Reservation fees held and finance reporting

This article explains how booking reservation fees appear in your figures, and which reports to use to see what you have taken and what is still committed to future appointments.

Reservation fees held

When a patient pays a booking reservation fee, it is recorded as a payment on the day it is taken and counts in your takings from that day, like any other payment. Because the treatment has not happened yet, the Finance page also shows Reservation fees held: the total of fees paid for appointments still to come. That figure is money you have received but not yet earned, shown beside your takings so you can see how much of your balance is committed to future appointments. It is not deducted from your takings. The held figure adds successful reservation-fee payments against future appointment times. It does not subtract refunds or exclude cancelled appointments, so check the payment records before treating it as the net amount still held.

The Finance page

This month and Today total every successful payment of any kind, with refunds taken off. These are payment-record totals, including account top-ups and treatments paid from account credit, rather than your bank balance or VAT turnover. Below them the page lists the payments themselves, any booking reservation fees due back to patients who cancelled in good time, discounts given this month, and patient account credit.

Using the reports

The Reports page is where the detail lives, with one period picker shared by every report. The ones to reach for here:

• Deposits shows fees Taken in the period and those Held right now, as at today. Its third figure, Kept as a missed-appointment fee, only covers fees charged to a saved card under the old no-show fee, which clinics can no longer take.
• Takings by day and Sales for income over a period.
• The Sales report also totals discounts given, split by reason, so discretionary money off (model rates, goodwill) is visible apart from your marketing codes.

See the financial reports for the rest of the group, and the reports overview for how the period, the filters and the exports work. For the clinical-and-compliance angle on your numbers, see the validation report.