Customize the Messages on Personal Bills

When you prepare and send personal bills, you can include a general billing message, customizable to the age of the balances on each family’s account. You can also include a specific message to the billing account. Messages will appear on bills you print at your practice or send to an electronic billing service.

Use the Submit Bills (bills/ebs) program to edit the general billing messages. Use the Practice Management Family Editor (fame) to edit a special message for a billing account.

Two Messages to the Family: A Current-30-60-90-120 day batch billing messages will appear in addition to the personal billing message to the account, if present.

Change Your “Pay Your Bill On Line At” Website URL Address

Your practice can include a custom website address on personal bills which indicates where the family can pay their bill online.

To customize the website address for online bill pay, contact PCC.

Change Your Practice’s General Billing Messages

You can review, delete, add, or change any of your global billing messages through the billmsg program.

From the bills program, press F6Bill Message to run the billmsg program. You can also type billmsg at a command prompt.

When you start billmsg, you will be presented with a list of choices:

Use the arrow keys to make your selection and press Enter. If a billing message for your selection currently exists, it will be displayed at the top of your screen and you will be given options to change it or keep it. If the message you selected has never been configured, you will be offered the chance to create it.

Whenever you make changes, billmsg will ask you to confirm that you want to over-write the old message with the new one.

Use the Amount Variable: You can add a variable that will be replaced with the amount of the bill: <amount>. See the “Overdue 90” and “Overdue 120” examples below.

Change a Billing Account’s Personal Billing Message

Use the Practice Management Family Editor (fame) to create or edit a personal message for a family’s billing account. It will appear on all of the family’s bills until it is changed.

First, open the Family Editor and find the account.



Then page down to the Account Billing Note screen.

Press F6Modify Note to change the family billing message. Type the new message and press F1Save.

If this is the first time you have added a note to this family’s bills, you will need to press F4Post New Note instead of F6.

Billing Message Examples

Here are a few examples of messages that offices use:

  • New Provider: “We would like to welcome Dr. Smith to our practice!”

  • Open House: “Come see our new facilities at 10 Main St. from 9am-4pm.”

  • Credit Card Payments: “We now accept VISA card payments.”

In addition to these general messages, you can also include messages specific to each billing category. For example:

  • Current: “Thank you for your patronage.”

  • Overdue 30: “Payment is now past due. Please send payment promptly.”

  • Overdue 60: “Failure to pay balance due in full may result in termination.”

  • Overdue 90: “Your account, with an outstanding balance of <amount>, may be sent to collection. Please contact the office.”

  • Overdue 120: “Your account, with an outstanding balance of <amount>, will be sent to a collection agency in 30 days.”

When you print or send your bills electronically, the appropriate bill message will print automatically. If a category doesn’t have a specific message, then a default message will be used instead (if it exists).

  • Last modified: May 22, 2023