How do I handle A/R in Vitals?

This is a Vitals A/R Procedure Guide

There is a Word Document attached to this article that you may want to print because it has table of contents. Please keep in mind, this article and Word document may be revised in the future so you might check this article again in the future.

VITALS RECOMMENDED POSTING & CLOSING SCHEDULE
Posting and closing dates are very flexible in Vitals. With time, you will find what dates work best for your accounting department but ideally invoices should be finalized between the 15th-20th of each month so they can be mailed/emailed to residents and/or responsible parties no later than the 25th. (Recommended)

If you determine it would be advantageous for you to wait to do the finalization at the same time you do the “hard close” it would not be necessary to generate your open invoices by doing the “statement close” until sometime between the 15th- 20th.

1st Day of New Month
Month-End Preparation
When beginning your month end closing process you are in the prior month’s Financial Period.
You have one day to review and finish recording any last minute payments that you want reflected on the prior month’s financial reports. If so, you will also need to “batch deposit” and “finalize” these payments before Vitals will allow you to “hard close” the month.
In addition, you will want to confirm that you have not missed entering any new residents into Vitals from the prior month. If so, you will need to do the resident’s move-in, assessment and first month’s invoice before “Hard Closing”. Be advised that it is highly recommended that you do the “move-in” process the day your lead becomes a resident.
Note: In order to do a “move-in” you should have previously set up the resident in Lead Management. This will allow you to easily convert the lead to a resident. In order to produce an invoice for the new resident you have to have “moved in” the resident. Once the resident is “moved in” it is recommended that you generate their first “pre-billing worksheet” and perform the “statement close” process in order to create their initial invoice. Creating an invoice is the only way the system will allow you to move a person out should that become necessary. There is no need to worry about pro-rating charges for a resident that has moved in after the first of the month. Vitals not only pro-rates the charges for you but also allocates any pre-payments to these charges. Additionally, by moving the resident in you will now be able to produce a paid receipt for the resident and/or responsible party’ first month’s paid charges.

2nd Day of the Month
Hard Close
YOU ARE NOW READY TO “HARD CLOSE” THE PRIOR MONTH!
After “Hard Closing” you will want to print the Billing Journal & Cash Receipts Summary reports. These reports will be used to create the monthly financials revenue side in your accounting software. The totals from the Billing Journal Summary report will be transferred to your accounting software by one simple journal entry. Since you will have previously entered all of the daily deposits into your accounting software you will want to confirm that your month end deposit totals tie back to the total on the Vitals Cash Receipt Summary report. By confirming these totals, you can be assured that you have not missed entering any Vitals resident charges or payments.
Note: When generating reports it is important to remember that when selecting the date of the report you want, that you go to the “FINANCIAL PERIOD” field and select the correct month in the dropdown box. If you want to view “ALL FINANCIAL PERIODS” you will also need to select “ALL DATES” in the dropdown box for the “Data Entered As Of” field. There are occasions as in the A/R Aging Detail Report where only the “Data Entered As Of” field is required to have a date selected.

In addition to printing the Billing Journal & Cash Receipts Summary reports you will also want to print the Adjustments Detail Report. This report is required if there has been any adjustments made to a resident’s account from the “Post Payments/Adj” screen and outside of the “pre-billing worksheet” during the current financial period. If there has not been any adjustments made from the “Post Payments/Adj” screen in the current month the report generated will be blank. If an adjustment has been made from the “pre-billing worksheet” field that adjustment will not appear on the Adjustments Detail Report but rather the Billing Journal Detail report. It is important to remember that any adjustment appearing on the Billing Journal Detail report would not require an additional entry such as a journal entry required to transfer the adjustment from Vitalsware to your accounting software. Examples of a situation where an adjustment would be required is a refund or any adjustment made to reverse a charge/credit. There will be times that other types of adjustments will be required but those will be unique to the situation and you will need to determine whether the adjustment requires a journal entry or in the case of a refund the entry of a payable in order to issue a refund check back to the resident.

Next you will want to confirm in Vitals that each resident’s new charges for the coming month are correct and if so, convert the “pre-billing worksheet” to an open invoice by doing the “Statement Close” process. (Recommended)

Note: At this point you are now in the CURRENT MONTH’S FINANCIAL PERIOD with the open invoices being dated in the following month.

Again, the date that you decide to convert the “pre-billing worksheet” to an invoice is completely up to you. Also, keep in mind that Vitals will allow you to post charges to a resident’s account up until the time you “finalize” the open invoice. After “finalizing”, any charges that are posted will be reflected on the next month’s invoice and financial reports.

3rd – 19th of the Month
Charge Entry, Census & Cash Posting Period
During this period of time you can add ancillary charges, do move-ins, make adjustments and add payments to the next month’s open invoice.

