Calculate Interest

This tab will automatically generate interest charges on overdue accounts.  You should Calculate interest before printing your monthly statements . Before doing this you must configure a few settings.

Calculate interest as at period
This determines the Financial Period  at which interest is calculated.  You should select the period that has just come to an end.  For example, if you have just finished capturing your invoices for the period June 2011 then you should select June 2011 as the period.

Transaction date
This determines the date of the transactions that will be generated.

Annual interest rate
This is the annual percentage that will be used to calculate interest.  Panacea assumes that interest will be charged monthly, so the Annual interest rate is actually divided by 12 before being multiplied by the outstanding amount on each account.

Ignore if charge is less than
This allows you to set a minimum interest charge.  If an account's interest charge is below this amount then no interest will be charged on that account.  For example, if the outstanding balance on an account is only R5 then the interest charge would be 4 cents (based on an Annual interest rate of 10%).  If you set Ignore if charge is less than to R2, for example, then Panacea would not charge interest on this account since 4c is less than R2.

Note: the default values for the Annual interest rate and Ignore if charge is less than are taken from the Interest tab  of Practice Setup (System - Practice Settings - Practice Setup).

When you are happy with the settings click Calculate interest now to start the process.  Panacea will step through each account (see right) and will carry out these steps: Panacea will calculate the ageing  on the account to determine how overdue the balance is. Panacea will then determine the account's interest setting.  See Interest Defaults  for information on how this is done. If Panacea determines that interest should be charged then Panacea will calculate an interest charge on the overdue amount.  For example, if the interest setting is from 60 days then interest will only be calculated on the portion of the balance that is 60 days and over. Note that you can carry on with other tasks while Panacea is calculating interest as the process is carried out in the background.

Once Panacea has finished calculating interest it will report that it Completed successfully.  You can now click on View to see that actual interest charges.  This will take you to the Other Transactions tab  where you will be able to perform various tasks, e.g. view, edit, delete and print the transactions.