Taking a Payment via Virtual Terminal (Staff Guide)

Audience: Billing, Revenue, and Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) — anyone using the Staff Experience

What this guide covers

Virtual Terminal is how you take a payment over the phone (or in person) without the patient logging into their own account. This guide covers:

• How to get to Virtual Terminal
• The step-by-step payment flow: account lookup → bill selection (Make Payment) → payment method → confirmation → receipt
• An important fork in the flow you need to know about: not every account number takes you through Virtual Terminal's own screens
• What actually happens if you take a payment against an account number that isn't found — and why it can be very hard to reunite with the right patient later
• Which payment methods are available and what gates each one
• Tips, tricks, and the exact error messages you may see

Getting there

Virtual Terminal is under the Actions dropdown in the top navigation bar, alongside Patient Search, Transaction Search, Store, and Reports. It requires the Virtual Terminal permission.

Permission note: A separate Virtual Terminal Admin tool (also under Actions, gated by its own permission) configures institution-level "Environment" options and custom fields — that's an admin/configuration task, not a payment-taking one, and isn't covered here.

An important fork: existing account vs. one-off payment

Before walking through the screens, know this: entering an account number that matches an existing, already-consolidated patient account does not keep you inside Virtual Terminal's own payment-method screen. Instead, you're redirected into that patient's Make Payment bill list — Step 2 below — which is also used elsewhere in the Staff Experience whenever a payment is being taken against a real account.

Virtual Terminal's own payment-method → confirmation → receipt screens are what you'll see when the account number resolves to a virtual bill — one with no consolidation identifier, i.e. a one-off/quick payment that isn't tied to an existing patient record yet. In that case, Step 2 is skipped entirely — you already entered your amount in Step 1.

This fork doesn't end at Step 2. The payment-method, confirmation, and receipt screens in Steps 3–5 below are genuinely different templates depending on which path you're on — different headers, different fields, different buttons. Each of those steps calls out both versions separately.

Why this matters: most of the time, when you're paying against a real patient account, you should expect to land on the bill-selection screen next (Step 2), and then the "existing account" version of every screen after it. That's the normal path, not a detour.

Step 1: Account lookup

Step 1: Account lookup

The page header reads "What Account Would You Like To Pay?" Fields (marked with the (*) Required fields notice):

Buttons: Make Payment (or, if your role has the Point-of-Service Payment Plans permission, you'll also see Create Payment Plan From Estimate next to it).

Below the form, a Recent Transactions table shows your own last 5 transactions (ID, Patient Name, Amount, Timestamp) — or "No recent transactions found." if you have none.

Tip: the account-found/not-found messaging is your first clue about which fork above you're on. If the account is found and matches an existing patient, expect to land on the bill-selection screen (Step 2) next, not Virtual Terminal's own payment-method screen.

Before you proceed: what checking "Account not found" really means

If you check "Account not found. Please confirm the Account Number above" and continue anyway, the system creates a brand-new bill record to attach the payment to — but that record has no link to any patient or guarantor account. In practice:

• The payment isn't lost. It's tied to a real bill and a real transaction, not a void.
• It will not show up if you (or anyone else) search for this patient later — not in Patient Search, not by the account number you typed, not by any normal means. This is a structural limitation of how the record is stored, not a setting anyone can turn off.
• Your only way to find it again is Transaction Search (by transaction number, last four of the card/account, dollar amount, or date) or your own Virtual Terminal Recent Transactions list above.
• It can get linked to a real account automatically — but only if the institution's system later sends through a real account with that exact account number via the normal nightly account-load process. There is no staff-facing tool to manually attach it to an account.

Why this matters: double-check the account number before checking that box and continuing. Once a payment is taken this way, reuniting it with the right patient later depends entirely on whether the account number happens to get loaded correctly down the line — treat the checkbox as a last resort for a genuinely new/one-off payer, not a shortcut past a typo.

Step 2: Which bills would you like to pay? (Make Payment)

Header: "Which bills would you like to pay?" A link labeled "Don't see the bill you are trying to pay?" sends you back to Virtual Terminal's account lookup (Step 1) if this isn't the right account — this is the loop-back for the fork described above.

What sections appear here depends on the account's situation — you may see any combination of: New Plan (a plan offer awaiting activation), a payment-plan installment table, Bills Not On Plan, Estimated Accounts, or Bad Debt Accounts. If none apply, you'll see "No Accounts To Pay" instead.

For each bill/section that does apply, the header is Bill Payment Details, with the instruction: "If you would like to pay any other amount, please specify it here and select a date for that payment." Below that, a table lists:

Below the table:

• Apply Other Amount: — lets you specify a payment amount that isn't tied to a specific bill's balance (paired with a payment date)
• Let us know which date you'd like the charge to occur → Select Payment Date — only appears if scheduled/future-dated payments are enabled for the account
• Does the debtor require a discount to settle? (No/Yes toggle) — only appears if your institution has staff-negotiated discounts enabled; toggling Yes reveals a Discount Amount field
• Total Payment — running total of everything selected, with * Includes Discount shown if a discount was applied

Click Continue to move to payment method selection.

