In Part 3 of this "mini-series" on reasons not to purchase office mate, or get rid of it if you already have it, we are going to explore Ledger Balances.
In Office Mate, ledger balances are often incorrect, as seen below. (HINT: The picture is quite large so you will need to click on it in order to get a better view. )
This is kind of a no-brainer. As has been my mantra with Office Mate, and ALL Eyefinity produced software for that matter, you purchase office management software to help you MANAGE YOUR PRACTICE which means that you are entrusting it to provide you with accurate financial information. As seen in the example above, however, Office Mate provides you with a balance for the patient, "Alexa" of $54.89 but if you click on the detail you will find that the ACTUAL ACCOUNT BALANCE is zero!!! These in-accurate balances are found throughout the patient ledger in office mate and usually occur after legitimate write offs have been posted to patient accounts. Basically, your staff is writing off these charges but a balance remains. Often, these erroneous balances are left to age and generally end up being billed to patients on statements! To Office Mate's credit, they have created a separate program you can download to "TRY" and fix some of these errors (this program is called "iBal" and will be explored in a subsequent post) but the program does not always work and you have to ask for it if you want it. It is not offered to you by Office Mate when you purchase the program nor can it be found in the Office Mate download center.
As with every other error I have posted about and will post about in the future, Office Mate does not deny the existence of this costly bug and has deemed it to be part of the program "as designed" which means they have no immediate intention of fixing it. When you buy Office Mate, regardless of what price you pay for it, YOU ARE BUYING SOFTWARE THAT DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY AND YOU PAY A YEARLY MAINTENANCE FEE OF UP TO $2,000.00 TO SUPPORT THIS BROKEN SOFTWARE!
Did I mention that not only are these ledger errors reflected on patient statements but on the reports you and your staff generate using Office Mate as well? It's true! This means that if you run an "open balance" report or an "aging report" YOU CAN'T TRUST THE NUMBERS THE SYSTEM IS GIVING YOU WHICH EFFECTIVELY MEANS THAT YOU WILL NEVER HAVE A TRULY BALANCED ACCOUNTING WHEN USING OFFICE MATE! This is truly a COSTLY shame.
