Carry your customer balances over, choose when invoices lock, send statements and take payments.
Essentials and upLabs that bill from Pilot
Contents
2.1
Import historical financial data
Your doctors expect Pilot’s first statement to pick up where your old system’s last one left off. Import your financial transactions, and Pilot works out what’s still owed on each invoice, then checks its numbers against the statements your customers already got.
Before you start
Customers and billing accounts imported. Every transaction names a billing account that’s already in Pilot. → Import customers
An export of every invoice, payment and credit up to your cutover date.
If you have them, the statements your customers got, with each month’s opening and closing balance.
How it works
1Each row is an invoice, a payment or a credit, with its number, billing account, date and amount. You don’t say which payment paid which invoice: Pilot works that out.
2Pilot reconciles every account before it saves anything. Accounts that tie out are ready. The rest come with a suggested fix, or need a correction in your file.
3Import the accounts that tie out, then run the checks. Pilot compares its balances and statements with the opening and closing balances you expect.
4Going live in two steps? Load your history early, then only the last stretch after cutover. Pilot recognizes invoices it already has by their number, so nothing is counted twice.
Optional. Each account’s opening and closing balance for each month, from the statements your customers got.
AccountPeriodOpeningClosing
The highlighted columns identify each row or must be filled. Keep the other headers as they are, and save as CSV.
Imported records are historical
Pilot marks them as historical and never sends or syncs them anywhere. Nothing is saved until you confirm the import.
You're done when: Every billing account shows the balance it had in your old system, and its statements match the ones your customers got.
2.2
Invoice finalization
Invoicing a case doesn’t lock it: you can still change it. Closing the case does. Once it’s closed, nobody can edit it, its invoice is final, and it can take payments and credits. Pick when that happens to match how your lab checks invoices.
When an invoiced case closes
At the start of each billing cycle
The default. Every invoiced case closes when a new cycle starts, so you have until then to fix anything.
When its statement is created
Cases close as the statement that includes their invoice is made.
As soon as it’s invoiced
For labs that never go back to an invoice.
By hand
Someone closes each case, or a batch of them. For labs that review every invoice.
Fixing an invoice
Invoices aren’t edited in place: uninvoice the case, change it, and invoice it again. A closed case can be reopened until its invoice is on a statement. Whatever you pick, a case that’s already shipped closes as soon as it’s invoiced.
You're done when: A test case goes from invoiced to closed the way you expect.
2.3
Statements
A statement sums up one billing account for one billing cycle: what it owed at the start, every invoice, payment and credit in between, and what it owes now. Your billing cycle sets the period each statement covers, and when invoices are due.
1Your billing cycle: weekly, twice a month, or monthly. It’s one setting for the whole lab.
2Automatic statements, so Pilot makes every account’s statement when a cycle ends. You can still make them by hand, for one account or for everyone.
3Statement emails. Making a statement doesn’t send it: the Statement Created email template has to be on, and each account needs an email address. → Email templates and HIPAA
Fixing a statement
Once a statement exists, what’s on it is locked. Fix a mistake in the current period with a credit or a custom invoice, and the next statement carries it forward. If the statement itself has to be right, delete it, make your fix, and create it again.
You're done when: A test account’s statement shows the balances you expect, and lands in your customer’s inbox.
2.4
Payment processing
Connect a payment processor, and doctors can pay invoices and statements online from the Customer Portal. You can also charge a saved card or bank account from Pilot, and every payment is recorded for you.
Before you start
A Stripe or NMI account for your lab, or someone who can set one up.
What to set up
1Your payment processor: Stripe or NMI.
2A processing fee, if you pass it on to customers. Each portal payment then adds a small fee invoice.
3QuickBooks, if you use it, so invoices and payments stay in step.
4Logging for payments that arrive another way, like checks and wires. Until a payment is applied to invoices, it sits on the account as unapplied money.
You're done when: A test payment shows on the billing account and lowers what it owes.
2.5
Business and up
Accounts receivable
Accounts receivable is the money your customers owe you. The Accounts Receivable page shows every account that owes something, grouped by how overdue it is, so you don’t have to build a report every time you chase money.
