Generate Statements

This tab will enable you to generate your monthly statement run.  In general you could simply leave the settings on their defaults and Panacea will generate all the necessary statements in one batch.  However, if you have special requirements you could generate a number of batches with special settings.  For example, you could generate your Injury on Duty accounts in a separate batch.

It is recommended that you Generate Statements after completing a financial period .  For example, if you want your financial periods  to be aligned with calendar months then you should print your monthly statements at the beginning of each calendar month.  For example, on 1 August (or soon thereafter) you would finish capturing your invoices for the July financial period  then you would print your statements for the July financial period .  After printing statements you can start capturing your August invoices.

You may also want to generate interest charges on overdue accounts  before printing your statements.

The Generate Statement settings look like this:

It is very important to understand that when you Generate Statements, Panacea will only generate statements for people and companies that were set up on each account's Statement Recipients tab .  When you click on Start Generating Panacea will step through each statement recipient and will decide whether to print a statement based on their settings as well as the Generate Statement settings.

After generating a batch of statements users sometimes ask why a statement was not printed for a particular statement recipient.  To answer this question go to the account's Statement history tab .  If you check the Show statements that were not generated checkbox  Panacea will show statements that were not generated with a red X.  If you move your mouse over the X Panacea will show you the reason.  For a detailed explanation click here .

Include statements for people
This checkbox  determines whether Panacea should include people that are set up as statements recipients.  If included these will be printed in account number order.  If you wish to start and/or end at a specific account number then specify this in the Start at Account and End at Account PowerComboBoxes .

Include statements for companies
This checkbox  determines whether Panacea should include companies that are set up as statements recipients.  If included these will be printed in alphabetical order by company name.  If you wish to start and/or end at a specific company then specify this in the Start at Company and End at Company PowerComboBoxes .

 In general the companies that are set up as statements recipients are medical aids.  Printing them in alphabetical order makes it easier for you to post all the statements for a particular medical aid together in one envelope.

Exclude eClaims
If this checkbox  is checked Panacea will avoid printing statements for companies where all invoices have been sent as eClaims.  The reason for this is simple: if you have already sent the invoice electronically then you should not send it again on paper.  Sending duplicate claims only slows down the process and can lead to delays in receiving payment.  It is recommended that you leave this checkbox  checked.

Account type
These three checkboxes  allow you to determine which account types are included in the batch.  If, for example, you want to print only Injury on Duty accounts then you could uncheck the Medical Aid and Private checkboxes  and leave the Injury on Duty checkbox  checked.

Balance
These settings determine how the balance on each account affects if a statement is generated.  Normally you would include accounts with a positive balance.  You may also want to include accounts with negative balances, for example, if you want to send refund cheques together with the statements.  If an account has a zero balance you have three options:

• Don't print a statement
• Print a statement
• Print only if it had an opening balance - a statement would be printed if the account was recently settled.  Even though the account balance is now zero the recipient would get a final statement reflecting their payment.

Ageing
This determines if the ageing  affects which statements are printed.  In general you would include all accounts regardless of how overdue they are.  However, you may want to print a separate batch of your "long overdue" accounts, i.e. 120 days.  Note that when determining the ageing of an account Panacea looks at the oldest amount.  For example, if an account has amounts owing in 90 days and 30 days then Panacea will only print a statement if you have checked 90 days under ageing.

Skip accounts where only 30 days > 0
Some practices prefer not to "waste paper" by printing 30 day accounts.  The thinking behind this is that they do not expect medical aids to pay within 30 days anyway.  The obvious (but incorrect) way to accommodate this policy is to uncheck the 30 days checkbox.  However, the patient may have amounts owing in Current and 30 days.  If you unchecked 30 days then this account would not generate a statement, which is undesirable since the Current amount has never appeared on a statement.  To avoid this problem check the Skip accounts where only 30 days > 0 checkbox .  Panacea will then exclude accounts where the oldest amount is in 30 days, but will include them if there is a Current balance.

