Refunds are applied like payments: first, the refund amount is applied to any items that were paid more than the amount invoiced; then, to any items that were paid more than the current price quote; and finally, to any items that were paid at all. A refund will therefore square up all overpaid items first, and will then un-pay items (newest first) until the refund amount is fully applied.
When paying an invoice, AngelTrack seeks to fully pay each invoiced item, oldest first. When the payment is insufficient to pay them all, then this is what happens:
All items pushed back to Billing office will then be picked up by the invoice generator during the next round of invoicing.
The payment of dispatches in an invoice, and the aforementioned handling of under- and over-payments, are not affected by parking.
If your contracts require you to re-invoice your customers every 30 days (or so), then you will be marking invoices as Unpaid at the end of each period, in order to invoice the underlying receivables again.
When you close an invoice in that manner, all included dispatches will be moved back to Billing office , so as to be automatically included in the next differential invoice you create.
AngelTrack automatically keeps track of how many times each receivable has been invoiced in this manner. The running count will be displayed in the Invoices list, so that you can see when you have satisfied your invoicing requirements and therefore can send the invoice to collections or perhaps write it off.
To learn how to use AngelTrack for a weekly/monthly reinvoicing cycle, read the Weekly/Monthly Reinvoicing Guide.
The Invoice Close page offers the option of selling the invoice to a collections agency. Use this option to record the sale event, which will close the invoice as Sold , and then move all of its dispatches to Finished (as unpaid) where they will exit AngelTrack's postprocess. Later, any dispatch not fully paid will appear in writeoff reports.
You can do this to multiple invoices simultaneously, by using the "Bulk Operations" toolbox on the Invoices List. It will download to you a consolidated .CSV spreadshet containing all dispatches in all selected invocies, with duplicates automatically removed. The spreadsheet contains all the information needed by the collections agency.
To learn more about selling to collections, and writeoff reports, read the Collections and Writeoffs guide.
To learn how to use AngelTrack for a weekly/monthly reinvoicing cycle, passing receivables to collections after they have been invoiced a certain number of times, read the Weekly/Monthly Reinvoicing Guide.
Uncommitted invoices will be automatically cancelled after two years.
Open committed invoices will be automatically closed as 'unpaid' after passing the stale-receivables auto-writeoff date, which is configurable under Preferences, under Settings. The default auto-writeoff setting is two years.