View Due Now Adjustment screen.

The Due Now amount is designed to represent the patient portion of the account Balance.  It is the amount that the patient is expected to pay now.  It is the Due Now amount that is aged.  For example, if the account Balance is $100 and the Due Now is $25, you are only expecting the patient to pay $25, at least for now.  If 30 days go by without any payment, the account is considered $25 delinquent (30 days past due), not $100 delinquent.

To adjust the Due Now amount click on the Due Now Adjustment button seen in the upper portion of the Posting screen and the Due Now Adjustment screen will open on top of the Posting screen.

The amount that is entered into the Due Now Adjust text box will be added to the Due Now amount.  An entry of 10.00 will increase the Due Now by ten dollars and a -10.00 (minus ten) will decrease the Due Now amount by ten dollars.  There are three buttons on the screen that will help facilitate your entry.  These will now be discussed.

Manual Adjustment
Manual Adjustment is the default.  You simply enter whatever amount you want to add to the Due Now amount into the Due Now Adjust text box.

Make Due Now Equal Balance
You frequently will want to make the Due Now amount equal to the total account Balance.  When you click on the Make Due Now Equal Balance button, the difference between the Balance and Due Now amount will be entered for you into the Due Now Adjust text box.  This saves you the arithmetic.

Percentage Of Today's Charges
The Due Now amount is designed to represent the patient portion of charges.  Keeping the patient roughly paying his or her portion as treatment progresses saves you from trying to collect the entire patient part after the insurance benefit has been received.  It also improves office cash flow. The ideal situation would be to collect the patient's part each time the patient is seen.  This is the idea behind Diamond Dental Software's Automatic Benefit Calculation. However, not all offices want to implement Automatic Benefits and in addition, not all benefit information is always known by the office. Some offices feel comfortable simply collecting a percentage of whatever charges were performed that day.  From experience you may feel that 20 or 25 percent will about cover what the patient is expected to pay.  If the estimate was a little high or a little low, that can be adjusted after all the insurance money has been received.