Visits nobody marked completed were never billed: no charge, no invoice, no autopay. Bill past visits fixes that by completing them each night. Two companion settings take it the rest of the way to the client: Send to clients for daily invoices, and the past-due invoice email.
None of this applies to locations connected to athenahealth; their billing stays in athena.
Turn on Bill past visits
- Go to Settings → Billing → Payment methods and find Autopay & invoicing.
- On the location's row, switch on Bill past visits. The hint changes to "Each night, visits not marked cancelled or no-show are completed and billed."
Off, the hint reads "Off. A visit is billed when it is marked completed." Only visits from the day you turn it on are touched; older ones are left for you. Turning it off and on again starts counting from the new day.
What happens each night
Between midnight and 6am in the location's time zone, in this order:
- Bill past visits marks completed every visit that has ended and is still booked: not marked completed, cancelled, no-show or rescheduled. Marking it completed does what completing it on the calendar does: a new client becomes an active client, the visit's charge is captured at its fee, and with autopay set to When a visit is completed, the card on file is charged. For a group session, each client who wasn't marked cancelled or no-show is billed.
- Daily invoicing (when on) puts each client's visit charges from before today that are still owed and not yet invoiced on one invoice per client, due in 30 days. Yesterday's newly completed visits are on it.
- Nightly autopay (when on, set to Nightly, for open invoices) charges each client's open invoices to their card.
Then in the morning:
- 9am, location time: with Send to clients set, each invoice made overnight that still owes money goes to the client with a pay link.
- From 10am: with review requests on, a review request goes for each visit the run completed, no earlier than your usual delay after the visit. See Collect patient reviews.
A night that is missed is caught up the next one.
What Bill past visits skips
- Visits from before the day you turned it on.
- Visits marked completed, cancelled, no-show or rescheduled.
- Visits that haven't ended yet.
- Blocked time and visits with no client.
- Locations connected to athenahealth.
Mark no-shows and cancellations the same day. A visit still booked when the night comes is billed as completed. If one slips through, mark it a no-show or cancelled; see Charges and the Billing tab for what happens to its charge.
Send daily invoices to clients
Send to clients appears on the location's row once Daily invoicing is on. Pick one:
| Choice | What happens |
|---|---|
| Don’t send (default) | "Invoices wait in Billing until someone sends them." They still show in the client's portal. |
| The invoice email with a Pay Now link. | |
| Text | A text with the invoice number, amount, due date and a pay link. |
| Email & text | Both. |
They go at 9am in the location's time zone, "with a pay link, unless autopay already paid it." An invoice paid overnight, voided, or no longer owing anything isn't sent. It's the same email and text your team sends with Send Invoice, so:
- It goes to whoever pays the client's bill: their guarantor when someone else pays.
- The client's own settings apply (do not contact, email or texts not allowed, billing notices off).
- A text that would reach the client before 8am their time waits for their 8am. See quiet hours.
See Invoices and Card on file and autopay.
Email clients about past-due invoices
The past-due email is off until you turn it on, and works for every invoice, not only daily ones.
- Go to Settings → Client Notifications and open Past-due invoice reminder under Billing.
- Turn on Email clients about past-due invoices.
- Set Days after the due date (1 to 30; 3 by default).
- Optionally write an Email opening line, using
{{patientFirstName}},{{invoiceNumber}},{{amountDue}},{{dueDate}},{{practiceName}}and{{practicePhone}}. Blank keeps the standard one. - Press Save.
How it goes out:
- Once per invoice, that many days after its due date, from 9am your location's time, while it still owes money. An invoice due October 31 with 3 days set is emailed November 3, and the email names October 31.
- The amount, the due date and a Pay now button are always included.
- Only recent ones: an invoice is emailed only if its due date passed within the two weeks before its send day, so turning this on doesn't email every client with an old unpaid invoice.
- It goes to the guarantor when someone else pays, and the client's own settings apply.
- It needs a verified sending email (Settings → Email). Without one, clients whose portal shows billing get a short email from the portal instead ("Invoice #1042 is past due. You can view and pay it in your client portal, under Billing."). For the rest, the emails wait, and the account owner and the location's admins and managers get an in-app notice, "Past-due invoice emails weren't sent", once a month. Once the sender is verified, the waiting emails go out on their own while they're still in their two-week window.
Who can change these
Bill past visits, Daily invoicing and Send to clients are for anyone at the location except a view-only member, who sees the settings but not the switches ("Your access here is view-only, so you can’t change autopay."). The past-due email is the same, under Settings → Client Notifications.
Good to know
- Daily invoicing and nightly autopay work without Bill past visits, but then they only reach visits someone marked completed, signed a note for, or ended a video visit for.
- A removed location or a closed account bills nobody.