When managing accounts receivable, bank reconciliation is an important step in the whole process. While a payment can appear as received on a patient's ledger, it is not necessarily credited to your bank account. Reconciliation confirms that any payment posted is credited to your bank account.

Most practices accept cash, checks, and credit cards for co-pays and account balances. Cash and checks are deposited to the bank with a deposit slip regularly. This is an error-prone step and can spring leaks. To prevent transit losses, reconciliation is a must - deposit slip has to be reconciled with the bank statement. At Glenwood, we reconcile the deposit slip with posted in-office collections in GlaceEMR. Glenwood also reconciles bank statements if provided by the practice.

Most insurance carriers pay providers via Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT). These EFTs have to be confirmed as received in the reconciliation process to prevent false payments. An increasing worrisome trend is payors sending Virtual Credit Cards (VCC) instead of checks and not indicating this mode of payment in their Electronic Remittance Advice (ERA). Posting these payments in the ledger with ERA can result in misleading payments if the VCCs are not processed correctly. Moreover, VCCs cost 2 percent or more to process through the credit card system. If bank statements are not reconciled, it is recommended that providers post ERAs only after confirming the actual deposit in the bank account. Glenwood provides an option to release ERAs for posting in our GlaceEMR software.