Why this matters: unlike Virtual Terminal's own one-time-payment screen, this step lets you pay multiple bills or plan installments in a single payment, apply a staff-negotiated discount, and optionally schedule the charge for a future date — none of that is possible on the Virtual Terminal-only path.

Tips & tricks:

• Check the balance before typing an amount. The Payment Amount field defaults to the bill's full remaining balance — you're not required to accept that, but overwriting it is easy to do by accident if you're moving quickly.
• If you try to overpay a bill, you'll be asked to confirm: "Are you sure you want to overpay for this bill?" — this exists specifically to catch accidental typos before they become a real overpayment that has to be refunded later.
• Validation is specific, use it to fix the problem fast: "You must select at least one bill to pay," "Payment amount must be greater than 0," "Payment amount may not exceed [balance]," and — for discounts — "You must enter a valid discount amount" and "Discount amount may not be greater than the balance remaining of selected bills."

Step 3: Select a payment method

Heads up: the next three screens differ depending on which fork you're on (see above). Both versions ask the same underlying question and offer the same payment methods, but the screens themselves are different templates with different fields — mixing them up will make you look for something that isn't there.

For an existing account (Step 2 led you here — the common case)

Header: "How would you like to pay?" / "Select a Payment Method." The Payment Details card shows Bill ID Number, Payment Date, Payment Amount, and — if a staff-negotiated discount was applied in Step 2 — Negotiated Discount.

For a one-off / virtual bill payment (no existing account)

Same headers, but the Payment Details card instead shows Hospital, Account ID, Payer Name, Email Address, Payment Amount, and Environment (if one was selected).

Payment methods (same on both paths)

Which options appear depends on your permissions and what your institution accepts:

Click Next: Confirmation to continue.

Step 4: Confirmation

For an existing account

You will see "Review Payment Confirmation," with the payment amount shown large just below it. The Payment Details card repeats Bill ID Number, Payment Date, Payment Amount, and Payment Method (e.g. "Ending in 1234") — and a second card, Negotiated Discount, appears if one was applied. Click Submit Payment.

For a one-off / virtual bill payment

You will see "Confirm Payment." The details card repeats Hospital, Account ID, Payer Name, Email Address, Payment Amount, Payment Method, Check Number (if paying by check), and Environment. Directly under the card is a notice worth reading to the patient if they're on the phone:

"By clicking the "Confirm" button, a one-time payment will be authorized from the account as indicated above."

Why it matters: that one-time-payment notice only appears on the virtual-bill path. Don't assume it applies to every payment you take — the existing-account path (the common one) doesn't show it, though it's still a one-time charge unless you scheduled it for a future date in Step 2. Click Confirm to process.

Step 5: Receipt

For an existing account

Depending on what happened, you'll see one of three states: "Payment Successful" (a green checkmark), "Scheduled Payment" ("Your payment has been scheduled and will be processed on the selected date" — if you set a future Payment Date in Step 2), or "Payment Failed".

The receipt card lists each transaction with Transaction ID (with status), Payment Date, Payment Amount, Payment Method, and — for payment-plan payments — the Service Fee breakdown. If you have the right permissions, you'll also see Refund and Void buttons directly on the receipt. You can Print or email the receipt. The button at the bottom returns you to Patient Home if you have account access, or back to Virtual Terminal otherwise.

For a one-off / virtual bill payment

You'll land on either "Payment Successful!" ("You're all set! We've processed the bill and it's now paid") or "Payment Failed!" ("There was a problem with your payment, please start the process again"). The itemized breakdown includes Bill ID Number, Payment Date, Payment Amount, Payment Method, Environment (if any), Name on Account, Check Number (if applicable), who took the payment (if you have that permission), and when it was processed. On failure, you'll see a Retry button instead of returning to an account.

Why it matters: the Refund/Void buttons on the existing-account receipt don't exist on the virtual-bill receipt — if you need to reverse a one-off payment, you'll need to find the transaction through Transaction Search or the account's transaction history instead.

Common gotchas — exact error text

Tip: if you see the duplicate-payment warning, don't assume it's a false alarm and immediately retry — check the patient's payment/transaction history first to confirm whether the earlier attempt actually succeeded.

This guide reflects the Staff Experience's redesigned Virtual Terminal flow, including the Make Payment bill-selection step you'll reach for any existing account. For setting up a payment plan from an estimate, or for changes to an existing plan, see the related guides in this Help Center series.