💡 Top tip: It is important first to understand how allocations work and how payments are allocated/explained.
What is the 'Monthly Accounts' report?
🚨 Important: The report differs depending what region you are in. For details on how the report looks in UK/ROI/APAC, check our separate article.
The 'Monthly Accounts' report is a financial report that provides insight into your practice's financial status. It focuses on A/R (accounts receivable), which represents the total balance of all outstanding invoices.
This report is useful for:
Understanding practice and practitioner performance by viewing total charges, discounts, invoice adjustments and payments towards invoices on a monthly scale.
Tracking your accounts receivable and how your unpaid invoices change from month to month.
Calculating practitioner pay, and accounting for any adjustments (this is the recommended report for doing so - we don't recommend using the 'Practitioner Allocation Totals' report for this).
The numbers in this report might look different from other financial reporting because it accounts for adjustments and corrections, rather than showing the current state of your accounts - giving you a useful overview, on a monthly basis.
How do I use the 'Monthly Accounts' report?
📝 Please note: This report is only available to permission level 3 or 4 users.
To access the 'Monthly Accounts' report:
Go to the 'Reports' section of Dentally. In the 'Financial' section, click 'Monthly Accounts'.
The report will open, displaying monthly totals, and subsections for 'Totals by type' and 'Totals by provider'.
💡 Top tip: You can hover over any column header in the report to see an explanation of what that column refers to. You can also click on any hyperlinked total in the report to see a breakdown of how that total was calculated.
If you have multiple sites, the report shows data for your currently selected site. This includes all payments used to pay for treatments charged at your site, regardless of where the payment was taken.
If there are cross-site payments, you will see an additional summary:
'Collected at other sites' shows money included in your totals that was collected elsewhere.
'Collected for other sites' shows money your site collected that appears in other sites' reports (but does not contribute to your report).
Monthly totals
The top section displays your monthly totals. Some column headers will vary depending on the region you're in.
From here, you can select the month you want to view using the dropdown - the earliest available month you can see will vary.
💡 Top tip: If you view the current month, it will only go up to the date you are viewing, and will display '(to date)' after the month and year, eg 'February 2025 (to date)'. A badge will also appear at the top if you are viewing the current month, indicating when it was last updated.
In this section, you can view:
'Opening A/R': Total unpaid invoices on the 1st of the selected month.
'Production total': The total charged during the selected month (excluding discounts, and adjusted to account for changes to previous months' invoices).
'Collection total': All payments recorded and allocated to invoices during the selected month (adjusted to account for changes to previous months' payments).
'Closing A/R': The total amount from unpaid invoices at month-end of the selected month (or at the current date if you have selected the current month).
'Net change': The change in your A/R during the selected period - ideally $0 or negative, showing you're not taking on more unpaid invoices.
Totals by type or provider
Below the 'Monthly Totals' section, you will see two more sections, 'Totals by type' and 'Totals by provider'. As with your monthly totals, some column headers will vary depending on your region.
'Totals by type' - This breaks down your totals into sundries and treatments. This is useful for seeing top level performance of each type.
'Totals by provider' - This breaks your totals down by each individual practitioner. This is useful for understanding each practitioner's contribution to practice revenue, tracking rates per practitioner, and calculating practitioner pay.
In these sections, you will see:
'Type' - Whether the summaries refer to sundries, treatments or lab fees.
'Opening A/R' - The total unpaid invoices of that type on the first day of the selected month.
Then you will see two sub-sections. Under 'Production':
'Charges': All items added to invoices of that type in the selected month.
'Discounts': All discounts added or changed in the selected month for that item type - this column does not factor in treatment or sundry items used to represent discounts, it is only visible if you have discounting feature enabled.
'Adjustments': Any changes made to charges from previous months.
'Production total': The total for that item type, calculated as 'Charges' plus 'Adjustments', less any 'Discounts'.
Under 'Collection':
'Collection': All payments for that item type which were recorded and allocated to an invoice during the selected month - this does not include any unallocated payments or payments allocated without selecting an invoice.
'Adjustments': Any changes made to payments from previous months.
'Collection total': The total for that item type, calculated as 'Collection' plus 'Adjustments'.
The final section displays:
'Closing A/R': The total amount from unpaid invoices for that item type, at month-end of the selected month (or at the current date if you have selected the current month).
'Net change': The change in your A/R during the selected period for that item type - ideally $0 or negative, showing you're not taking on more unpaid invoices.
'% collected': The percentage of your net charges that were paid during the selected month.
The report is focused on work completed, and payments taken towards that work. Any payments that have been taken but sit on the patient's account for future use (so unallocated payments or payments allocated but not assigned to an invoice) are intentionally excluded. The A/R totals therefore represent the totals of all unpaid invoices at your site, and do not deduct money taken as deposits for future treatment.
You can use the 'Collections' report to locate payments that have outstanding balances that need to be allocated, and use the 'Payment Allocations' report to view allocations.
💡 Top tip: You can export the report using the 'Export to PDF' button on the top right of the report (currently only PDF format is available). After month-end, the data in the report cannot change, so the report cannot become out-of-date after this point.
Can I see how totals are calculated?
You can see a detailed breakdown of how totals are calculated by clicking them - this opens a report (in a new tab), with a line-by-line breakdown of every transaction which contributed to that total. Totals which can be broken down will show as underlined if you hover over them - these include any charges, discounts, adjustments and payments.
In the report which opens, you can click on any patient name (and where applicable, the invoice number) to view their record.