Each payment has a date received and a date banked. When you manually enter a payment, you can manually edit both these dates. The default date received is today's date. If the payment is electronic, i.e. credit card, EFT etc, then the default date banked will also be today's date. You can change either of these when you enter the payment. For cheques, the date banked is not entered when you enter the payment. Instead, it is entered when you print the bank deposit slip. This may be the same day or it may be a week later. Again, when you print the bank deposit slip, you have the option to specify the banking date. Depending on how you do your banking, there may be a small or a large difference between the date received and the date banked.

 

For Eclipse payments, these dates are entered automatically. The date received is the date that the payment advice was received by AA. The date banked is the date that is sent in the ERA indicating the date that payment was made. Again, depending on the way you run your Eclipse system and the efficiency of Medicare/fund, the two dates may be some time apart.

 

When you generate a report for your doctors, you should probably stick to using one or other date, not both. And when sending successive reports, always use the same date (received or banked) as the previous report. I would probably be inclined to use date received. Especially since, with ERAs, it is possible to receive what appears to be retrospective payments, if the date banked is some time ago.