Recurring Charges and Rate Changes

Recurring Charges account for the majority of revenue, and they are invoiced to your residents automatically on a monthly basis according to your financial agreements.

If there is a planned service change or you need to prepare for a resident move-out, ALIS provides an efficient way to add rate changes and end services before the affected invoices are generated.

• This guide refers to the Impact Review and Billing Items, both of which can which can be configured in your Billing Settings. For assistance with updating your Billing Settings, contact your Account Manager or our ALIS Customer Success Team.
• It is highly recommended to enable the Impact Review as it can help your whole team invoice new charges and changes to recurring charges. Read this article to learn more: Impact Review. 
• Recurring charges are added to the resident profile by selecting from a list of Billing Items. It is important to know the Billing Items available at your community, and to establish a clear policy on which items are allocated to which residents. Billing Items for recurring charges are likely Rent and Care charges. Alternatively, your organization might bill for these two services as one all-inclusive charge, or your organization may also bill for specific services 'a la carte'. 

Add Recurring Charges

Adding recurring charges to a resident profile is a common part of the move-in process. Read this article Billing for Resident Move-Ins to learn about all related billing preparations for a resident move-in. 

Follow the steps outlined below for proper setup of recurring charges:

1. Set up Default Payer(s)

Verify that your resident Default Payer is set up properly before adding recurring charges to their profile. The payer name attached to the recurring charge will be the person to whom invoices are addressed, and these are the only people who can submit ACH payments to pay the invoices. For more information on configuring payers, read this article: How to Set a Resident Payer.

2. Review Recurring Charges section details

On an applicant or resident profile, scroll down to the Recurring Charges blue bar in the Billing section. Review the following details:

• Current Care Level and Fee associated with their most recent Evaluation and Service Plan completed in ALIS. The Care Level may have no associated fees, or you might use this value to determine the resident's monthly care charge. Note that you will need 
• Estimated Next Period Fees shows what you can expect to be billed in the next upcoming billing period based on the Active & Future charges below. 
• If the Billing status shows as Active, you can expect an invoice to run on the Next Recurring Date. You can click the Pause button if you do not want the next invoice to generate, and you can click Change to edit the Next Recurring Date for this resident.

3. Add Recurring Charges 

Recurring charges are typically Rent and Care charges, which are Billing Items. Depending on your community, you may also have additional recurring fees to add here. Be sure to review your Billing Items in Billing Settings to ensure you have the correct recurring charges to choose from. Read these guides for more information: How to add Billing Items and Billing Settings.  

1. To add a monthly recurring charge, click +Add Recurring Charge in the Active & Future tab.
2. This opens a pane on the right side of your screen where you can select the appropriate Payer Type, Payer (most likely be the Default Payer), and Billing Item. 
   • Once you have selected the Billing Item, you can add a description to display on invoices, and update the Service Start date, or when the resident becomes financially responsible for the service. The Price may be automatically populate based on your Billing Settings, but it is editable if you need to change it.
   • Click Submit to save.
3. If you have the Impact Review enabled, a pop-up appears which requires you to choose how you want to allocate the charges to invoices. For more information, read this article: Impact Review.
   • You can use this to create your Move-In Invoice. Set the "Action" menu to Add Charge, and set the "To" menu to Create New Invoice.
   • If you do not need to create the invoice yet, but want the charges to display on the next automatically-generated invoice, set the "To" menu to Future Invoice Charges.
4. Click the +Add Recurring to add any other charges to recurring billing.
   • In the Impact Review that appears, you can set the "To" menu to the invoice number you initially created with the first charge, or to Future Invoice Charges.

If you do not use Impact Review setting you will not see a pop-up after you add the charges, and you may need to create and generate invoices manually. This article also provides details on how to manually create Invoices: Billing for Resident Move-Ins.

3. Editing Recurring Charges and Invoicing

If you have made a mistake on any of the items in Recurring Charges, you can edit or delete them when you click the Options button. Once invoices have been created, editing the charges will historically impact reports that detail recurring charges within the charge dates. Editing charges will not impact historically-generated invoices.

