Often clinics will take payment for a package of several treatments at once, and will need a way to track who has paid how much, and when that credit runs out. 

Cliniko has some handy tools to help with managing this! We call it a "credit balance", and this guide talks about it in depth, but we'll go over it here, as well. In this article, we'll discuss:

Head to the Payments tab in the blue sidebar, and then select Add payment:

A "new payment" page will open up. Enter the patient's name:

Below that, in the payment source field, enter the amount that the patient is prepaying for (for example, this patient is paying $500 up front):

Assuming the patient has no open invoices, at the bottom of the page, you'll see a message stating that this will add credit to their account. Press the Save payment button:

That will bring you to a new page that shows you the receipt of this payment. You'll be able to see that none of it was applied to any invoices, and the entire amount was "allocated to account credit":

Then, if you go back to the patient's details page, you'll see that they have a "credit balance" of the amount of the prepayment:

You're all set! Now, read on below

If a patient has credit balance on their account, Cliniko will automatically use this to pay for open invoices!

First, you'll need to create the invoice. Head to the Appointments page, and find the patient/appointment you need to create the invoice for, and click on it:

Click the Add payment button:

Modify the invoice if need be (add/remove billable items, products, etc.), and add a note if you want, to help indicate that this invoice is being paid for via credit:

Then click the Create invoice button.

On the next page, you'll see a message about how much existing credit the patient has, and it will say $0.00 remaining in the Payment summary box:

The $0.00 "payment" might sound weird, but stay with us! At the bottom, under Apply to invoice, you'll see an Account credit column. Depending on your payment allocation settings, this may already have a number in it that matches the amount owing on the invoice:

Click Save payment, and this will bring you back to the invoice. You'll see that it was "paid" via credit:

If you were to click on the payment details (the link with the date below Payments on the invoice), you will see something like this:

You'd see that the total payment was $0.00, and the payment itself was allocated from account credit.

Because we already entered the actual payment in step one—when we took the prepayment! 

If you go back to the patient's file after paying an invoice via account credit, you will see that the amount of credit they have has reduced accordingly:

You'll want to repeat the above steps any time you need to "pay" an invoice with account credit!