Summary and Best Practices
- Best practice recommendation: avoiding directly comparing Cash, Provider and Category Summaries on the Sales report.
- This article firmly defines and provides rationale for apparent discrepancies between the sections.
Report Section Distinctions
Cash Summary
- Literal and exact summary of all the monies received for the date range specified.
- If the practice receives a payment and enters it into the system, expect it to show up with that value here.
- Includes both payments and deposits.
Provider Summary
- This is a summary broken down by provider for all the services done in the date range for them.
- Is not an accounting of received payment for the date range but is a registering of service.
- Provider receives full credit for the invoice on first payment (see example image below).
- This critically will be different for first partial payments.
Category Summary
- Detailed breakdown per category of all services done in the date range specified.
- The summary attempts to adjust partial payments with a system item called "Account Adjustments" at the top.
- Credits and negative payments can skew reported numbers to not match the Cash Summary anymore.
Examples
Common example of summary discrepancies, day one.
- A guest received a service that produces a 100.00 invoice.
- They choose to pay half of it in cash and leave the remainder on account and pay it on a different date.
- Payment is entered as 50.00 cash, remaining balance placed on account.
Cash Summary section appears like the below:
- The Cash Summary logs a literal $50.00 cash entered.
The Provider Summary for the exact date range and transaction looks like:
- The provider receives full credit for the item on the invoice.
- The item on the invoice, however, has not been fully paid.
- Furthermore, when the second, subsequent, and final payments get applied towards the invoice, the provider does not get additional credit for the item (since all the credit was given up front).
The Category Summary section for the same date range and transaction looks like:
- The Category Summary total at the very the top matches of the section the Cash Summary section, balanced by the Account adjustment section (in this instance, for $50.00).
- Individual procedure categories display the full amount for the items invoiced, not the payments received.
Note: This is a fairly straightforward example, but even top-line totals will not always match up as cleanly as pictured above, especially when considering credits or negative payment across multiple days.
Section discrepancy, day two.
- The same guest comes in and decides to pay off the remainder of their invoice of $50.00 the next day.
- This time they use a Visa card as a payment method.
Cash Summary
- The Cash Summary logs $50.00 Visa received.
Provider Summary
- The provider does not get additional credit for the item on day two, because full credit was previously received.
Category Summary
- Similarly, individual category breakdown does not receive additional credits on day two, since full credit for the category was received on day one.
- A positive account adjustment is entered to properly account for the top-line balance. This also has the effect of "cancelling" the negative account adjustment from day one and reconciles so the top-line summary balances over longer-term date ranges.
Additional example scenarios
- Deposits done on accounts show up in the Cash Summary, but not the Provider Summary since they are not tied to a serviceable item.
- Returns done on a different day subtract from Provider Summary and won't subtract from Cash Summary unless a refund is issued. If a credit is left on account a mismatch occurs.
- When using a credit to pay for an invoice, it will not show an amount in Cash Summary (the money was received previously) but if the item did not have a payment applied to it previously, that item will appear in the service totals in Provider Summary.
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