Period Close

The Period Close feature facilitates more accurate revenue and accounts receivable reporting by preventing financial transactions from being posted to past periods. 

User Permissions

To edit Period Close settings, a Managing Organization Admin must be designated as a Financial Admin within their User Profile. Other Managing Organization Admins, Managing Organization Users, and Organization Admins can still view Period Close settings but cannot edit the settings. For more information on user permissions, click here.

Before Enabling Period Close

Let's review some important things to keep in mind before enabling this feature!

• Only Managing Organization Admins with a Financial Admin role can configure this feature.
• Once enabled, at the beginning of each month, Financial Admins must update the previous month's status to ensure data integrity.
• Periods can be re-opened and re-closed based on an organization's needs. To track any actions taken when a period was re-opened, run the Exceptions to Closing Date report.

Enable Period Close

Let's review how to enable the Period Close feature.

1. To start, navigate to Organization Admin and open the Configuration tab.
2. Click Account Settings, then click Edit.
   
3. Scroll to the Accounting section and select either Accrual or Cash as the desired accounting method.
   • Accrual
     • Payments are recognized and reported on by Post Date
     • Period Close prevents anyone from backdating a Post Date
     • Period Close allows anyone to back-date a Deposit Date
   • Cash
     • Payments are recognized and reported on by Deposit Date
     • Period Close prevents anyone from backdating a Deposit Date
     • Period Close allows anyone to back-date a Post Date
       
4. Next, select the month in which your fiscal year starts.
   

5. Then select the Year from the drop-down to display the individual periods that can be opened or closed.

   Note: You can close and open periods from January 2021 to the current year. All periods before that will be automatically locked once this feature is enabled.

   

6. Each period for the selected year is listed with the period name, date range, and status toggle.
   • To close a period, toggle the Status to Closed. When this toggle is on and a date is selected, certain actions become unavailable within the system on or before the period close date. See below for more information.
   • To open a period, toggle the Status to Open. By default, all periods are Open.
     
7. Finally, click Save to complete the process.
   

Period Close Restrictions

Once a period is closed, the following actions cannot be completed in the system:

• Add new charges in Attendance for the date range of the closed period
• Create insurance payment collections with a post date in the closed period
• Edit insurance payment collections to backdate the post date to dates within the closed period
• Edit claim payments with post dates in a closed period
• Record cash or check patient payments with a post date within the closed period

• In the RCM, users can only unsubmit or delete services. If a user attempts to add a charge after a period has closed, they will receive the following error message.

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  In the EMR, charges will be prevented from being submitted for treatments added through the integration when the date of service falls within a closed period.

• When this feature is enabled, individual insurance payments and adjustments cannot be edited if the check date falls within the closed period. As a result, the system will remove the Edit option from the Payment Details section.

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  For organizations with the Patient Billing module, an error message will appear at the top of the screen if the patient's payment date falls within a closed period.

Frequently Asked Questions

Let's review some of our frequently asked questions!

• No, users can still unlock treatments in the Attendance Calendar for a closed period to generate corrections and voids. Any changes made to revenue, like changes to billed amounts, unit count, or voids, will be represented in the Exceptions to Closing Date report.
• Conditionally, yes. If treatments were added to the Attendance Calendar before the period closed, users can still submit them to billing after the period closes. If the treatments were added to the Attendance Calendar via the Kipu EMR integration after the period was closed, billing submission will be blocked for that closed period.
• No, users can still create and submit claims in the Work Center for DOS in a closed period.
• Likely yes, organizations will have to establish a final posting process of 1-5 days after month-end to allow your staff to complete charge and payment entry before locking down the period. Organizations are encouraged to run the Exceptions to Closing Date report for the previous 2 periods at each month-end.
• Yes, an organization can choose to leave open or reopen, and never close, any period from January 2021 onward. RCM Support cannot "deactivate" Period Close. 
• Contact RCM Support via email or phone to provide date range requirements for review.