Low Stress Year End

No need to get all worked up about Year End,  it happens every month.  Yep you heard me right.  Year end is just like running Month End, there is nothing different you need to do.  Just run your Month End process exactly the same as you always do and you are all good.

The month end process does several things in your system:

• It puts transactions from the previous month into history.  This means you will no longer be able to edit or delete a completed transaction, payment or adjustment.
• All your clinical notes for the month are locked up.  So if you have not signed your clinical notes they will get locked up anyway for security purposes.
• If an insurance plans benefit year starts over this month the maximum used will be reset to 0.

Then, there are some optional things the month end process can accomplish:

• You can purge old appointments from your schedule.  This is a good idea after a couple years.  I would recommend keeping about 2-3 years worth the data on your appointment book.
• If you are using the month end wizard you can send billing statements, run certain reports and post finance charges.
• Also during the month end wizard you can post future due payment plans and assess late fees to your payment agreements.

For more information on reports to run for Year End check out these articles:

CLICK HERE for reports to run
CLICK HERE for more about year end
DOCTORS CLICK HERE to see what reports you need to be watching

I am looking forward to a great 2015!

Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dayna loves her work. She has over 25 years of experience in the dental industry, and she’s passionate about building efficient, consistent, and secure practice management systems. Dayna knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software—the better you learn to use it, the more productive and stress-free your office will be. In 2016, Dayna founded Novonee ™, The Premier Dentrix Community, to help cultivate Dentrix super-users all over the country. Learn more from Dayna at www.novonee.com and contact Dayna at dayna@novonee.com.

For the Accountant in the practice . . .

We all know how amazing Dentrix is for managing your patient information, charting your patient’s clinical data, and providing you with a mountain of reporting options … but what about going a step further and downloading the numbers directly into your Quickbooks software? I bet you didn’t even know Dentrix could do that, did you? Let me tell you how.

If you have access to the Dentrix Resource Center, you can go directly to Article #22921 and read all about it. However, if that is not an option for you, here are some basic instructions with screen shots. First, go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Preferences and click on the Paths tab to check the DXPort path. This is where it will export the information. To set up the export to Quickbooks, you will go to the Office Manager > Analysis > DXPort Setup, then follow the instructions.

After you have successfully exported your Dentrix file, you can import and open it up in Quickbooks. Open Quickbooks for the “Company” the office uses. Choose File > Utilities > Import, then browse to the DentrixAR.IIF file that was exported and double click on it. Click chart of accounts and you should be able to view the figures just imported.

NOTE: If you need more help with importing the DentrixAR.IIF file into Quickbooks, you will need to call Quickbooks because the Dentrix customer service department does not support the Quickbooks program, only the DXPort program.

Using this feature in your Dentrix software could save you time and import more accurate figures for your accountant.

Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dayna loves her work. She has over 25 years of experience in the dental industry, and she’s passionate about building efficient, consistent, and secure practice management systems. Dayna knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software—the better you learn to use it, the more productive and stress-free your office will be. In 2016, Dayna founded Novonee ™, The Premier Dentrix Community, to help cultivate Dentrix super-users all over the country. Learn more from Dayna at www.novonee.com and contact Dayna at dayna@novonee.com.

Let's do some goal setting for 2015

What’s on your agenda for December?  Decorating the office for the upcoming holidays, getting the thank you cards out to your referring doctors, or how about planning for 2015?  My vote is to do some goal setting for 2015 and let your Dentrix software help you.  Set up a meeting with your doctor, accountant or financial advisor for the practice and set your office goals for production, collection and new patients, then enter these goals in Dentrix so you can easily track your numbers.

There are a couple of places in Dentrix to help you manage your goals for the practice.  First, let’s set up your production goals so you can watch them on the appointment book and schedule appropriately.  Go to the Office Manager > Analysis > Practice > Setup > Goals, this is where you can enter your provider production goals for each month.  If your doctor has given you the daily goal, just multiply this by the total number of days worked to get the monthly goal.  Click on the >> next to the provider and select the first provider to enter goals for, then click on Read Selected Goals and it will list any goals you have already entered. If this is for a new year, it will be empty.  Then click Add and select 1 for January, 2 for February, and so on.

Next, go to the appointment book and click on View > edit or new > add in the providers you have entered goals for in the upper left area and click on View Amount. This will show you how much scheduled production you have on your books for that day.  Back on the appointment book, click on the monthly calendar in the upper left and click on Scheduled Production. Here you can see your scheduled production, monthly goal you just entered, and the variance.  This is simple way to track your monthly production goal.

Another place these production goals show up is the Daily Huddle Report.  This report is amazing!  Here are other blog posts on the Daily Huddle Report:

Your Daily Motivation

5 Minute Morning Huddle

Once you have your goals for production, collection and new patients, you can enter these as benchmarks for the Practice Advisor Report.  This report will give you a more comprehensive analysis of your numbers and give you some guidelines if you need to improve your office stats.  To enter your goals into the Practice Advisor Report, go to the Office Manager > Analysis > Practice Advisor > Practice Advisor Setup > Benchmarks Setup >. To enter your benchmarks, give a range for each category with your office goal being somewhere in the middle.  For example, if your total office production goal is $100k, then your benchmark would be $90k - $110k.  

Continue entering in the benchmarks for your practice and then use the Practice Advisor Report as a monthly monitoring tool.  For more information on this report, click the links below for other blog posts.

Your own personal practice management consultant . . .

The 5 stats every office should monitor

Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dayna loves her work. She has over 25 years of experience in the dental industry, and she’s passionate about building efficient, consistent, and secure practice management systems. Dayna knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software—the better you learn to use it, the more productive and stress-free your office will be. In 2016, Dayna founded Novonee ™, The Premier Dentrix Community, to help cultivate Dentrix super-users all over the country. Learn more from Dayna at www.novonee.com and contact Dayna at dayna@novonee.com.