2. Quickstart: Post a Payment

Start pam and Find an Account

You can access pam from the "Daily Operations" window of your Partner windows. You can also type pam at a command prompt.

Enter the account's name into the find screen:

To learn more about finding patients and accounts, read Finding Patients and Accounts.

Enter Basic Payment Information

Enter the date of the payment, the payment type, the amount, the check number (if applicable) and optionally a provider. Press the Tab or Enter keys to move forward one field, press the Backspace or left arrow keys to move back one field.

	Automatic Date
	Today's date is entered for you automatically. If you wish to record a previous date of payment, simply press Backspace and change the date. The date can be written without slashes, i.e. "092205" for September 9th, 2005, and you can use the abbreviations of "y" for yesterday and "t" for today.

Press [F4 -- Link Payments]

Press F4 to view the list of outstanding charges to which your new payment may be applied.

Select Charges to Apply the Payment Against

Enter the number, or range of numbers, of the charges towards which you wish to apply your new payment. To help you make your selection, the screen displays the amount of each charge that is currently pending insurance and the amount due personal. In most cases, you will apply the full amount of a personal payment to the oldest charges first.

You can use a range of numbers or commas to select specific charges. Press Enter to continue.

Where is the Charge I Need?

The screen will only show unpaid charges that are at least partly personal. Paid charges or charges that have no personal balance will not appear. If you can not find the charge you expected to see, press [F8 -- Show Insurance] to view both insurance and personal charges. You can also press [F6 -- Correct Mistakes] or [F7 -- Family Editor] (from which you can run a Collection report or Family History report) to analyze the account and find out when the charge was paid off.

If Necessary, Indicate How to Apportion the Payment

If you selected charges that exceed the value of the payment, you can use the next screen to indicate how much of the payment should be applied towards each charge.

	Customized Behavior
	You can configure Partner to automatically distribute the payment among the charges or to apply the money towards the oldest charge first. Contact PCC for more information.

Press [F1 -- Save]

Press F1 to save your payment and return to the main pam screen. Your payment has been posted, and you will see the updated "New Balance" column.