These steps should be performed on the last day your office is open in the current year (at the end of the day) — or — the first day your office is open in the New Year (at the beginning of the day).
Make a Year End Backup
ALL Customers
- Always be sure everyone is out (and stays out) of Herfert Software during the backup process.
- Click on the [Utilities] menu and select [Backup Data].
- Click on the [Quick Backup] button. You should see a black window listing several files – if not, the backup did not work and you should contact Herfert Software
Customers (who are not in our cloud hosted environment)
- Always be sure everyone is out (and stays out) of Herfert Software during the backup process.
- Click on the [Utilities] menu and select [Backup Data].
- Plug in a flash drive.
- Click on the [Backup Data Files] button. You should see a black window listing several files – if not, the backup did not work and you should contact Herfert Software.
- Label the flash drive “Herfert Software Backup – December 31, (current year)”. Save this Year End flash drive in a safe place (off-site) and do not re-use it.
note: Use one of your flash drives from the weekly rotation as the year end backup then replace it with a new flash drive to be used in your weekly rotation. This way every year you have a new flash drive in your weekly rotation. Contact us to verify your new flash drive is working properly.
note: If you have your own way of backing up Herfert Software (eg: cloud backup service, automatic backups, etc) we would highly recommend backing up our way as an additional backup. After all, this is your business and you can never have too many backups.
Print Year to Date Reports
The Year to Date reports can be used to examine the number of new patients, visits, services, charges, payments, write off’s, etc. posted throughout the year.
tip:
print the YTD report to a PDF file and save it to your year end flash drive. This way you have a digital copy. Cloud customers can save the PDF file to their shared drive (S:).
- from the [Reports] menu, select [Year to Date].
- select the desired report options
- click on the [Ok] button
In addition to the daily activity report, the following reports are also available and are optional:
-
- Individual Doctor Report (if you want associates to have their own report)
- Doctor summary report (recommended)
- Payment code cross totals report
- Procedure code cross totals report
- Referral code cross totals report
- Totals by patient report
Year to date graphs can also be printed displaying the following (per month):
-
- Payments and Write Offs
- Visits
- New Patients
- Payments and Write Offs per Procedure Code
- Payments and Write Offs per Payment Code
- Payments and Write Offs per Referral Code
Initialize Claims
(optional)
The initialize claims option allows you to automatically reset visits and deductible information for all of your patient’s default claims.
- From the [Utilities] menu, select [Year End Options].
The following options are available:
* Reset the “Current Visit” to 0
* Reset the “Deductible Balance” back to the patient’s yearly deductible amount entered.
* Reset the “Deductible Start Date” for the new year.
Delete Old Transactions
(optional)
Caution: Run this at your own risk. Once the transactions are deleted, they are permanently deleted. You would need to restore a backup just to view them again. And, they could never be re-activated into your “live” data.
Be sure to run a backup prior to running a deletion.
It is recommended to print the Transaction Deletion report to the screen then print it to a PDF file. Save the PDF file in case you ever need to reference what has been deleted. Be sure to name the PDF file appropriately for clarity.
Delete old transactions that have been paid (or written off) in full. If you no longer need to reference old paid transactions, they can be deleted. This will speed up various searches. We suggest deleting transactions thru 12/31/(current year – 7) that is, transactions that are older than 7 years.
- from the [Reports] menu, select [Transaction Deletion].
You do have an option to include or exclude payment codes. For example if you want to exclude auto accidents and personal injuries, you could enter the appropriate “Payment Codes” (eg: AA,PI) then checkmark the “Exclude” field.
Cleanup Files
(optional)
Caution: Do not use this feature unless you have been using Herfert Software for at least one full year.
Caution: We do not recommend removing unused Diagnostic codes.
Remove unused insurance companies, payment codes, and / or procedure codes from the data files found under the [Customize] menu.
- from the [Utilities] menu, select [Cleanup Files]
- select the appropriate files you would like to clean up.