An important change has been made to the Financial Transactions Report (fka Day Sheet) to improve our customer's interaction with the report. Specific information about turning this option on and feature flag details are located at the end of this article.
Once inside the report, an additional button is available; Update All. It is just to the left of the Update button. You will also see a date/time listed.
It's important to know the difference between the two and when you would use one over the other.
Definitions:
Update - This button works just about the same as it always has, with one exception. When the search values have been selected and "update" is selected, the system will first look in the cache for data matching the requested search. If it finds it, it will be used to populate the report. If it is not found (whether it is not there, or the requested search fields differ from the information stored in the cache), the system will go out into our databases like it always has to gather the information. All information gathered will be stored in a cache for 24 hours and then deleted. This will speed up the time it takes for the system to populate the report since it is not going to the database and re-pulling the same information. The date/time listed to the left of the new "update all" button, lists the date/time the information stored in the cache was retrieved.
Update All - This new button will request the system to bypass the cached data and go right to the database to retrieve information to show in the Financials Transactions (fka Day Sheet )report. This option would want to be selected at the end of the day if the Financial Transactions (fka Day Sheet) report is being utilized to balance daily collections/postings. It will include all postings/charges from the entire day, up until the moment the report is requested if the customer is utilizing MariaDB. If the client is utilizing Redshift, there will be a delay of 15-30 min as the information is passed from MariaDB to Redshift.
The date and time listed to the left of the "Update All" button is the date and time of the information listed - NOT the time the information was requested.
- Clients should continue to utilize the "Update" button as they always have as this will give them the best user experience.
- If part of the information they are wanting to see has been posted after the date/time listed, they will want to use "Update All".
- At the end of the day, they will want to use the "Update All" button so the system will retrieve all postings/charges from the entire day. They can then use this report to balance their cash drawer to what was posted as received payments. Please note, that if the client is utilizing the Redshift database, there will be a delay of 15-30 minutes for information (charges/payments/adjustments) to be forwarded over.
The "why":
Previously, the method through which the Financial Transactions (fka Day Sheet) was run included batching, where the system broke a larger query into multiple pieces and runs simultaneously (like when you ran a Financial Transactions (fka Day Sheet) report for a week or month for your entire practice). The system then consolidated the data from the minor queries and displayed the results. The drawback of this previous functionality was that it often took a long time to return the results, did not load at times, has challenges in exporting, and at times may have resulted in inaccurate results or inconsistencies when running the Financial Transactions (fka Day Sheet) with the same parameters. To combat the long run time and inconsistencies in data, our team moved the data for the Financial Transactions (fka Day Sheet) to a separate server. The advantages of this move included faster and more reliable data. However, in this transition, your data must first pass through the older server to the new one–which results in a 15 to 30-minute lag in data when querying the Financial Transactions (fka Day Sheet), which will be displayed by the timestamp on the Financial Transactions (fka Day Sheet) report.
Roll Out Plan:
The feature will be rolled out to a selected group of clients. The accounts will be monitored for 1-week to ensure there are no bugs/issues with the option. Once the payment team is satisfied with the function of the option and no bugs/issues are identified, it will be rolled out globally to all clients. Financial Transactions (fka Day Sheet) report has been enabled for all customers as of October 2022.
Database update
In addition to temporarily caching data to speed up the time it takes to generate reports, we will also be moving this function to run off a Redshift database, instead of MariaDB (our current database for DrChrono functions).
Moving the Daysheet to run off of Redshift will allow customers with large data sets to run reports themselves, and not have to request the information through our developers.
There will be a delay of approx 15-30 minutes when entering charges/payments/adjustments in the system and then having the Financial Transactions Report (fka Day Sheet)on Redshift reflect those changes. This is due to the need to have the information from MariaDB pushed over to the Redshift database. The payment team will look into shortening the time delay (September 2022).
The "how":
If the Redshift database is enabled for a customer:
- Daysheet V2 must be enabled through the Feature Rollout Tool
- Daysheet Batching must be turned off through the Feature Rollout Tool
- Daysheet Cache must be turned off through the Feature Rollout Tool
