Two ways to count the same sale. They only differ when payment and delivery happen on different days.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.decodahealth.com/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
- Cash counts a sale the day money changes hands.
- Accrual counts a sale the day the service (or product) is delivered.
How each one counts common transactions
| What happened | Under Cash | Under Accrual |
|---|---|---|
| $80 facial, paid at checkout | $80 today | $80 today |
| $500 10-visit package, paid up front | $500 today, then $0 per visit redeemed | $0 at purchase, then $50 per visit redeemed |
| $200 monthly membership, billed Feb 1 | $200 on Feb 1 | $200 spread evenly across February |
| $150 gift card purchased | $150 today | $0 today, then revenue as the gift card is spent |
| Refund of a past sale | Reduces revenue on the day the refund is processed | Same — reduces revenue on the day the refund is processed |
| Void of an outstanding charge | Reduces revenue on the day of the void | Same — reduces revenue on the day of the void |
The totals eventually meet
At any given moment, Cash is usually ahead of Accrual. The gap is revenue the clinic has already collected but hasn’t yet earned — package visits the patient hasn’t taken, membership days still ahead in the cycle, gift card balances still sitting unspent. That gap is what accountants call deferred revenue — money in the bank that the clinic technically still owes the patient in services. As patients redeem those visits and the membership days tick by, Accrual catches up. Once every package is fully redeemed and every membership cycle has been delivered, the two bases land on the same total.When Cash and Accrual credit different providers
Accrual doesn’t just change when revenue counts — it can also change whose revenue it is. If one provider sells a 10-visit package and a different provider performs the visits, Cash credits all $500 to the seller on the day of purchase. Accrual credits $50 to whoever delivers each visit, as it’s redeemed. The two views can paint very different pictures of who’s driving revenue at the clinic, and that’s intentional — they answer different questions. This shows up most clearly in the Provider Earnings Report. Sellers who push package volume look strongest in Cash; providers who perform the redemptions look strongest in Accrual.Which one should you use?
| For this | Use this |
|---|---|
| Day-to-day clinic operations, end-of-day reconciliation, comparing against bank deposits | Cash |
| Financial statements, tax reports, anything for your accountant | Accrual |
| Month-over-month revenue trends | Accrual — a big package sale or membership renewal still being delivered won’t distort the comparison |
| Crediting providers for what they actually performed | Accrual |
| Crediting providers for what they sold | Cash |
Where you’ll see the toggle
The basis menu appears at the top of any dashboard or report where cash and accrual can disagree:- Product Sales Breakdown (Analytics > Product Sales)
- Provider Earnings Report (Analytics > Provider Earnings)
Set the clinic default
Go to Settings > General > Analytics and set Default Accounting Basis to either Cash or Accrual. That’s the basis the dashboards open in for everyone who logs in. Individual users can still switch their own view, but the default is what they’ll see first.A related but separate concept: deferred commissions
The Commissions module has a similar-sounding setting called Deferred Sales, with two options: When Sold vs. When Used. These determine when a provider gets paid on package sales — they’re a payroll-timing setting, not an accounting-basis setting. The two are related but independent. You can pay commissions at sale time (cash-flow friendly) while still reporting revenue on an accrual basis to your accountant. Pick each setting based on what it’s actually for:- Default Accounting Basis — How revenue is counted in reports.
- Deferred Sales (commissions) — When the provider receives the payout.