Introducing Integrated Payments with Dentrix Pay

Improve cash flow, enhance reliability, and save time with integrated credit card payments.

Are your patients ever frustrated because you can’t quickly process their credit card payments at time of service? When you process credit card payments, do you have to enter payment information into multiple systems? Would you like to use flexible spending account (FSA), health savings account (HSA), or any type of credit card for your patients’ payments? Would you like to use saved credit cards to pay down your patients’ payment agreements–almost automatically–without having to bill your patients and wait for their payments? And would you like to use a saved card to make payments for any member of a cardholder’s Family File? If your answer is yes to any of these questions, you need Dentrix Pay!

What is Dentrix Pay?

Successful practices provide excellent customer service and expertly manage their books. With Dentrix Pay, you have the opportunity to do both because Dentrix Pay is an integrated payment solution that expedites the checkout process and saves you and your patients valuable time and effort.

Dentrix Pay is integrated directly into Dentrix, so you use the same Dentrix payment window for credit card payments that you use for any other type of patient payments. And the payments are automatically posted to the Ledger from the payment window, which eliminates the need to enter payments into multiple systems (a.k.a. payment double entry), which also reduces the risks of posting errors.

Dentrix Pay gives your patients more payment options, as they can pay with EMV chip-enabled credit cards, magnetic-stripe cards, FSA and HSA cards, or smartphones. You can even save credit cards with Dentrix Pay. And Dentrix Pay is backed by Worldpay (formerly Vantiv), one of the world’s leading credit card processors.

Watch an overview video about Dentrix Pay.

Now that you know a little bit about Dentrix Pay, let’s explore its significant features and benefits, which you can use to save your practice time, ensure accurate payments, and improve cash flow.

Processing Payments

Every patient should pay at time of service, so processing payments will likely be the one Dentrix Pay transaction that you’ll perform most often. Dentrix Pay improves this process by expediting payments and posting them to the Ledger immediately. And because there’s less manual entry, it also reduces the likelihood of human errors.

To enter a credit card payment with Dentrix Pay, follow the same process you use to post payments in Dentrix. You don’t have to enter payments in Dentrix and a separate credit card program. You can even split the payment between family members like you’re used to doing in Dentrix.

To post a credit card payment with Dentrix Pay, open the patient’s Ledger and from the Transaction menu click Enter Payment. In the Enter Payment dialog box, enter the payment amount, select a Dentrix Pay payment type (denoted by credit card icons), select a provider and patient (or split the payment by family members), and select a split method, if needed.

Once your entries are complete, click Process Card. On a PIN pad, the patient is asked to select Debit or Credit and insert, swipe, or tap their card or smartphone. The payment amount and credit information are encrypted and sent to your merchant account, which accepts or declines payment. When the payment is accepted, Dentrix Pay requests an electronic signature for the purchase receipt. Once the patient signs the receipt, click OK to save the signature with the receipt.

Click Print Receipt to print the receipt (or click Close) to complete the payment process and post the payment to the patient’s Ledger. The payment is instantly processed, and you don’t need to bill the patient and wait for payment.

Learn how to post patient payments with Dentrix Pay.

Saving Credit Cards

Stop storing credit card information in your patients’ notes or a file at the front desk! Dentrix Pay saves credit card information in your merchant’s “payment vault,” and you can use that information to make future payments–with your patient’s consent, of course. And when you charge a payment to a saved card, the payment is instantly credited to your practice.

Imagine calling a patient to confirm her appointment and, on the same phone call, discussing her outstanding balance and receiving permission to charge her balance to her saved credit card. You’d save yourself from having to make a separate collection call–and you’d get your money faster. In other words, Dentrix Pay improves cash flow with timely credit card payments from saved cards.

And saved credit cards are great for other reasons. You can use them every month to pay down your patients’ payment agreements. You can use a saved card to make payments for every member of a cardholder’s Family File. And better yet, you don’t need the PIN pad or the card itself to process saved-card payments.

You can save credit cards in two different ways. The first is at time of service. When a patient makes a payment with a Dentrix Pay credit card, the PIN pad captures the card’s information, and you have the option to save the card before the payment posts to the Ledger. Simply click Save Card, have the patient review and digitally sign a Credit Card on File Consent form, and click OK.

The second way is to save the card. From the Ledger, click Transaction > Saved Credit Cards. Click Add, use a PIN pad to capture the card’s information, process the consent form, and click OK. You can also remove expired or declined cards, view the patient’s saved (and removed) cards, and view a patient’s consent form.

Remember, saved credit card information is stored in your merchant account’s payment vault and not in your Dentrix database.

Learn how to save a credit card without having to post a payment.

Charging Saved Credit Cards

Once a card is saved it becomes a payment option in the Enter Payment dialog box. Here, you can charge a single payment or use it to enter a payment on patient’s payment agreement. You don’t have to wait for patients to mail a payment or send multiple statements trying to collect monies owed and missed payments.

To charge a saved card for a single payment, open the patient’s Ledger. From the Transaction menu, click Enter Payment and enter the payment information. Select a Dentrix Pay payment type, click Process Card, and select the saved credit card as payment. Then, click OK to complete the payment and then click Print Receipt (or click Close) to post the payment to the patient’s Ledger.

Charging a saved card for a payment agreement is essentially the same process as for a single payment, but here you enter the patient’s monthly payment amount (per the agreement), and you must ensure that the Apply To Payment Agreement checkbox is selected before you charge the saved credit card. Learn how to post a payment to a patient’s payment agreement with a saved credit card.

Now you can use the saved credit card every month to pay down the patient’s balance until it’s completely paid off.

Making Corrections

Occasionally you (or your patients) will make a mistake when processing payments. For instance, you may enter the wrong amount, or patients may use a credit card that they didn’t intend to use. With Dentrix Pay, you can instantly void transactions (up until 10:00 p.m. local time) on the date the payment was processed. However, you must use the same PIN pad and card (or card number) that was used for the original transaction. Learn how to void Dentrix Pay transactions.

You can also refund a payment back to its original credit card–and a PIN pad and card are not required. Refunds can be particularly useful for payments that can no longer be voided or where credit cards are no longer accessible. Watch this video to learn how to refund Dentrix Pay transactions.

Upgrade Eligibility

Dentrix Pay is available to any Dentrix customer using version G6.6 or higher. (PowerPayLE EMV continues to be the payment processing option for customers on version G5.2 to G6.5.) Visit www.Dentrix.com/emv/upgrade to determine your upgrade eligibility.

Conclusion

Dentrix Pay is an integrated payment solution that saves time, ensures accurate payments, and improves your company’s cash flow. If you’re ready to process credit cards from inside Dentrix and save cards for future payments, Dentrix Pay is the solution for you. Raise the level of your payment processing with the all-new, fully-integrated Dentrix Pay!

For more information about Dentrix Pay, visit www.Dentrix.com/DentrixPay or call 844.853.2285.


Learn More

To learn more about using Dentrix Pay, watch the Dentrix Pay Quick Start Videos. Browse to Dentrix.com/Resource-Center and under Insurance & Patient Billing Videos, click Dentrix Pay.

For more information about Dentrix Pay, visit https://www.dentrix.com/products/eservices/dentrixpay.


By Rodney Merrill, Contributing Editor

Originally published in Dentrix Magazine, Summer 2018