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I get a lot of questions about closing the day, month, and year in UltraMed. It's a subject that scares and confuses a lot of people, but it's actually pretty straightforward and easy to do. So don't be scared - keep reading!
First, some definitions.
What the heck does "Close the Day" mean, anyway?
Okay, that was the simple answer. How about the full story?
But I love my patients! Why would I want to delete them?
What is the Daysheet?
What is the Trial Daysheet?
Summary, Details... say what?
Do I have to close the day?
How often should I close the day?
What does "Close the Month" mean?
What does "Close the Year" mean?
What do the "Reprint" options do?
First, some definitions.
This is going to be way, way too long if I don't use some abbreviations. You probably know these already, but here's what I mean when I use them in this FAQ:
- CPARV
- Charges, Payments, Adjustments, Refunds, and reVerse adjustments.
- In UltraMed, Refunds are a special type of transaction - you can distribute payments and adjustments against them as if they were charges, but they are subtracted from the Payment totals (You enter a $5.00 refund, and it lowers your payment total by $5.00. No more negative numbers! Yay!)
- Reverse adjustments work just the same way, but they decrease the Adjustment totals instead. This is actually a subject for a different FAQ (coming soon!), but just as a side note - use a Refund if you're actually going to be writing a check, and use a reVerse adjustment if you simply need to clean up an undistributed payment (for example, if you wrote off $1.37 too much when the primary insurance paid, and now you can't distribute the last $1.37 of the secondary insurance payment.)
- CPA
- Charges, Payments and Adjustments - with the Refunds already taken out of the payments, and the reVerse adjustments already taken out of the Adjustments.
- MTD
- Month-to-date
- YTD
- Year-to-date
- A/R or AR
- Charges minus Payments and Adjustments equals Accounts Receivable.
- Day
- Not as obvious as it seems! A "day" just means: however long it's been since last time you closed the day. Could be a (real) day, a week or two, an hour - it's up to you.
- Month / Accounting Period
- Again, however long it's been. Or more precisely, it's the total of all the daysheets you've run during that time. Example: accounting period 05/06 begins when you close 04/06, and ends whenever you close it - regardless of whether you actually do it in May or December. It's up to you to discipline yourself. If your accounting periods have slipped out of sync with the actual calendar, you should fix it - but that's another subject.
What the heck does "Close the Day" mean, anyway?
This is a phrase with different meanings in various programs. In UltraMed, the simple answer is: it gives you a report (called the Daysheet) of everything you've done since last time you closed the day. There's more to it, but that's all you really need to know.
Okay, that was the simple answer. How about the full story?
Here goes: - Creates the Daysheet.
- You'll notice that, when you print the Daysheet, there's a "Sequence" (SEQ) number at the top.
- Flags transactions as having been closed.
- New transactions in UltraMed are created with a flag that says they haven't been closed yet. (The Daysheet is basically just a list of all the transactions that still have that flag set.) Closing the day turns off that flag, and in its place stamps the transaction with the Daysheet date (the date you entered in the "Date of Report" field on the Day Closing screen) and the sequence number that it belongs to. Later, if you need to, you can run a Transaction Recap report and re-create this daysheet by sequence number.
- Zeroes out the "Unclosed Day Summaries" screen.
- Seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? This screen shows the totals - dollars as well as transaction counts - since last time you closed the day. At any time during the day, you can check to make sure that you haven't skipped any superbills or EOBs, or entered any of them twice. When you close the day, the totals reset to zero.
- Updates table totals.
- Many of the Practice Information tables have totals for MTD, YTD, and the previous year. Closing the day updates those totals, adding today's numbers to the MTD and YTD numbers.
- Allows you to delete inactive patient accounts.
- UltraMed protects you against "orphaned" transactions - in other words, transactions that don't have any patient attached to them. Because of this, you can only delete accounts when UltraMed is absolutely certain that there's nothing outstanding. After you delete all of the patient's transactions, you must close the day. After you close the day, and before you enter any new transactions, you can delete the inactive account(s) - but as soon as you save even one transaction for any patient (even if you immediately delete it), UltraMed goes back into safety mode.
But I love my patients! Why would I want to delete them?
Well, I'm sure you have your reasons. But the most common one is that someone accidentally re-entered a patient who already had an account. Why, what did you think I was talking about?
What is the Daysheet?
The Daysheet is the report that UltraMed prints just before it starts the actual heavy lifting of closing the day. It says "FINAL DAYSHEET" at the top, to distinguish it from the Trial Daysheet - but be aware that, if the actual day-closing process crashes (due to bad data, or a Windows crash, or a blackout, or whatever), then you will probably need to re-run it once you're back in UltraMed. When you do, the report you get will have the same sequence number at the top, but the numbers may be different. If they are different, keep the old report, not the new one. Run a Transaction Recap to double-check if you want.
