The ALIS Billing Center

The ALIS Billing Center is a centralized location for your billing team to track billing and invoicing tasks. Events that populate in the Billing Center task list can be related to resident occupancy changes, level of care changes, and upcoming invoice dates.

Enable the Billing Center

The Billing Center is behind an entitlement and requires the ALIS team to enable. For assistance, reach out to your Account Manager or the ALIS Customer Success Team. If it was recently turned on, you can consult the Set Up the Billing Center section below to further configure it to your needs.

Once the Billing Center is enabled for your community, you can access it in the Billing dropdown menu.

How to use the Billing Center

At the top of the Needs Attention tab of the Billing Center, you see the number of Pending and In Progress Billing events for your building or portfolio of buildings selected in the Communities menu. This shows how many items are on the task list need review before residents' billing accounts are updated. 

Please note that this number does not reflect the date range filter, so it is very possible that there are Billing Events that occurred prior to the default filtered dates. This is especially true if the Billing Center was turned on long before your team began to use it. If you have items here that are irrelevant, contact your Account Manager or the ALIS Customer Success Team to remove obsolete items.

Use Filters 

Use additional filters to show you more specific groups of events if that will help organize your workflow. Also, you can click any of the column headers in the table to sort the displayed events.

Process Events

The main impact of the Billing Center is the ability to process events. Click the Process button in the far right column when you are ready to review details of the event and update the resident's billing in real time. Clicking this button takes you to a new page or modal, and is meant to operate similarly to the Impact Review. To learn more, read this Impact Review Reference Guide.

1. • Dependent on the event type, the top half of the page will show the resident information and the Event Details. The second half of the page gives us all the options we need to add and update recurring charges, as well as payments, credits, discounts, refunds, etc. We can even create an invoice right from this page. These options reflect exactly the Billing portion of a resident's profile.
   • Once you have completed the required billing task based on the event, scroll back to the top and click the green Complete Task button. Repeat this process until there are no more events in the Billing Center.
   • Additionally, the Billing Center has a Print option, which may help you to generate a printer-friendly PDF you can use to keep track of things on paper. Some of us prefer to work this way and ALIS makes it easy. There is also an Export to Excel option, which may help to communicate these details to other team members prior to Processing or Dismissing the tasks.

Set in Progress, Reset Status, or Dismiss Events

Use the blue buttons on the far right column to choose the option for an individual event. You can Process, Set in Progress, or Dismiss events. 

• Set In Progress if you want to designate an event as something you are working on. This is especially helpful in showing who is completing tasks if multiple people are working from the same list of events in the Billing Center. If an event has been Set In Progress, you can also Reset Status to change it back to Pending. 
• It is appropriate to Dismiss if an event is truly irrelevant and does not require any billing account changes.
• To bulk Dismiss, Set In Progress, or Reset Status on events, click the checkboxes to the left of the events, then click the button above the table on the left. Note that processing an event can only be done on an individual event.

Billing Center Items with Automated Impact Review

There are two events in ALIS that generate "automated" Billing Center items: Service Plan Completion and Room Assignment changes. It is especially necessary that the settings detailed in the sections below are configured properly for these events.

Most billing center events take you to a new page to review any billing impact of the event. For these automated events, a modal will display and actually make an educated guess at the potential changes to recurring charges. This operates exactly like Impact Review on the resident profile. To learn more, read this Impact Review Reference Guide.

Set Up the Billing Center

We recommend consulting your Account Manager or the ALIS Customer Success Team for assistance with setup. If you prefer to set up the Billing Center independently, the following guide outlines which settings to configure in the most efficient order:

1. Decide which events will trigger an item in the Billing Center 

We have a lot of flexibility with the events will display for review in the Billing Center, and to get started, it is recommend you decide which if not all events will be appropriate for your billing team to review. To update this list, go to Settings > Billing Center, and click the Manage button to the right of your community. It is recommended to start with the following events when you are trying out the Billing Center:

• Service Plan Completed
• Applicant Moved In
• Resident Moved Out
• Resident Transferred Out
• Assign Room/Unassign Room
• Room Change
• Prepare For Auto Invoice Generation (5 Days Prior)

Some of the events require you to review the additional settings in ALIS:

• For the Service Plan Completed event, you want to verify details in section 2.
• For the events in the Room section, verify details in sections 3 and 4.
• The Prepare For Auto Invoice Generation (5 Days Prior) event will depend on your Billing Day of the Month in Billing Settings.

2. Care Levels in the Billing Center

Care Levels in ALIS are determined by the RET (Resident Evaluation Tool), and any accumulated points in the Evaluation and Service Plan will determine the resident's Care Level upon completing the Service Plan. You must have the "Service Plan Completed" event turned on to utilize this automation. Read this How to Complete a Service Plan guide for more information. 

