What is a credit, and what can I do with it?

A credit is money in. A copay collected at the desk, a patient’s check, a card payment: each one is recorded on the account as a credit.

A credit is not finished when you record it. It sits on the account until you do one of exactly two things with it.

Apply it. You put the credit against charges the patient owes. The balance drops. Nothing left the account, the money just moved onto the work it was paying for.

Refund it. You give the money back. A refund needs a reason, because refunds are audited, and it appears as its own entry on the account.

That is the whole model, and it is deliberately small. Every dollar on an account is either sitting as an unapplied credit, applied to a charge, or refunded, and each step is written to the timeline as your receipt trail.

A credit balance is also a signal. If insurance paid after the patient already paid, the account can end up holding money that belongs to the patient. That is one of the four cases in When does money have to go back out?.

If a balance ever looks odd, ask the assistant why this patient owes what they owe. It walks the ledger and explains it step by step.