It is highly recommended that entering payments, batching deposits, and finalizing payments be done on a daily basis. Once the daily deposit is finalized, by selecting the Cash Receipt Detail report sorted by “custom date”, you can print a report that can be used to record the daily deposit into your accounting software. For your records, you may want to attach the copy of this report to your bank deposit slip. By entering deposits daily you will always know the cash amount available in your bank account.
Note: In the beginning it is recommended that you review each individual resident’s charges through the “pre-billing worksheet” before proceeding to the “Statement Close” tab. Once you become familiar with the billing process in Vitals you may elect to just confirm that the resident’s charges are all in the current financial period and then proceed on to the “Statement Close”.

20th of the Month
Pre-Billing Review
Before “finalizing”, you may want to review each of the open invoices for accuracy. This will be your last opportunity to add any charges before the invoice becomes “final”. The Prebilling tool in AR or the Rent Roll report are excellent tools for confirming that all charges are being billed correctly to each resident and that you have not missed billing a resident for anything. If needed, you can export the Rent Roll report into Excel. By doing this it is easy to compare the prior month’s rent roll report to the current month’s report. This will allow you to identify any changes/additions that may have occurred over the past month. Again, the Prebilling screen Rent Roll reports are an excellent way to confirm that all revenue is being accounted for.

Second, if there are any deposits that remain to be finalized you can “finalize” those at the same time you are finalizing the invoices.

Note: To help insure you are able to “finalize” on schedule, it is recommended that the accounting department set a firm date for all ancillary charges to be turned in. Also, to allow the accounting department time for ancillary charge entry it is advisable to set this cutoff date at least 3 days prior to your preferred invoice finalization date. Any ancillary charges not turned in by the cutoff date will be charged on the next month’s invoice.

WARNING! The “finalizing” process CAN NOT be reversed! Make sure ALL ancillary charges for the current billing month have been entered before “finalizing”.

Finalization & Invoice Printing
You are now ready to “Finalize” ALL open invoices and print for mailing.

Optional: The finalization date is flexible. Some accountants may prefer to do it back to back with the “Hard Close”. This would allow for any last minute adjustments to be made to the current month. Be aware though that by doing it this way you would be making changes to invoices that had previously been mailed to the resident and/or influencer. For this reason, it is recommended that once you have mailed invoices that you have also performed the finalization process.

One other thing that should be considered when determining what day works best for you to “finalize” invoices is the way Vitals post payments to invoices. Some communities want to finalize immediately to have invoices to post payments against. Other communities elect to leave invoices unfinalized in order for payments to be posted as pre-payments. Once you do finalize the invoices, Vitals will automatically tie pre-payments to invoices. Again, this is a personal preference as Vitals’s flexibility allows for you to pick whichever option works best for you.

21st – 2nd (next mth)
Payment Posting & Deposit Period
During this time you can receive payments, batch deposits, finalize deposits and do move-ins but any charges added between these dates will be reflected on the following month’s invoice. (recommended)

1st Day of the Month:
Cycle Repeats

VITALS RECOMMENDED ACCOUNTING SCHEDULE

• Daily –

o Enter and deposit payments the day they are received. Process the “batch deposit” and “finalize” DEPOSITS ONLY! “Move-In” residents along with doing their assessment and “finalizing” their initial invoice for payment.

• 1st of the month –

o Review reports and prepare for the “hard close”. Confirm all “move-ins” are entered.

• 2nd of the month – 

o Hard Close! Transfer totals from the Billing Summary & Adjustments report to community accounting software. Generate the next month’s “pre-billing worksheet” and perform the “Statement Close” to create the actual invoices.

• 15th of the month –

o Print the A/R Aging Detail Report for collections.

• 17th of the month –

o Deadline for ancillary charges to be turned in.

• 20th of the month –

o Review the Pre-bill screen or Rent Roll for incorrect and missing charges. Finalize all open invoices. Mail invoices to the residents and/or influencers no later than the 22nd to allow time for payments to be received on the first. If you email invoices, do so no later than the 25th.

 Vitals Step-By-Step Overview

THE FINANCIAL PERIOD IS ONE MONTH BEHIND THE NEWLY CREATED OPEN INVOICE MONTH!
Lead Management
1) Add new lead. Once the resident is set up as a lead you will be able to “Move-in”
Resident Care
1) Select the lead that you are going to “Move-in”
2) Enter the new resident’s recurring monthly charges
3) Complete the assessment
4) Your resident is now ready for billing.

