After insurance pays its share, what's left is patient responsibility. The Patient Balances page shows those balances and lets you collect them with secure payment requests sent by text message. You can also collect a walk-in payment from the Payments & Invoices tab of the patient’s record.
Your payments account
Patient card payments — copays at the visit, walk-in payments, and online payment links — are charged to your practice's own Stripe account and paid out by Stripe to your bank. The Payments account card at the top of Patient Balances shows each connected Stripe account, the providers it serves, and whether it is enabled. Stripe dashboard opens Stripe for payouts, refunds, and card readers.
To connect an account, staff with full dashboard access click Connect Stripe account and enter:
Account name — a name you'll recognize, such as your practice name.
Secret key and Publishable key — from Developers → API keys in your Stripe dashboard. Taiga checks the secret key with Stripe before saving it and never shows it again.
Billing providers — the providers whose payments go to this account. Each provider can belong to one account.
A provider without a connected, enabled account can't take card payments, and payment links can't be sent for their balances. Use Edit on an account to rename it, replace its keys, change its providers, or disable it.
Balance statuses
The tabs split balances by where they are in collection:
Ready to request — insurance has finished; the patient owes this and no request has been sent yet.
Requested — a payment request has been sent and is awaiting payment.
Paid — the patient has paid.
Suppressed — balances you've chosen not to pursue.
Collecting a balance
Review the row: patient, amount owed, date of service, payer, and when the patient was last contacted.
Click Review text to see what will go out: a text from your clinic with a secure payment link for the balance. Patients can reply with questions.
Click Send request. When you confirm, Taiga verifies the patient's contact details, their text consent, and the live balance before anything is sent.
Track it: the status moves to Requested, and to Paid once the patient pays.
If you'd rather deliver the link yourself — over the phone, in person, or from your own email — use Copy payment link in the More actions menu to get the same secure link without sending a message.
Collecting a walk-in payment
No appointment is needed. Card payments need a card reader added to the provider's Stripe account; add and manage readers in your Stripe dashboard. Cash, check, and money order need no reader.
Open Patients, select the patient, and open Payments & Invoices → Current Balance. Review the visits and the amount outstanding.
Click Payment Actions → Record payment, then choose Card reader, Cash, Check, or Money order under Payment Method. Keep the full amount or enter a smaller amount for a partial payment. Payments are applied to the oldest visit first.
For a card, choose the payment device and click Charge patient. Ask the patient to follow the reader’s prompts. Use Cancel transaction if the patient changes their mind before paying.
For money already in hand, choose Cash, Check, or Money order, enter the check number or money order serial number, choose the location where you took it, and click Record payment. The payment is recorded against the balance right away.
When the payment completes, click Print receipt to open and print the receipt. It lists the visits the payment was applied to. For a card, Card receipt opens the card processor's receipt.
If the record shows Payment in progress, click Resume to finish that payment before starting another. If a payment didn't report a result, check the reader (for a card) and the patient's payments, then choose It was collected or It was not collected. If the balance has changed or is unavailable, refresh the record and review the current amount before trying again.
Front desk staff can collect these payments and print their receipts. Staff with full dashboard access can review the patient's payments and refunds under Payments on the same tab, including copays taken at visits, online payments, and payments recorded by your billing team, even after the balance is paid in full. A canceled payment or a completed partial payment allows a fresh collection using the updated remaining balance.
A payment in progress on the card reader, or an online payment the patient has started, holds the balance until it finishes. To refund a payment, contact Taiga support.
No-shows and no-show fees
When a patient misses a visit, open the visit on the Appointments page after its start time and click Mark no-show. Choose the fee ($25 for an established patient, $50 for a new patient) or No fee, then confirm. The visit shows as No show on the schedule. Nothing is charged: a fee is added to the patient's balance and collected with their other balances at the next visit, at the window, or online.
To add a fee later, or a same-day cancellation fee, use Add fee on the visit. A visit can only get one fee, and a checked-in visit can't get one.
When a checked-in patient leaves, click Check out on the visit. It shows as Checked out on the schedule.
Paying online
Patients pay from the secure payment link by card. Apple Pay and Google Pay are not offered on the payment page.
Automatic outreach
When patient messaging is set up for your practice, Taiga also works balances automatically so nothing sits idle: it texts the patient a secure payment link once a balance is ready and sends one reminder a few days later. Texts go out between 8am and 9pm in the patient's time, and patients can reply STOP to opt out. Every automatic send runs the same checks — contact details, consent, and the live balance — and suppressing a balance or patient stops all automatic outreach to them.
History and exceptions
Use View history and log contact on any row to open the patient's history. It has three tabs:
Messages (the default) shows the patient's text conversation. It is read-only. Attachments are listed by name and type but can't be opened or downloaded here.
Activity shows every touch on the balance — requests sent, payment links created, payments received — and links to the claim.
Log contact records calls, texts, emails, or in-person conversations you've had outside Taiga, along with the outcome. Saving switches to Activity so you can see the new entry.
Copy text and Download .txt on the Messages tab export the full conversation. If a thread can't be shown because it is also linked to a balance outside this patient's records for your practice, both the drawer and the export say how many were left out.
The More actions menu covers the exceptions:
Don't request this balance — suppress this one balance without affecting the patient's other visits.
Never contact this patient — stop all payment requests to this patient.
View claim — jump to the claim behind the balance.