1. In Billing Center Settings (Settings > Billing Center), click on the second tab Map Care to Billing.
   • • Verify that the correct Community is selected, and then as you scroll, you can see each Care Level and Care Package that are already active as part of the resident evaluation. If your Care Levels or Care Packages are not correct for your building, update these by following step 2 below. 
     • For each Care Level or Care Package, you must either leave the Linked Billing Item menu to its default "Do Not Link" setting, or select the correct corresponding Billing Item. If your Billing Items are not correct for your building, update these by following step 3 below.
     • Once all the correct Care Levels are linked to the correct Billing Items, click the "Linking On" option to the top right of the table.
     • Click Save Changes at the bottom right.
2. Updating Care Level and Care Package settings:
   • • Go to Settings > Resident Evaluation Tool Settings. Click the Reasons and Care Levels tab fourth from the left.
     • Toward the bottom of the page is where Care Level names, fees, and point ranges can be added and edited. Take the opportunity to make sure these Care Levels are correct for your residents.
     • If the Billing Center is already enabled for the community you are setting up, you can add the appropriate Billing Item when you add or edit a Care Level.
     • We can also do this for Care Packages in the next tab to the right. Learn more about RET Care Packages.
     • Finish step 1 above.
3. Updating Billing Items:
   • • Go to Settings > Billing Settings. Select the correct Community at the top right, and then in most cases, you want to update Billing Items in the Private tab. If the care charges are invoiced to Insurance, Medicare, or other payer types, find them in those tabs.
     • The Billing Items that pull into the correct Care Level menus must all have the 'Care' Category assigned. When you +Add Billing Item or if you click Options > Edit for an existing Billing Item, the Item Category must have 'Care' selected.
     • Finish step 1 above.

3. Verify Floor Plan Settings and Current Room Assignments

You must have the "Assign Room/Unassign Room" and "Room Change" events turned on to use this automation.

1. In Billing Center Settings (Settings > Billing Center), click on the third tab Map Floor Plan to Billing. 
   • • Verify that the correct Community is selected, and then as you scroll, you can see each Room Type that is already active in the ALIS Floor Plan. If your Room Types are not correct for your building, update these by following step 2 below. 
     • For each Room Type, you must either leave the Linked Billing Item menu to its default "Do Not Link" setting, or select the correct corresponding Billing Item. If your Billing Items are not correct for your building, update these by following step 3 below.
     • Once all the correct Room Types are linked to the correct Billing Items, click the "Linking On" option to the top right of the table.
     • Click Save Changes at the bottom right.
2. Updating Floor Plan and Room Types Settings:
   • • Go to Communities > Floor Plan.
     • Click the Settings tab (third from the left) and scroll down to the Room Types section. Here we need to either +Create New Room Type or use the edit pencil on the right column of the table to edit existing room types.
     • If the Billing Center is already enabled for the community you are setting up, you can add the appropriate Billing Item when you add or edit a Room Type.
     • The Floor Plan tab will show you all floors, hallways, rooms, and beds currently set up for your building. If you need to make changes here, follow this How to configure a community Floor Plan guide for more details.
     • Each room must be assigned the correct Room Type as configured in the Settings Tab. This is most easily done by clicking the checkboxes of each room of a specific type and then using the Bulk Set button at the top to set the Room Type. Repeat this until the Room Types are accurate for each room.
     • Finish Step 1 above.
3. You should verify that all resident room assignments are correct. This can be done by just looking on the Floor Plan page or using the Print or Export to Excel options. The Room Assignments Report will also give you this information (Reports > Occupancy and Census Reports > Room Assignments).

4. Residency Agreements

Residency Agreements give you the ability to plan rent increases and approve them according to a schedule, track invoiced rent based on the agreements, and see which units are vacant and for how long.

You must keep ALIS Residency Agreements up-to-date in order to use the following event tasks in the Billing Center:

• • • Lease Added
    • Lease Revised
    • Lease Terminated
    • Lease Rate Upcoming (Next 60 Days)

Residency Agreements are behind and entitlement must be turned on by the ALIS team. For assistance, reach out to your Account Manager or the ALIS Customer Success Team. For additional details about setup and management, read these Residency Agreements Setup and Residency Agreement Center guides. 

Related Articles: 

• Billing Settings
• Impact Review Reference Guide.
• How to Complete a Service Plan
• How to configure a community Floor Plan
• Residency Agreements Setup
• Residency Agreement Center

For more assistance with the ALIS Billing Center,

Contact our ALIS Customer Success Team:

 888.404.ALIS (2547) or support@go-alis.com