Billing & A/R
1) Select Preview Billing
2) Enter resident name and select “Generate Pre-Billing”
3) Select the resident name that is highlighted in green which will take you to a “pre-billing worksheet”
4) The “worksheet” will allow you to view the pending charges for the current financial period. It will also allow you to add additional charges that fell within that current financial period.
5) There is no need to worry about pro-rating charges for a resident that has moved in after the first of the month. Vitals not only pro-rates the charges for you but also allocates any pre-payments to these charges.
6) Once you have confirmed that the charges are correct you have the option to either leave the “pre-billing worksheet” open in order to add more charges at a later date or you can select “complete invoice” (recommended).
7) By selecting “complete invoice” you are acknowledging that you have all charges in for the current financial period and that you are aware that any charges from this date forward will be billed on the next month’s invoice. For the initial move-in billing, it is highly recommended that you “finalize” that invoice immediately after confirming the first month’s charges. Without finalizing the initial invoice you will not be able to “Move-out” a resident should that become necessary.
8) By selecting “complete invoice” you have now created your current financial period’s invoice while also creating the next month’s “pre-billing worksheet”.
9) Now would be a good time to go back and select “Generate Pre-Billing” again but this time do it for all residents. This will allow you to see that the resident that you have just moved in now has the next month’s “pre-billing worksheet” available to add charges to and the other residents are still waiting to have their current financial period’s “pre-billing worksheet” reviewed and approved for the “complete invoice” process.
Note: In the beginning it is recommended that you review each individual resident’s charges through the “pre-billing worksheet” before proceeding to the “Statement Close” tab. Once you become more familiar with the billing process you may elect to just confirm that the resident’s charges are all in the current financial period before performing the “Statement Close” process.

Statement Close (This is the step for creating an invoice!)
1) The Statement Close function allows you to select the resident’s current financial period’s charges that you entered on the “pre-billing worksheet” and convert them to an invoice.
2) Select all resident’s that have open charges in the current financial period and exclude any residents that fall into a future month.
CAUTION! It is very important that you only select the resident’s with charges in the current financial period. If you select a resident that has already had the “complete invoice” process done for the current financial period and they are already in the next month’s financial period, you will then be posting charges into their next month’s billing.
3) Enter the last day of the month of the current financial period at the bottom of the Open Invoice screen.
4) Select Complete All Checked Invoices. By doing this you have now converted your “pre-billing worksheet” into an actual invoice. This process may take a few minutes. Once this process is completed, you will receive a message that your invoices have posted successfully and they are now ready to be printed.
5) Before moving on to the next step, it is advisable to go back to the Preview Billing screen and select “Generate Pre-Billing” again. This will allow you to confirm that if all of your resident’s invoices posted successfully while doing the Statement Close process above, then all of the resident’s new “pre-billing worksheets” will now fall within the next month’s financial period.

Payments/Adjustments
1) Select the Payments/Adjustments tab and enter the resident’s name that you would like to post the payment for. If you are posting multiple payments you may prefer to just select “All Residents” in your search.
2) It is recommended that when you are first learning to post payments in Vitals that you start by selecting the resident’s name that is highlighted in blue. This will allow you to see the individual charges that you would like to post their payment against. Once you become more familiar with the intuitive way that Vitals automatically applies payments, you can select the “apply payment” option and let the software do the work for you.
Note: You will notice that even though you have created your current month’s invoices and as well as created the next month’s “pre-billing worksheet”, the payment screen is still in your current financial period waiting to have payments posted and any additional ancillary charges that may have occurred during the current financial period. Another nice feature in Vitals is that the invoice number along with the invoice date appears in the “add charge/adjustment” field which will allow you to confirm what financial period you are posting the charge in.
3) You are now ready to enter your payment. Select the “Add a new Payment/Adjustment” box. STOP! It is very important that you make sure you are selecting a payment date that falls within the current financial period before you “submit” your payment.
4) By selecting “submit” payment, you will be prompted to either add your payment as a “pre-payment” or “finalize the invoice”. It is recommended that at this point you “finalize” the invoice unless you are still waiting for additional payments and/or ancillary charges to come in that need to be applied to the current financial period. Note: This is only “finalizing” the one resident’s invoice. All other resident’s invoices will still need to be finalized before doing a “hard close”.
5) To add a charge, select the “add a new charge/credit” box. Once in the “add charge/adjustment” field you will notice that the current financial period’s invoice defaults. All you need to do is enter the date in the current month that you want the ancillary charge to post to. STOP! Before selecting “submit” when adding a charge, confirm that your charge date falls within the same month as your invoice date.
6) NSF(Non Sufficient Funds) is a special type of payment. It is selectable in the payment type dropdown. It is used to reverse the amount of an existing payment. You would enter the payment in the post payments area using the amount, responsible party, and check number of the original payment. STOP! It is very important that the amount, responsible party, and check number fields match the original payment! A/R Aging reports may not reflect accurately if this is not the case.

Batch Deposits
1) Once you have entered all payments, select the Batch Deposit tab.
2) Select all the deposits to be posted to the current financial period.

Year End Processing
Since Vitals is only producing reports for journal entry and the actual year end close is to be done in the accounting software the concept of a year end close in Vitals is not relevant. The A/R from the accounting software will still tie back to Vitals.