Bank Reconciliation Can Be Automated – Learn How

Diagnostic testing volume is at an all-time high due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, it is more important than ever to automate as much of the revenue cycle management (RCM) process as possible. Adding more people to the process or more work on the existing people working the process is just not feasible and is costly. One part of RCM that often remains a manual process is bank reconciliation. Yet it doesn’t need to be.

There are five benefits of automating your bank reconciliation process:

1. Significantly reduce manual processes and associated errors when reconciling the daily/monthly bank transactions with deposit batches created in your RCM software
2. Quickly identify payor remittances in your bank, but not in your RCM system.
3. Quickly identify payments in your RCM systems, but not in the bank.
4. Facilitate daily bank fund confirmation which in turn can expedite payment posting.
5. Create and maintain an end of month (EOM) auditable bank reconciliation record.

XiFin RPM offers automated Bank Reconciliation: How it Works

To get started, a daily transaction file in a BAI2 format must be retrieved from all accounts receivable related banks/bank accounts and placed on your SFTP site. The BAI2 data files represent all the transactions that have occurred in the customer’s bank account(s) reflecting EFT, ACH and/or any other type of debits and credits.  

• A patient lockbox is configured to receive a direct file from your bank

Once the BAI2 file is downloaded and deposits are in created, the automated bank reconciliation process can take place. The XiFin RPM platform reconciles bank deposits to XiFin deposits containing the same electronic file transfer (EFT) identification (ID) and dollar amount. Using both the EFT ID and dollar amount is important to avoid incorrect reconciliation. Reconciled deposits are easily identified in XiFin RPM by the payment processing team to facilitate timely posting

Any unreconciled deposits are identified via the XiFin Business Intelligence “Unreconciled Deposit report”. XiFin offers enterprise-grade business intelligence capabilities as part of their RCM platform that helps XiFin customers to identify the matching deposits and enter the bank transaction ID manually in the related deposit. Those deposits will then be reconciled.

The point of the reconciliation is to identify all transactions between the bank (the source of truth) and the RCM system. However, it is possible for transactions to remain unreconciled at the end of the day or month. One of the reasons could be timing. For example, if the reconciliation is performed on a daily basis then you and your team may spot this trend. Sometimes, it may simply be that the deposits are in your bank, but not in your RCM system or vice versa. This is not an ideal situation, but it is an excellent example of why proper bank reconciliation is so important. If properly executed, automated bank reconciliation allows for unreconciled items to be quickly identified so that team members can determine if a deposit is missing from the bank or if it was never entered into your RCM system.

Due Diligence is Still important

It is important for billing team members to ensure that the processes are correctly executed and that they have the visibility and tools to accurately and efficiently validate and complete tasks as outlined in the workflow diagram below.

Want to know more about automated bank reconciliation and robust RCM automation?