Overview
This checklist walks through the key tasks for keeping your Payments clean and your accounts receivable accurate. Use it as a daily or periodic reference to catch unapplied payments, duplicates, credits, and ERA issues before they become bigger problems.
✅ Identify Payments Applied to an Invoice but Not to a Service Line
Sometimes a payment gets applied to an Invoice but never makes it to a specific service line (HCPCS code). To find these:
Open the Payment Remittance Report
Set your date filters (Received Date or Applied Date range)
Export the Report and look for rows that have an Applied On date but a blank HCPCS code — these are payments sitting on the Invoice without being tied to a service line
✅ Find Payer Unapplied Payments That Need Work
These are insurance payments that came in but haven't been fully applied yet. You can find them a few different ways:
Option A: Payments Detail Report |
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Option B: Payment Remittance Report |
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Option C: Payments Queue |
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A recoupment that's missing its PLB stays Unapplied, so it will show up in this item's search:
💡 If the claims on a payment are fully posted but money is still unapplied, the EOB probably has a provider-level adjustment (PLB) that hasn't been posted yet. See Posting Offsets, Forwarding Balances, and Other PLB Adjustments.
✅ Find Patient Unapplied Payments with Balances
When a patient has made a payment but it hasn't been applied, and they still show a balance, you'll want to clean that up.
Open the A/R Aging by Patient Report
Sort the Unapplied column from highest to lowest
Filter out any zero, negative, or blank balances in the aging buckets (Current, 31–60, 61–90, 91–120, 120+)
What remains are patients with unapplied money and an outstanding balance — apply those payments
✅ Find Patient Accounts with Payment Credits
Credits can sit on patient accounts when a payment was collected but there's no remaining balance or active rental to apply it to.
Open the A/R Aging by Patient Report
Look at the Last Paid column to identify accounts that have recent payments
If the account shows no balance and no new communications or active rentals, the payment is likely a credit that needs to be reviewed for a refund or future application
✅ Find Payment Duplicates
Duplicate payments can happen when the same ERA is processed more than once, or a payment is entered manually after an auto-post.
Open the Payments Detail Report
Set your date filters
Look for duplicate Reference Numbers with matching payment amounts — these are likely duplicates that need to be reviewed and corrected
✅ Connect ERAs
When an ERA comes in but can't be automatically matched to a payer, it lands in a Failed status and needs to be manually connected.
Go to the EOB/ERA Queue
Filter by Failed status
Open the ERA — if the Payer ID is blank, you'll need to manually select the correct payer to connect it
Once connected, the ERA can be reprocessed
If the same payer keeps failing, check that payer's Remittance ID under Management › Billing Setup › Payers › Edit › Claim Options. It must match the remittance payer ID on the ERA. See Failed Payments.
✅ Delete or Reprocess ERAs
Sometimes you'll have duplicate ERAs that need to be removed, or you may need to reprocess an ERA if a payment was accidentally deleted.
Go to the EOB/ERA Queue
Filter by New status
Delete any duplicate or unnecessary ERAs
Reprocess ERAs if the associated payment was accidentally deleted and needs to be re-created
✅ Review PLB Adjustments
Provider-level adjustments (overpayment recoveries, forwarding balances, interest) affect the whole payment, not a single claim. If one is missed or entered with the wrong sign, the payment won't balance.
Open the PLB Adjustment Report.
Set your date filters.
Compare each adjustment to the PLB section of its EOB. Check that the amount, the sign (negative lowers the payment, positive raises it) and the adjustment type match.
For each WO – Overpayment Recovery, check that the take-back was also posted as negative amounts on the invoice it applies to.
✅ Follow Up on Invoices After a Take-Back
When a payer takes back money, the invoice balance reopens. If nobody follows up, that revenue can be lost.
Open the Payments Detail Report.
Set your date filters and look for negative payment amounts. These are take-backs.
Open each invoice and check its status and bill-to.
Decide what to do next: correct and rebill, appeal, or bill the balance to the next payer or the patient.
💡 Tip: For all of these steps, always set appropriate date filters before exporting or reviewing. This keeps your data manageable and ensures you're working with the right time period.