User Guide

Statements

ArkCloud produces statements in two separate ways, and they behave differently: statements staff generate on an account, and statements the scheduled statement engine produces. Only the second reach the patient portal.

Written for: Billing staff · Supervisors · Administrators

Two kinds of statement

Field or control	What it means
Account statements (staff)	Generated by a member of staff from an account's Statements tab, as a Balance Due or Itemized statement. Listed on Patient AR → Statements and in the Letters Queue. Web documents only; not shown to the patient in the portal.
Engine statements (scheduled)	Produced by the statement engine on a schedule (weekly, every two weeks, monthly or quarterly), at 03:00 each night for whatever is due. Delivered by email, text, portal or print queue. These are what the patient portal lists and lets the patient download as a PDF.

Generating a statement on an account

Account → Statements tab → Generate Statement

Open the account and select the Statements tab.
Select Generate Statement and choose Balance Due Statement or Itemized Statement.
Print it and send it through your own mail process, then mark it as sent on the Letters Queue. Statements generated here are postal letters, so Send on Patient AR → Statements refuses them with "Print it and mail it; ArkCloud cannot post letters."

An "Itemized" statement shows a single services line with payments, adjustments and the balance - not individual charges. Download PDF stays disabled because no PDF is produced. The same tab holds Patient portal access for sending the patient a portal link.

The Patient Statements screen

ArkCloud RCM → Patient AR → Statements

Warning

Generate Statements opens a page where you select accounts with a balance due, a template and Email or PDF delivery. It creates the statements as Generated and does not send them; they then appear on this screen to send or print.
Send and Send Batch email an Email-channel statement to the guarantor and mark it Sent only when the email provider accepted it. If the provider rejects it, it is marked Failed; if no email transport is configured on the deployment, or the guarantor has no email address, the statement is left unchanged and the reason is shown. PDF and certified-mail statements - which is what the account Statements tab generates - are refused with "Print it and mail it; ArkCloud cannot post letters." Text messages are refused. Send Batch reports how many were sent and how many failed.
Before sending, Send checks the patient's communication preferences: a cease-and-desist or a bankruptcy on file stops it with "Not sent: the patient has a cease-and-desist on file" (or a bankruptcy), and the statement is left unchanged. These are the same holds statement runs apply. Attorney representation is not checked, by Send or by statement runs.
Statements generated in bulk - for example with Generate Statements on a work queue - are created as Generated and are not sent. Send them from this screen. A request to generate and send in one step is refused with "Generate them, then send them from AR > Statements."
Print Queue only shows a count.
The Draft and Ready to Mail status filters return errors, and there is no Generated filter. The Mail method filter shows only certified-mail statements, so statements generated on an account (PDF) never appear under it. The email open rate is always 0%.
Export downloads a CSV and works.

Scheduled statements (the statement engine)

The engine runs nightly in the worker service and generates statements for each schedule that is due. A schedule (weekly, every two weeks, monthly or quarterly) is set per organisation by an administrator on Settings → Statement cadence.Until a schedule exists, the engine produces nothing.

Statements the engine skips.
Field or control	What it means
Nothing owed	Zero or credit balance.
Recently billed	A statement was issued recently, or a payment was received recently (configurable).
No route	The patient is marked do-not-mail and do-not-email.
Legal holds	Cease-and-desist or bankruptcy recorded on the patient's preferences.

How engine statements are delivered

Field or control	What it means
Email	A short "your statement is ready" email, through SendGrid or an SMTP mailbox - whichever the deployment uses. Not sent to a patient who has opted out of email.
Text	A notice with no account detail. Needs Twilio and text consent - from the patient's consent flag, contact preferences or the TCPA consent register, with any opt-out winning - and is sent only between 8am and 9pm in your organisation's timezone. A refused text is recorded as failed with the reason.
Portal	The statement becomes visible in the patient portal.
Print	Marked as queued for print. ArkCloud has no print or mail vendor - your team prints and posts it.

The channel is the patient's preferred channel where one is recorded, otherwise email if there is an address on file, otherwise print. A statement is only marked sent when a provider accepted it; otherwise it stays queued. Failed sends are retried up to three times.

Separately, once patient messaging is switched on, the patient is sent a portal link when a statement is issued - see statements in the patient portal.

Tracking

Statement records carry a status (generated, queued, sent, failed or suppressed, among others). Delivered, opened and bounced are never set, because ArkCloud does not receive delivery events from email or SMS providers.

Customisation and messaging

Statement layout is fixed: there are no settings for a logo, colours, fonts, languages, a payment slip, a QR code or messages that change with the age of the balance. The PDF a patient downloads shows the statement date, period, due date, previous balance, new charges, payments, adjustments, the balance and the minimum due.

Statements and the patient portal

Statements do not carry a portal access code. Patients reach the portal from a link sent by email or text. See opening a portal account.

Good practice

Decide which of the two statement paths your organisation uses, and do not run both for the same accounts.
Mark a postal statement as sent (Letters Queue → Mark as Sent) only after it has actually been posted.
Hold statements yourself for accounts with an open dispute or assistance request - nothing does it automatically.

Statements

Related documentation