Period
This determines the financial period  of the statements being printed.  In general this would be the current financial period, which is the default setting.

Start next financial period when finished
As a rule you should start the next financial period after printing statements.  If you check the Start next financial period when finished checkbox  Panacea will automatically start the next financial period when you have finished generating statements.  If you do not check this option Panacea will offer to do so anyway after statements have been generated.  Click here  for a detailed explanation on why financial periods should be "aligned" with statement printing.

Statement date
This would normally be today's date, but you can set it to another date if you wish.  It is printed on each statement but does not affect the ageing, nor does it affect which transactions are included on the statement.

Exclude accounts printed after
If you print individual statements during the course of the month and hand them to your patients it may not be necessary to repeat those statements again during your month end statement run.  To implement this set the Exclude accounts printed after DatePicker  to the date of your last statement run.  Panacea will then exclude statements that were printed after this date, i.e. statements that were printed individually since your last statement run.

Printer
This determines which printer will be used for printing the statements.

Generating Statements

When you click Start Generating Panacea will close the settings tab and will display the Generate Statements status tab.  You can now leave Panacea to do it's job.

Note that Panacea generates statements in a "background thread ".  This means that you can continue to use Panacea while statements are being generated.

Note too that you can stop generating statements by clicking the Stop button.  You can use this to cancel the statement run altogether, but you can also use it to suspend statements.  For example, if your statement run has not completed by the time you want to go home at the end of the day you can stop the run then start it again in the morning.  See below for details on resuming an interrupted statement run.

All printing in Windows is "spooled".  This means that Panacea places items to be printed in the "print queue" and Windows takes care of delivering these items to the printer.  As a result Panacea doesn't have to wait for each item to print.  Most printers also have quite a large memory which can store many print items.  Keep this in mind if you have any kind of interruption while printing.  You should not switch off your printer until all print jobs have printed successfully.  If you switch off the printer beforehand it will be very difficult to determine which print jobs were lost.  For example, if your printer runs out of paper in the middle of a statement run then do not switch it off.  Leave the printer on while re-filling the paper tray.  Please read your printer user guide for more information.

Resuming an interrupted statement run

A number of things could interrupt your statement run, for example a power failure or a user deliberately stopping the run (see above).  If this happens Panacea will keep track of all the Generate Statements settings and will be able to pick up from where it left off.  Simply select Tools - Generate Statements and Panacea will automatically detect that a previous statement run was interrupted.  Panacea will then offer to resume the last statement run.

Manually re-starting an interrupted statement run

If for some reason you do not want to make use of Panacea's automatic ability to resume a statement run you can also re-start it manually.  To re-start manually follow these steps:

1. Determine the settings that were used in the interrupted statement run.  If you don't remember these then go to any account that generated a statement and click on the Statement history tab .  Move your mouse over the Run column of the last statement and Panacea will display all the settings that were used.  Make a note of them.
2. Take a careful look at the last statement that was printed.  The most important thing to identify is whether the recipient is a person or a company.
3. Go to Tools - Generate Statements.
4. If the last recipient (identified in step 2 above) is a person then leave Include statements for people checked and set Start at Account to the account number on the last statement printed.  Leave Include statements for companies checked.
5. If the last recipient (identified in step 2 above) is a company then uncheck Include statements for people and leave Include statements for companies checked.  Set Start at Company to the name of the company on the last statement printed.
6. Set all other settings according to the values determined in step 1 above.
7. Click Generate Statements.

The important things to remember when manually re-starting a statement run are:

• When generating statements Panacea first prints a batch for people (in account number order) then a batch for companies (in alphabetical order).  If the batch for people had completed successfully then it must be excluded when re-starting.
• When re-starting from somewhere in the "people batch" then the account number must be used as the starting point.
• When re-starting from somewhere in the "companies batch" then the company name must be used as the starting point.