If your team needs to delete an invoice due to making a mistake, you have the option to regenerate the recurring invoice from the resident profile rather than having to navigate to the Invoices page. Note that if your team has the Impact Review and Billing Center enabled, these features will alleviate the need for these actions. 

1. In the Billing section of the resident profile, navigate to and expand the Invoices blue bar.
2. Click Create Invoice > Recurring. 
3. In the pop-up that appears, simply set the invoice date and verify the correct payer type and charges details.
4. Click Create Invoice(s) to create the invoice and automatically be directed to that specific invoice page for further review and updating.

Add Rate Change

When the price of a charge is the only detail that changes, you can schedule a rate change. Scheduling a rate change will automate the process of allocating charges to invoices generated during the change date and invoices going forward.

1. Click Options > Add Rate Change on the applicable charge.
2. In the pane that opens to the right, select the correct Rate Change Service Start date. You can either set the date in the future to schedule the rate change, or you can add a rate change that took place in the past.
3. Enter the Price to reflect the new rate. 
4. Click Submit to save.
   • Note that based on the date of the rate change, Impact Review will automate adding credits to previous invoices for the old version of the charge, and apply the updated version of the charge.

Bulk Rate Changes

You can also update rates in bulk for your residents. This allows you to efficiently schedule changes to the pricing of specific charges for multiple residents at once.

It is important to note when you update rate changes in bulk there is no Impact Review, so any changes that are meant to affect invoices that have already generated will need to be done from the individual residents' profiles.

1. Using the Billing dropdown menu, hover over Bulk Imports and click Bulk Recurring in the submenu that opens. This takes you to the Bulk Recurring Charges page where you also have the option to create recurring charges in bulk. 
2. Click the Add Rate Change button. In the pop-up that appears, select the appropriate Billing Item and the group of residents who will be impacted by the rate change. 
   • You can either select specific residents from the Resident dropdown menu or leave the filter set to 'All.' If you leave the Resident filter set to All, you can remove individual residents who might be exempt from the list in the next step.
   • The the next step will always default to showing only residents who currently have the selected Billing Item as a Recurring Charge on their profile.
   • Add an optional Rate Change Note, which will appear in the audit of the Bulk Recurring Charges page.
3. Click Add Rate Change to go to the next step. 
4. On the next Add Rate Change page, you will see a list of all residents who currently have that Billing Item added as a Recurring Charge on their profile. 
   • To "remove" any residents from this list who may be exempt from the rate increase, click on the red X to the left of their name.
   • To set the same new rate for all residents listed here, use the Bulk Edit button at the top of the table. In the pop-up that appears, enter the Bulk Set Price and click Submit to apply the rate.
   • To individually update new rates for residents shown here, scroll to the right of the table to view the information about the charge for each person. You can also choose different dates for the rate changes from this location if needed.
5. When you click Submit, a pop-up will appear to confirm your rate changes. Back on the Bulk Recurring Charges page, you can click the View button to see audit details per resident for any bulk creation of recurring charges or rate changes.

Separately, you can also use the Edit Recurring Charges button to edit rate changes historically. This will not impact invoices that have already been generated. If you make any changes dated in the past, these will be reflected on the Recurring Charges report. Updates to specific invoices will always need to be done individually.

End Service

In addition to rate changes, it is important to be aware of how you can end services for residents. ALIS offers a convenient way to schedule these end dates ahead of time if you have advance notice. Ending the service eliminates the need to update invoices after they have already generated. 

1. In the Recurring Charges section of the profile, identify the charge and click Options > End Service.
2. In the pop-up that appears, enter the Service End Date and click End Service to schedule the service end. This will update the recurring charges section accordingly.
   • The Impact Review will help you calculate any necessary credits to existing invoices, so even if no more invoices will run following the service end, you will still want to end the service for all recurring charges in order to close out and lock a resident's billing.
   • Even if you do not use the Impact Review feature, it is important to click End Service for the charges to document the specific date they should end for all reports. This is also one way to keep any future invoices from generating. 

Related Articles:

• Impact Review
• Monthly Invoicing with ALIS
• Billing Settings

For more assistance with Recurring Charges and Rate Changes, 

Contact our ALIS Customer Success Team:

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