Overpayments
What an overpayment actually is
CentralReach flags an entry as overpaid when payments applied exceed the value of the entry. It shows up in the Overpayments column of the RCM report, with patient responsibility overpayments broken out separately.
Small example. An entry expects $196.00. The payer sends a check for $208.00. The entry now carries a negative $12.00 balance.
That $12.00 is not revenue. It is not a reduction of what other payers owe you. It is cash sitting in your bank account that belongs to someone else, and at some point they are going to ask for it back.
Why netting it into AR is wrong twice
Left alone, that negative $12.00 rolls up into your AR total and reduces it.
Say your AR at agreed rates is $412,000 and you have $9,400 in overpayments scattered across entries. Net it and AR reads $402,600.
Both numbers in that sentence are wrong. AR is understated by $9,400, because $412,000 is what payers actually owe you. And your liabilities are understated by $9,400, because the refund obligation never got recorded.
Then the takeback arrives. The payer recoups $9,400 against future remittances, cash comes in light, and now you are hunting a variance in a month where nothing went wrong operationally.
Where to find the number
Pull it separately. Do not let the AR report do the math for you.
In the Receivables report, use the Outstanding and Overpayments views rather than the Net view. Net hides exactly the thing you are trying to isolate.
In the RCM report, the Overpayments column gives you the total at payer level. Drill path if you need the detail: plus sign next to the payer, then the plan, then the client, then the itemized date of service. Clicking the blue date opens the line on the Billing screen, and expanding it shows the individual payments stored beneath.
One caution. Receivables and RCM are live reports, not snapshots. Re-running a closed period will not give you the number you booked from. Archive the export at close.
How to book it
Two accounts, cleanly separated.
AR control holds what payers owe you, gross, at agreed rates. No negatives netted in.
A refund or credit balance liability holds overpayments. Book the total out of AR each month so both sides are stated at full value. When the refund is issued or recouped, it clears against the liability, not against revenue.
Your balance sheet now shows the obligation. Your AR aging now shows collectible dollars. Neither number is doing the other one’s job.
The reason this matters more in ABA
High claim volume, low dollar per claim, and frequent payer recoupments. Overpayments are rarely one $9,400 event. They are hundreds of $12 balances that never get looked at individually because none of them is big enough to notice.
That is exactly the kind of number that has to be pulled by system, not by attention.
Where Qlarity fits
Qlarity reads the CentralReach billing export you already pull and posts revenue into QuickBooks Online at agreed rates, on an accrual basis, broken out by funder, location, and procedure code. It posts through a direct QBO integration, duplicate-checked so a re-upload never doubles revenue. No PHI stored.
Clean revenue postings are what make the rest of the balance sheet reviewable. When revenue and AR go in right, the overpayment total is the thing you look at, not the thing you go looking for.
$199 per month. The first 30 days are free.
