Accept a Payment

Topic

In-Office Payments

For

Front Office Team

Read Time

~4 minutes

A patient is standing at the front desk and wants to pay. Here is how to open the payment screen from their page and take the payment, whether you are running their card on the terminal, typing it in, or charging what they already have saved.

This article applies to offices on Smile Advantage Payments. If your office still processes through a legacy gateway, or if Payment Requests and Payment Plans are not switched on for you, some of the options below will not appear.

Opening the payment screen

1. Open the patient list. In your dashboard, click the Patients tab at the top, then choose All Patients.
2. Find the patient. Search for them, then click anywhere on their row in the list. The whole row is the click target, so there is no separate button to look for.
3. Locate the payment section. On the patient’s page, look in the left column for the Payment Terminal heading.
4. Start the payment. Click Accept a Payment. The payment screen opens over the page.

Note

Your tab may not say Patients. Each office chooses its own word, so some accounts show Members instead. The rest of this article uses the default.

The payment screen cannot be closed by clicking outside it, so you will not lose a half-entered payment by clicking the page behind it.

Choosing how to take the payment

The screen opens in two columns: the payment details on the left, and a list of ways to take it on the right, under the heading Action. Five options appear, in this order.

• Tap or Swipe Using Terminal: Takes the payment on your connected card reader. The patient taps, inserts, or swipes their card.
• Enter Card Manually: Lets you key the card details in yourself, for phone payments or any time the reader is not the right tool.
• Charge Card on File: Charges the payment method the patient already has saved, in one step.
• Payment Request: Sends the patient a link to pay online later, instead of taking the payment now. See Sending a Payment Request.
• Payment Plan / Installments: Creates a payment request and splits it into a schedule of installments. See Setting Up a Payment Plan.

Two things can change what you see here:

• No terminal connected. The terminal option stays visible but is dimmed and cannot be selected, and its description changes to say a terminal has not been set up. The screen quietly selects manual entry instead so you can still take the payment. Contact support to have a terminal set up.
• Payment requests or payment plans switched off. Those two options stay visible but are dimmed, with a note pointing you to support. Both are switched on per office.

Taking the payment

1. Choose the action. Click one of the five options on the right. The screen’s title updates to match what you picked.
2. Enter the amount. Type the amount you are collecting into the Amount field.
3. Add a note. Use the Note field to record what the payment is for. This travels with the transaction, so it is worth filling in.
4. Complete the payment. Click the button at the bottom of the left column. Its label depends on the action you chose.

If you chose	The button reads
Tap or Swipe Using Terminal	Complete Sale on Terminal
Enter Card Manually	Continue with Manual Payment, then Charge Card with the amount on the next step
Charge Card on File	Charge Card on File with the amount, or No Payment Method on File if nothing is saved yet
Payment Request	Complete Payment Request
Payment Plan / Installments	Create Payment Schedule

If your office surcharges

A surcharge line appears in the same block as the Amount when the payment is eligible for one. Surcharging is optional, applies only to eligible credit cards, and is capped at 3%. See Credit Card Surcharging for what the patient sees and which cards are never surcharged.

Two checks the screen runs for you

Below the amount, the screen watches for two situations that catch mistakes before they become refunds.

• A recent charge on this patient. If the patient was charged in the last 8 hours, an amber warning names them, the amount, and how long ago it was, with a link to search for a different patient. Any successful or settling charge triggers it, whatever the amount, so it catches both accidental double charges and charges against the wrong person.
• No active membership. If the patient has no membership, or their membership has expired, a prompt asks whether you are taking a membership payment and links you to add a membership or renew one instead. This keeps a membership sale from being recorded as a one-off charge.

Tip

Both are advisory. Neither blocks the payment or has to be dismissed, so if you have checked and the charge is correct, carry on. You will only ever see one at a time, and the membership prompt does not appear when you are collecting against an existing payment request.

Other ways to open the payment screen

The same screen opens from a few other places, already filled in for you.

• From a payment request. Open the request and click Accept a Payment in its Payment Terminal section. The screen opens titled Collect Payment, locked to that request, with the patient already selected and the amount capped at what is still owed.
• From an installment. On a payment request with a schedule, the next installment due has a Charge button that opens the same screen with that installment’s remaining balance filled in.
• On its own, after creating a payment plan. If the plan’s first payment is dated today, Collect Payment opens as soon as the plan is created, pre-filled with that amount, so you can take it before the patient leaves. This needs your office to be on Smile Advantage Payments and the request to still have a balance owing. See Setting Up a Payment Plan.
• From a PMS balance. If your office is connected to its practice management system, the patient’s page shows their balances. Click any non-zero amount to open the payment screen with that amount and a matching note already in place.

Other ways patients pay

Not every payment comes through this screen.

• Online. Patients can pay a payment request themselves from an emailed link, a text, or a QR code, with no account and no login.
• Membership renewals. Memberships set to AutoPay charge the saved payment method on each renewal date without anyone doing anything.
• Payment plan installments. Installments with AutoPay switched on charge themselves on their due dates.
• Cash or check. These are recorded when you enroll or renew a membership, by choosing One Time Payment - Cash / Check. There is no cash or check option on the payment screen, so a walk-up cash payment for any other amount is not recorded here.

Once a payment goes through, it appears in the patient’s transactions straight away. If you are ever unsure whether one landed, see Did My Patient’s Payment Go Through?, and Review Transactions and Refund Payments covers what to do if you need to send the money back.