Money the clinic owes patients, not the other way around
Patient Credit Balances flips the usual billing question around: instead of who owes the clinic money, it lists every patient the clinic currently owes money to. Credit balances build up from a handful of everyday situations — an overpayment at the front desk, a refund issued against an invoice that had already been paid, or a credit note raised that hasn't yet been applied to a future invoice.
Left unmanaged, patient credit is a quiet liability. It doesn't show up as a problem the way an unpaid invoice does, so it's easy for small credit balances to accumulate across a patient base without anyone noticing until a patient calls asking where their refund is. This report exists so that liability stays visible, and is the report to check before running refunds in bulk or reconciling accounts at period end.
- Which filter Patient Credit Balances uses
- What the four KPI tiles show
- How the per-patient table is sorted and why that ordering matters
- The everyday situations that create a credit balance in the first place
Filters
- <strong>Location</strong> — the only filter this report offers
Like Outstanding Balances, this report has no date range filter — a credit balance is a current-state snapshot of what's owed right now, not activity confined to a period.
KPI tiles
- <strong>Patients with credit</strong> — how many patients currently carry a non-zero credit balance
- <strong>Total credit owed</strong> — the combined liability across all of them
- <strong>Largest balance</strong> — the single biggest credit any one patient holds
- <strong>Avg balance</strong> — Total credit owed divided by Patients with credit
Table: patient credit balances
| Patient | Credit balance |
|---|---|
| — | — |
Every patient with a non-zero credit balance appears here, sorted with the largest balances first, so you can prioritize refunds or offer to apply the credit toward a patient's next invoice starting with the amounts that matter most. A patient with a large, aging credit balance is usually a better candidate for a proactive refund than one waiting to be asked.