Writing Off Debt

As you may be aware, there is no direct facility for writing off patient debt within Healthy Practice. However, writing-off debt can be easily done within the program, using the following procedure:

  1. Create a new, dummy practitioner called ‘WOD’ (i.e. written off debt). Mark the practitioner as no longer practising. So that they are not displayed in the diary.
  2. Create a new ‘dummy’ patient called ‘WOD’ and make the WOD practitioner their managing practitioner.
  3. Create a tag, labelled ‘DEBT WRITTEN OFF’.
  4. Locate the patient registration card for the patient whose debt you are writing off (in this example, Mr Smith) and click the Finance button.
  5. Identify the fee / fees to be written off, record the relevant information (e.g. patient record number, date of fee, amount, attending practitioner).
  6. From the Enter fees window, enter a negative payment., e.g. in this case above enter -£25.00, in the ‘Other’ field, and alongside put in a note i.e. Adjustment to Write off Debt – finish the transaction as you would normally.
  7. Assign the ‘DEBT WRITTEN OFF’ tag to this patient. 
  8. Locate the patient registration card for ‘WOD’ and enter a fee with the date and amount details as per Mr Smith (point 4/5 above).  In the practitioner field, select the number for the WOD practitioner.  In the comment field enter the original patient name and their patient card number, along with the attending practitioner.

NOTE:  If a range of fees are being written off enter total amount i.e £100 + details. So, for example, Patient 00205 SMITH fees 18/08/12 – 26/09/12 4 treatments of £25 WOD. This simple procedure ensures that whilst the account for the patient is cleared of the debt, the debt information is still available. This is via the ‘WOD’ patient. The receipts report is not affected (as no payment was made). The sales report will report the same financial amounts – via WOD. In the Aged Debt Analysis window, you will be able to identify the accumulated written off debt for the clinic. Just by referring to the information for the WOD practitioner.