Cash sweeps

In healthcare billing, money often arrives in one account but needs to end up in another. Insurance payments land in a passthrough account that feeds the operating account. An MSO collects on behalf of its PCs and needs to distribute funds daily. A practice keeps a reserve threshold and sweeps the rest to a higher-yield account overnight. A PC owes its MSO the same management fee on the first of every month. Cash sweeps handle all of this automatically. You define a rule once (which account to watch, how much to keep, where to send the excess, and when to check) and Lemma runs it on schedule. Sweeps can move funds between your Lemma accounts or out of Lemma to accounts you hold at another bank. Many customers pair Lemma’s lockbox, MSO-PC compliance, and other products with existing accounts elsewhere by sweeping over RTP, which settles in seconds. That lets critical money movement, like funding payroll at your primary bank, keep running on schedule while the rest of your treasury runs on Lemma.

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Creating a sweep rule

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When to use sweeps

• MSO-PC fund distribution: an MSO collects insurance payments centrally, then sweeps each PC’s share to their dedicated account at the end of each day
• Passthrough accounts: a lockbox account receives all inbound checks, then sweeps the balance to your operating account after keeping a small reserve
• Cash concentration: multiple practice locations each maintain a local account, and excess funds are swept nightly to a single treasury account
• Recurring monthly fees: a PC sends its MSO the same management fee on the first of every month, so the payment moves on a documented schedule instead of being invoiced and chased

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Sweep methods

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Target balance

The default method keeps your source account at a set floor. Whenever the sweep runs, Lemma checks the current balance and sends everything above your threshold to the destination. If the balance is already at or below the target, the sweep is skipped.

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Fixed amount

You can send a specific dollar amount each time the rule runs. This is useful when you need to fund an account by a predictable amount. For example, top up a PC’s operating account with a fixed daily allocation from the MSO. Paired with a monthly schedule, it also covers a payment that is identical every month, like an MSO management fee or a loan repayment. The sweep is skipped entirely when the source account has less than the fixed amount.

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Percentage

You can send a share of the source account’s available balance each time the rule runs. Enter a whole percentage from 1% to 99% in Percentage of balance to send. Lemma rounds the transfer down to the nearest cent. We recommend only running percentage-based sweeps once a week or once a month. Running them too often is functionally the same as transferring your entire balance since they are calculated from the available balance rather than as a percentage of incoming deposits.

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Sweeping to another Lemma account

When both accounts are on Lemma, transfers settle instantly at no cost. This is ideal for MSO-PC structures where the MSO and each PC both bank with Lemma. Select Another Lemma account, then pick the destination entity and account. If your organization only has one entity, the entity dropdown is skipped.

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Sweeping to an external account

You can also sweep funds to a bank account outside Lemma. Choose your transfer method based on urgency and cost:

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Setting the schedule

Each rule runs either weekly or monthly. Weekly rules run on the days of the week you pick. Select every weekday, just Fridays, or any other combination. Monthly rules run on the first day of every month. Use this when the payment is the same each month rather than tied to a balance. Either way, you choose what times of day to check the balance. You can add multiple check times — for example, 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM — so excess funds are swept both when the business day opens and after the last deposits settle. ACH transfers only process during banking hours on business days. A sweep that triggers on a weekend or holiday will queue the ACH, but it won’t settle until the next business day. This catches monthly rules a few times a year, whenever the 1st lands on a weekend. If you need funds to move over weekends, use RTP or FedNow instead. Both RTP and FedNow settle in seconds, any day of the week. Lemma remembers your timezone when you create a rule, so a 5:00 PM sweep always runs at 5:00 PM in your timezone. Team members who edit an existing sweep will not be able to change the timezone.

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Categories and documents

Every sweep transfer can carry the same bookkeeping context as a transfer you send by hand. Set it once on the rule in the Add details step, and Lemma applies it to every run. Both fields are optional.

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Category

Pick a transaction category such as “MSO Fees” to tag each transfer the sweep makes. Lemma applies the category to the outgoing transaction on the source account. The receiving side is not categorized. If a category is archived after you create the rule, the editor shows the rule with no category and asks you to choose another or leave it blank.

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Supporting documents

Upload the agreement or invoice that justifies the sweep, such as the management services agreement behind a monthly MSO fee. You can attach up to 10 documents. Lemma attaches them to every transfer the sweep makes, so each transaction explains itself without a separate upload. Who can see the documents depends on the destination:

• Another entity on Lemma: the receiving entity sees the documents on its side of each transfer.
• Your own Lemma account: only your team sees them.
• External account: they are for your records only and are never sent to the recipient.

When you edit a sweep’s documents, the change applies to transfers from then on. Earlier transfers keep the documents they were made with. You must wait for the document to finish uploading before you can save the sweep. See attachments for accepted file types and size limits.

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Limits

Each sweep run can transfer up to $100,000. If the excess balance is larger than that, the remaining amount will be swept on the next scheduled run. Contact us at contact@getlemma.com if your practice needs higher per-run limits.

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Editing a rule

Click any row in the sweep rules table to open the editor. The form is pre-filled with the current configuration. Save Changes only activates when you have actually changed something, so you cannot accidentally save a no-op update. If you’re limited to specific bank accounts, a sweep’s source or destination might be an account outside your access. The editor shows that account as the field’s current value, dimmed, but doesn’t list it as an option. You can save other changes and keep that account. If you switch to a different account, you can’t switch back to it. You can’t save changes to an active sweep while any of its accounts is closed.

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Who can manage sweeps

Team members with the Accounting or Owner banking role can view the Cash Sweeps page and create and edit sweep rules. Read Only members do not see the page. See user roles for what each role can do. To require an owner’s sign-off when an Accounting member creates or edits a sweep rule, set up an approval rule. While any approval rule is active, sweep changes take effect only after an owner approves them. A team member who is limited to specific bank accounts sees every sweep that involves at least one account they can see. Accounts on that sweep that are outside their access are shown by name only. That team member can turn a sweep on or off, or approve or reject a sweep request, only if the sweep involves at least one account they can see. A sweep can be turned on only while every account it involves is open.