Don’t you just hate it when a patient’s check comes back from the bank with a big NSF (not sufficient funds) stamped on it? Bounced checks are just a pain. But, as banks report making billions in bad check fees every year, it is almost inevitable that some of that bad news will come to your business as well.

This article is not going to talk about your SOP for handling checks returned by reason of “insufficient funds”, “account closed” or “no account”, and whether you will be calling the patient, sending a certified letter, attempting to redeposit the check, or whatever your office policy dictates. This article is about how to record it in Ascend to reflect a corrected patient balance.

To adjust the patient balance to reflect that no payment was received:

1. Search for the patient or guarantor and open their ledger.
2. Click Charge (+) Adjustment. Dentrix Ascend has a predefined charge type for this situation. In the Type drop-down select NSF Check.

3. Enter the amount of the NSF check and the patient name. Note: The patient name automatically populates if you start on a patient ledger; you will need to select the patient if you start in the guarantor view.
4. Select the Payment date. The last payment date populates automatically.
5. Add a note to keep track of the adjustment—why it was applied, and any other information required by your SOP.

Tip: If the policy in your office is to assess a fee for returned checks, click Charge (+) Adjustment again, but this time select NSF Bank Fee as your adjustment type. Make sure to associate it with the appropriate visit and visit date.

Additional Information

• The date will automatically populate to today, however, you do have the ability to back-date an adjustment if need be.  You cannot future-date adjustments.
• You can only back-date an adjustment within the ledger rules time frame.  Meaning, if your transactions are set to close after 30 days, an adjustment cannot be backdated 31 days.
• To learn more, see Posting charge adjustments.