Learn the workflow for selling trips to your collections agency.
Invoices are Used to Sell Receivables to Collections
AngelTrack provides invoices as a way to quickly manage the sale of receivable dispatches to a collections agency.
For this purpose, AngelTrack has a special invoice type called a "Collections Invoice", which gathers together trips according to how many times they have previously been invoiced. Or you can create any other type of invoice, whichever is the easiest way to target the trips you want to sell.
Remember you can add and remove individual dispatches from an invoice, one at a time, once the invoice is created.
Commit the invoice once you're happy with it, so as to pull all of its dispatches out of the "Billing office", and set their price quotes as necessary.
Next, use the invoice's Close link as if paying it normally. On the subsequent Close Invoice page, select the "Sold" option, then click the "Save" button and you're done.
All items in the invoice will be moved to "Finished", causing them to exit any billing queues they may be waiting in. Any nonzero balances will thereafter appear as writeoffs in AngelTrack's tax and revenue reports.
Selling many invoices at once
If you need to sell many invoices to collections at once, then use the "Bulk Operations" toolbox on the Invoices List page. After selecting multiple invoices from the list, you can mark all of them as "Sold" with the click of a button, then one more click to export all of their collections data.
AngelTrack will create a consolidated .CSV spreadsheet containing all dispatches in all selected invoices, with duplicates automatically removed; your web browser should automatically download the file. The spreadsheet contains all the information needed by the collections agency.
Using the Express Invoicer to do all sales at once
The Express Invoicer can do all your collections invoices at once, auto-marking them "Sold" and then exporting the underlying receivables data in a single de-duplicated spreadsheet for transfer to your collections agency. The export options appear in the top-right corner of the Express Invoicer's results page as soon as the task finishes.
In preparation for this, as part of a reinvoicing workflow, the Express Invoicer can mark all your stale invoices as "Unpaid", so that the underlying receivables can accumulate the necessary number of unpaid invoices to qualify for sale to collections.
Automatic collections warnings on invoices
If an invoice contains any trip that has two or more previous invoices which went unpaid*, AngelTrack will automatically print a collections warning on the invoice, like this:
WARNING: We have already invoiced you X times for one or more of these items, without payment. We will refer your account to a collection agency if we do not receive prompt payment.
*The calculation for number of previous unpaid invoices works like this:
- Find the last committed invoice that applied a non-zero payment against the dispatch, and which is marked "paid", "unpaid", or still open.
- Count all subsequent committed invoices which included the dispatch, and which are marked "unpaid" or "paid".
You can disable the automatic collections warning, or allow it only for patient and affiliate invoices (not facility invoices), by visiting the Preferences page under Settings.
Sold Calls are Writeoffs
When you mark an invoice "Sold", AngelTrack will advance all of its dispatches to "Finished", which makes them writeoffs. This means that each dispatch's balance due becomes zero, and the monetary amount owed will instead be reported as a writeoff. Various reports are available to track these amounts; refer to the Writeoffs Guide to learn more.
You can always un-writeoff a dispatch by pulling it back into the postprocess workflow (e.g. by pulling it back to "Billing office") if you want to work it again.
AngelTrack does not expect you to later post the monies recovered by your collections agency, but you can if you wish, using an "Approval or payment" payment event to book the recovered money plus a "Finance charge" payment event to book the collections fee.
Transferring Data to the Collections Agency
The collections agency will ask for a spreadsheet of the receivables to be collected. AngelTrack already knows how to provide all the information they will need.
The Invoices List will prepare the data export for you. Simply tick the checkbox next to each sold invoice, then click the "Export data for collections" item in the "Bulk Operations" box.
You have a choice of data format: Format 1 or Format 2. These two formats were built to exactly match the requirements of two different real-world collections agencies; one or the other will probably satisfy your collection agency, but if not, you can build your own format (see below).
AngelTrack will automatically de-duplicate the result set, so that each particular dispatch appears only once, even if it is present in multiple invoices. It will download a .CSV document to you containing all the necessary information. The document opens in Microsoft Excel™ or in Google Sheets™. From there you can make any necessary edits, and then send it onward.
Exporting from the Invoice Sold Calls Report
There is a report available from the Billing Home page called the Invoice Sold Calls Report. It shows all trips from all invoices that were marked "Sold" within a selectable time period, and its results can be exported. It also has a bulk exporter tool that can gather together the associated run reports, in case your collections agency wants to see full .PDFs of the services you provided.
This report's exported data may suffice for sending patient receivables to a collections agency, but it doesn't contain enough data for collecting against a facility or an affiliate, i.e. in situations where the liable party is someone other than the patient.
Building a custom collections data format using Report Builder
AngelTrack's Report Builder has all the data columns you might need to roll your own collections data format, plus the necessary filters to pull from certain date ranges. For example, you can build a report that has exactly the columns that your collections agency wants, and use the column named "Sold To Collections Days Ago" include only those trips which were marked "Sold" within the past 30 days; then, just run the report once a month and send the results to your collections agency. Report Builder can even email it out for you.
The most pertinent datasets for this project will be:
- Dispatches-Overview
- Dispatches-BillingNotes
- Dispatches-Financial
- Dispatches-PatientIdent
- Dispatches-PayorIdent
- Dispatches-Workflow
There is a built-in report named "Sold to Collections - Past 30" that you can use as a starting point.
The dataset named "Dispatches-PayorIdent" is the key, because it contains columns that specify the contact information for whoever is the currently liable party.
Be sure to monitor the column named "Liable Payor Is Same As Last Invoice" for any FALSE values, in order to detect any dispatches that were sold to collections but subsequently pulled back into the billing workflow in order to re-file against insurance or invoice a different party. Or you could filter out any trips that are no longer marked "Finished", as would normally be the case for a sold receivable.
Exporting from the Data Hub
If you don't have a Report Builder license, you can still use AngelTrack's Data Hub to pull the aforementioned datasets, and then assemble the report yourself in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
Implementing a Reinvoicing and Collections Workflow
AngelTrack's design includes a workflow for invoicing your counterparties a certain number of times, then giving up and selling the receivables to collections -- typically after three unpaid invoices.
To learn how to implement it, read the Weekly/Monthly Reinvoicing Guide.
You might use a reinvoicing workflow for your patients while invoicing your contract facilities differently -- keeping their invoices open for many months as they make partial payments, such that each receivable appears on one and only one invoice ID, which they input into their system as a payable. AngelTrack supports this paradigm; refer to the aforementioned reinvoicing guide to learn how. You still have the ability to sell that invoice to collections if they refuse to pay it off; however, AngelTrack won't be able to prove that you invoiced them at least X times, since there is only a single invoice.
Subsequent Payment Activity Against a Sold Receivable
If an insurance EOB arrives and applies any credit or debit to a dispatch that has already been sold, AngelTrack's EOB importer will warn you. If you then click the results link to review the workflow of the affected dispatches, the workflow review page will offer you a pair of download links by which you can fetch the collections data for the affected trips. This data should be sent immediately to your collections agency, to notify them that the balance due has changed.
A similar process will occur if you apply a payment to an invoice which contains a trip already sold to collections. Here as before, AngelTrack will offer you download links to pull fresh collections data to be sent to your collections agency.