Billing a month, step by step

This guide walks you from start to finish through a billing month: open the period, generate the billing, create and confirm the invoices, then close the month. Follow it with WideCare open alongside: each step tells you where to click.

The idea in two parts

Each month can be billed in two flows:

  • the resident’s share — accommodation, supplements and supplement conventions, medication, adjusted for absences → standard invoices, the subject of this page;

  • the insurer’s share (the care allowance paid by the health insurer), where the country pack bills one → sent to the health insurers according to the country’s rules.

WideCare runs them in parallel on a single period.

A guided tour

When guided tours are turned on in the general settings, the Monthly billing tour walks you through these steps on screen, from the ? menu at the top.

In Belgium

The insurer’s share is the INAMI allowance: between Generate and Create Invoices, the period adds a Check MDA step (insurability) and a Generate eFact step; the batches are then sent and followed up in the eFact Cockpit before the close. See Billing a month in Belgium.

Step 1 — Open the month’s period

  1. Open the Billing app.

  2. Go to Facturation → Billing Periods.

  3. Open the month’s period. To create it, click New in the list, or use the + button of the billing dashboard and choose Billing period.

The list shows, for each month, a To do column: the step it is waiting for. The months that need something are in bold.

On the period, the status is at the top (Draft → Generated → Invoiced → Closed). The button for the next step is always the leftmost one, highlighted.

Step 2 — Generate the billing lines

  1. Click Generate. The Generate Billing window opens.

  2. Leave Residents empty to bill all active residents (or pick one resident for a specific case), then click Generate.

  3. For each resident, WideCare computes the accommodation, the supplements and supplement conventions and the medication, applies the absences, and adds the care allowance where the country pack bills one.

The period becomes Generated.

A resident without an active stay

If some residents have no active stay covering the month, generation stops and a Missing active stay window lists them. Click Open stay or Create stay on a row to fix it, then click Generate again. You can also leave those residents out of the selection.

Advance billing

For residents billed in advance, accommodation is billed one month ahead; the care allowance and supplements for the month served. See Invoice type: in advance or in arrears.

Step 3 — Review the result

Before invoicing, read what was generated:

  • the Residents tab — one row per resident, with their invoice type for the month, the room, the stay type, who the invoice goes to, the presence and absence days and the amounts;

  • the Billing Lines tab — the detail, line by line, with the payer;

  • the smart buttons at the top — Absences (the absences that reduced the presence days) and Unbilled (the residents absent for the whole month, not billed at all);

  • the Info tab and the messages WideCare posts in the period’s thread.

The detail of a resident

Click a resident in the Residents tab to open their Resident Billing detail, across the whole width of the screen:

  • Resident Info — the stay, the stay type, the room, the Stay Days, Presence Days and Absence Days, Invoice To, and the Invoice Type (this period);

  • Totals — Accommodation, Supplements, Resident Part and Total;

  • the Billing Lines tab — the month’s lines, with a Calc. column that explains each quantity;

  • the Lines and Absences smart buttons.

The lines are read-only: every refresh rebuilds them from the stays, the absences and the supplements. To change a price, edit the resident’s supplement convention (Negotiated price) or add a one-time supplement.

A yellow row

A yellow row means the resident’s invoice type for this month changed after the lines were built. Open it and click Apply the Invoice Type: until then, the period refuses to create their invoices. See Invoice type: in advance or in arrears.

A mistake is cheaper to fix now: correct the source (stay, absence, supplement), then run Refresh from the gear menu of the period. With automatic billing refresh turned on, most changes reach the period on their own.

In Belgium

Before creating the invoices, the period asks for two more steps: Check MDA (the insurability of the residents; Retry Failed MDA for the requests that failed), then Generate eFact, which builds one batch per union of mutualities from the period’s lines. See Billing a month in Belgium.

Step 4 — Create the invoices (resident’s share)

  1. Click Create Invoices.

  2. The draft invoices for the resident’s share are generated, in the Invoices tab, with the journal and the person each one is addressed to.

  3. Check them, then Confirm them.

The period becomes Invoiced.

To send the invoices, open them with the Invoices smart button, tick the ones to send and click Send.

A confirmed invoice “freezes” the month

Once posted, a resident’s invoice is never rebuilt silently. When a change reaches that resident afterwards (a late absence, a departure, a supplement), a Corrections pending banner appears on the period: click Refresh to create the supplementary invoice or credit note, then find it under the Corrective docs smart button. Other residents are not affected.

In Belgium

The eFact batches built before the invoices are then sent to the mutualities, and their acknowledgements, settlements and rejections followed up; the period closes only once every batch has reached a final outcome. See Billing a month in Belgium and Electronic invoicing (eFact).

Step 5 — Close the period

Once no invoice is left in draft, click Close Period. The month is locked.

If the button does not show, a Cannot close yet message under the header says what is still blocking. A closed period can be reopened with Reopen.

Start the month again

Reset to Draft (on a generated or invoiced period) clears the billing lines, the residents and the draft invoices, so the period can be generated again. Residents whose billing is finalised — a posted invoice — are kept untouched.

Process recap

graph TD
  A[Open the period] --> B[Generate]
  B --> C[Review]
  C --> D[Create Invoices]
  D --> E[Confirm the invoices]
  E --> F[Close Period]

Going further