What is the Trial Daysheet?
The Trial Daysheet is what you get if you select item B, "Day Closing - Preview". It contains only the Details section, and the day does not close after you run it. Why run it, then? Well, (for example) if your payments are off by $3.62, this is the only way you're going to find the problem. Enjoy!
Summary, Details... say what?
You have a choice of running the daysheet with Details (option D), Summary, (option E), or both (option C). You can choose any of these, or you can run any one of them to screen (which means you don't get a hard copy unless you ask for it - saves trees!) But you can't make a good choice unless you know what you're choosing, so:
- Details
- Gives you line-by-line information on every transaction you entered (or deleted), sorted into CPARV totals. You might want this section, or you might want to skip it, because 1) it can run into lots and lots of pages if it's been a busy day, and 2) you can re-create this part of the report at any time by running a Transaction Recap Report (as long as you know the sequence number).
- Summary
- Gives you the following information:
- daily, MTD, and YTD totals for all of your CPARV types (Medicare, MediCal, etc.);
- CPA totals for each doctor;
- and a section that shows each doctor's starting AR, today's impact on AR, and final AR.
The Summary section is always at least three pages long (for some practices, it runs over 15 pages!), and contains a lot of useless information - does anybody care what the Adjustment totals are? However, some practices can't live without some of these numbers, and unfortunately there's no easy way to reproduce this report if you don't print it - it's a snapshot of today's status, and if you run it again tomorrow the numbers will be different.
Do I have to close the day?
Yes and no. UltraMed will not punish or nag you if you don't. I've known plenty of clients who didn't (or don't!) close the day for years at a time, either because nobody in the office knew how, or because they didn't see the point of it. (Since you're asking this question, I'm guessing you're at risk of being one of those people.) However, at some point or another - either because you want to delete an inactive patient, or because your accountant is demanding a report with good numbers on it - you're going to find yourself needing to close the day. And when you do, I can almost guarantee that it will take forever, and it will crash. (This is because, if you have any bad records, the day-closing routine will trip over them. And if you haven't closed the day in years, you almost certainly have some bad records.)
So why not use the program the way it was intended? It just takes a few minutes every day or so, you get a regular snapshot of how your practice is doing and a built-in way to catch errors, and you find out about bad data early instead of later - what's not to like?
How often should I close the day?
At least once a month. Anything more than that is up to you. Some suggestions:
- Classic, old-school: do it every day and check the "charges" total against the day's superbills. That's what it was designed for, after all.
- Do it each time you go to the bank - balance the "payments" total against the amount you're depositing.
- Keep things clean and separate: save any refunds or reverse adjustments until the end of the day (Remember, refunds are subtracted from the "payments" total, and reverse adjustments are subtracted from the "adjustments" total.) Finish entering the day's "normal" transactions, and close the day. Then enter all of the refunds and reverse adjustments, and close the day again. That way, when the accountant asks at the end of the year where those funky numbers came from, you'll be able to explain without killing yourself.
What does "close the month" mean?
Closing the month is almost like closing the day: It gives you a report of all the daysheets you've produced since last time you closed the month.
Also: for all of the tables in UltraMed that keep MTD and YTD totals, it zeroes out the MTD totals.
NOTE: you must have run at least one daysheet since last time you closed the month!
Also note: if you closed the day, then entered more transactions without closing the day again, those new transactions will not appear on this month-end report! (They'll show up next month instead.)
What does "close the year" mean?
Closing the year gives you a report of all the month-end totals. It also moves all the YTD totals to the Previous Year column, and zeroes out the YTD column.
You can only run it after you close the last month in your fiscal year.
UltraMed lets you choose your own fiscal-year end; it defaults to 12/31, but you can set it to whatever you want (that's in Utilities/Recalculate Table Totals).
What do the "Reprint" options do?
When you close the Day, Month, or Year, UltraMed saves a copy of the report on the hard disk (in the reports subdirectory). If the printer jams, or the dog eats it, or whatever, and you need to replace the report, you can select the "reprint" option, and UltraMed will send that copy to the printer again.
It DOES NOT re-run the report! You will get exactly the same information. If you selected "Details Only" when you closed the day, and now you realize that you needed the Summary section... too bad.
Also: if the contents of the reports subdirectory have been cleaned out, there's nothing to reprint.
Also: if your office network is slow, and UltraMed was set up with the reports subdirectory on the local disks of the individual workstations, then you must reprint from the same station where you originally ran the report (otherwise you might get a previous report, or nothing at all.)
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