How to create payers ?

 A payer is the third party you bill instead of (or in addition to) the client — an insurer, an employer, a government program, etc. You create your payers once at the clinic level, then attach them to clients through funding policies.

▎ Prerequisite: Third-Party Billing must be enabled for your clinic. See the article "Third-Party Billing: how to enable and configure the feature".

1. Open the Payers section

Go to: https://www.colib.io/settings?show=directbilling

Expand the Third Party Billing panel and scroll to the Payers section. There you'll find a search box and the list of payers already created.

2. Add a payer

Click Add a payer. A form opens where you fill in the payer's details.

3. Fill in the payer details

- Payer name (required) — the name that will appear on invoices (e.g. the insurer's name).
- Type (required) — choose Insurer, Employer, Government or Other.
- Billing email (required) — the address invoices are sent to. This is the email used when you send an invoice to the payer, not the client's email.
- Phone (optional).
- Billing address (optional) — appears on invoices addressed to this payer.
- Payer ID / reference number (optional) — your account or provider reference with this payer.
- Submission method (optional) — how you submit claims to this payer: Email, Portal, Mail, or leave Not specified.
- Notes (optional) — internal notes, not shown to the payer.

▎ Conditional rules:
▎ - If the submission method is Email, a billing email is required.
▎ - If the submission method is Mail, a billing address is required.

4. Save

Click Save. The payer appears in the list with a status of Active and becomes selectable when you attach a funding policy to a client.

Managing existing payers

Each row in the payer list shows the Name, Type, Billing email, Submission method and Status, with these actions:

- Edit (pencil) — update the payer's details.
- Archive / Unarchive (box) — an archived payer no longer appears in selection dropdowns but stays visible on
historical invoices. Use this to retire a payer you no longer work with.
- Delete (trash) — permanently removes the payer.

▎ Archive vs Delete: if a payer has already been used on invoices or policies, archive it instead of deleting it, so your history stays intact.

▎ "Added via booking – to verify" badge: if a client selected their insurer themselves during an online booking, the  payer is flagged for review. Open it, confirm or correct the details, and save.