Billing Automation
- Videos
- Where to find Billing Automation settings
- Automatically creating bills
- Automatically creating superbills
- Automatically sharing bills and superbills
- Automatically sharing statements
- AutoPay
- Frequently asked questions
Videos
Billing automation
This tutorial explains how to set up Billing Automation features in Sessions Health.
Where to find Billing Automation settings
Permissions: This feature requires administrator permissions or the biller role. If you don't have permissions, please contact your account administrator regarding this feature.
You will find billing automation settings under Billing Settings > Billing Automation.
Automatically creating bills (or invoices)
Billing automation includes the ability to automatically create bills. You have several options available when configuring this feature.
If you automatically create bills Daily, they will be created each evening at 12am. If you have this setting configured for Monthly, they will be created at 12am on the 1st day of the month. If bills are created Manually, bills will remain in a Pended status until you confirm the billing details by saving it to move it to an Open status to be paid.
In some cases, you may want to create your bills manually, such as if you frequently add products like credit card fees based upon the bill amount. Products must be manually added to a bill, so you should select to manually create bills if adding products.
Automatically creating superbills
Billing automation includes the ability to automatically create monthly superbills. You may select any day of the month when configuring this feature. By default, your account will be set to generate superbills on the 1st of the month.
When should I set my superbills to be created?
Superbills will be generated on the day of the month selected in the dropdown for services completed the prior month. If you want to collect payments from clients before creating superbills so that the superbills reflect their payments, it’s best to delay superbill creation until after the date you'd normally collect payments from your clients.
Example 1: Your superbills are set to be created on the 1st of the month. On July 1st, eligible clients will have superbills created for June date(s) of service (or earlier if applicable).
Example 2: Your superbills are set to be created on the 31st of the month. On July 31st, eligible clients will have superbills created for June date(s) of service (or earlier if applicable).
Note: This setting is only used to determine which day automatic superbills will generate. You must enable each client you wish to generate superbills for from the client-level settings described below.
Client-level settings
In addition to account-level configuration, each client must have the Automatically Create Superbills setting enabled in order for superbills to be automatically created. Go to Clients > [Client Name] > Billing > Settings to verify that it's turned on.
What will be included on the superbill?
All insurance-eligible services (those tied to CPT codes) that occurred the previous month or earlier will be included.
Note: If you select the 31st, 30th, etc. for superbill creation and a month doesn't have that many days, the superbill creation will run on the last day of the month.
Automatically sharing bills and superbills
Billing automation includes the ability to automatically share bills and superbills. When enabled, a bill or superbill will be shared with the client or an assigned billing contact if one exists. Bills and superbills are shared via email after a pre-defined time after the bill or superbill is created.
Client-level settings
Automatically sharing of bills and superbills can be turned on or off within a client's Billing > Settings tab. You will also designate when bills or superbills will be shared after they are created to give you time to make changes.
Note: You will want to set the time between creating and sharing a bill to at least 60 minutes if you have both Automatically create bills set to Daily and Autopay enabled. This will allow for enough time for the autopay process to run and the bill to be marked as paid before the bill is shared. In that case, a PAID watermark will appear on the bill.
Account Settings
To set a default for any new clients added to your account, go to the Billing Settings > Billing tab and click Edit within the Billing Automation section. Any clients already in your account before superbill sharing automation is enabled, will need to have their individual billing settings set to automatically share superbills, as this setting will only apply to new clients.
Note: In order to automatically share billing documents, the client or billing contact must have a valid email address added and email permissions enabled within the Contact Preferences section of their Details tab. Once shared, the billing document PDF will be shared via email and will also be available in the client portal under their Documents & Forms tab. You may choose to exclude the billing document PDFs in the email and only share them through the client portal. You may adjust this from your Billing Settings > Billing tab in the Bill Settings section.
Automatically sharing statements
If you wish to have statements automatically shared with clients after creation, you can select Yes for the Are statements automatically shared with new clients by default? option. If turned on, you can select how much delay to have between creating the statement and sharing it. The delay allows time to make changes or delete the statement if necessary.
While we do have automatic statement sharing feature, we currently don't have automatic statement creation feature. You will still need to manually create any statements.
Autopay
Billing automation includes the ability to automatically collect payments using the default credit card on file for a client. You must have Stripe configured on your account to run autopay.
First, you will need to enable Autopay in the Billing Automation section of the Billing Settings > Billing tab. This enables the ability to use Autopay across your account but it will still need to be enabled for individual clients. It will not automatically apply to any clients unless you set their individual billing settings to automatically submit payments via AutoPay.
Once AutoPay is enabled in your Billing Automation section, you will then be allowed to enable Autopay for individual clients. You can do this by going to a client's Billing > Settings tab and check the box next to Automatically Submit Payments via AutoPay.
When enabled, Autopay will run daily at 12:30am for any open bills with a client responsibility amount due and a credit card on file from the client or the assigned billing contact. When setting this up nightly, we recommend also setting your bills to be automatically created Daily. If you have Autopay enabled, automatically creating bills daily, and automatically sharing of bill, we recommend setting at least 60 minutes between creating and sharing of bills to allow the autopay process to run first.
Note: AutoPay will attempt to charge the default credit card on file. The default card will be the assigned billing contact's card, if one exists. Otherwise, it will be the client's card, if one exists.
Autopay Pause
Autopay will be paused on a bill if it contains a date of service on an associated claim that requires review. The intention is to prevent clients from being charged incorrectly when an insurance payer adjusts the client owes portion of the claim before the claim has been reviewed.
Autopay Failures
When autopay fails, you will see a failure message on the client's Autopay settings as well as receive a message in the Daily Digest.
After five consecutive autopay failures, autopay will be disabled until the client puts a new card or file. The checkbox under Clients > [Client Name] > Billing > Settings can also be toggled to clear out the error and reenable autopay for the failing card.
Note: Each time there's a payment failure from Autopay, you will see a notification in your Daily Digest email. Please keep an eye out for that email so you may follow up with your clients regarding any failed payments.
Frequently asked questions
Autopay is not working for my client. Why not?
You can check a few areas to ensure Autopay is setup appropriately:
- Confirm you have Autopay enabled in Billing Settings > Billing Automation.
- Confirm your Stripe account is setup in Billing Settings > Online Payments. There should be a green check mark next to both Enabled and Verified.
- Confirm you have a valid credit card on file for the client or the assigned billing contact if one exists.
- Confirm you have Autopay enabled in the Online Payment Methods section of the client's Billing > Settings tab.
- Confirm you have an open bill for the client (bill has been created and not paid).
- Confirm you have a client responsibility portion amount due on the bill.
Can I split payments for a bill using Autopay?
Currently, you cannot split payments using two or more credit cards with Autopay. You will need to manually split payments to a bill.
What's the difference between account-level and client-level billing automation settings?
In the Billing Automation section of your Billing Settings > Billing, here are the differences in how each automation is setup:
- Automatically creating bills (manual, daily, weekly, monthly) will be applied to all clients within your account.
- Automatically sharing bills and superbills are set within each client's billing settings, although the default for new clients can be set at the account level.
- Autopay is set within each client's billing settings, but you can globally turn on/off this option at the account level. If turned off, no clients will run autopay. If turned on, only clients that have the setting enabled within their billing settings will have autopay run.