How a patient’s account balance is calculated
The Account tab is an append-only ledger: nothing is edited or deleted, every figure traces back to a dated row, and payments always settle the oldest debt first.
Every patient has an account at each clinic they visit, on the Account tab of their profile. It works like a paper ledger: every entry — a charge, a payment, an adjustment — is a row with a date, an amount and who recorded it. Nothing is ever edited or deleted; a mistake is corrected with a second, reversing entry, so the balance can always be explained by reading down the list.
Where a charge comes from
A charge is raised the moment a visit is completed or an invoice is raised for one — never both for the same visit. If a package already covered that session, no charge is raised for it at all; that is what keeps a covered visit from ever being billed twice. Cancelled or already-paid appointments and invoices raise nothing.
How a payment is applied
A payment always settles the oldest outstanding charge first — opening balances brought in from before the account existed settle ahead of anything from a same-day visit. Whatever is left over after every charge is covered becomes credit on the account, ready for the next charge rather than being pushed onto one that does not exist yet.
Two ways to record a payment, one balance
Creating an invoice with its own payment, and settling existing charges directly from the Account tab, both update the same ledger — an invoice raised the first way is picked up as a charge here automatically, so the two never disagree about what is still owed.
Starting balance and manual corrections
A patient who already owed the clinic money before this account existed can have that carried in as an opening balance. A write-off, a goodwill credit, or any other one-off correction is recorded as an adjustment — always with who made it and why, for the same reason every other entry is.
