There are a number of tasks you should complete at the end of every day, in order to stay on top of your finances. Doing them on a daily basis will ensure you don't fall behind, and allow you to identify and manage any issues quickly.
💡 Top tip: Each report can be easily printed if you prefer to work on a paper copy. Use the built in print functionality in Chrome. You can adjust the print screen size too using additional settings.
Balance the day's payments
Use the 'Collections' report to ensure that all payments have been correctly explained, so that you can balance the day:
Set the date range filters to today's date.
You may wish to set the 'Explanation' filter to 'Unexplained', or you can review by looking at the tick ✅ (explained) and question mark❓(unexplained) icons next to the 'Amount' column.
For any unexplained payments, check if this is correct or if it should have been explained:
If a patient has added credit to their account (for example, paying in advance for work not yet completed), this should be unexplained. We recommend writing 'Credit' as a note when taking payment, to show this is intentional.
If a payment is displaying as unexplained but is not an intentional credit (for example, if the payment was an insurance check), this indicates that an error has been made so it should be reviewed in the patient's 'Account' tab and, if necessary, resolved by matching up payments to invoices and explaining them.
Cross check the list in the 'Collections' report with any appointments and payments that day in your records, to balance the day.
Review production for the day
Use the 'Practitioner Allocations' report to check the production for each practitioner is accurate.
💡 Top tip: We recommend encouraging each practitioner to take responsibility of checking their own production at the end of each day using this report.
Each practitioner should change the 'From' and 'To' filters to today's date, and set the 'Practitioner' filter to their own name.
With the list that appears, they should check each entry against the patients they saw that day.
To see all the treatment plans they have proposed for the day, they can use the 'Treatment Plans' report.
Check all claims went through that day
Use the claims management tool to manage your claims for the day and check if any have failed or were rejected - if they were, check whether further action is needed.
Set the 'Treatment date' filter to today's date and review all claims for that day.
Check if any claims need to be resubmitted or followed up on by setting the 'Claim status' filter to 'Needs attention'.
Once you have reviewed the list, decide on the suitable action to take:
Mark as manually submitted
Follow up with the insurer
Discard - if there is an error/if the claim is rejected and no insurance payment is expected, you may choose to resubmit or discard. If you discard, the claim won't be deleted but it will be removed from your 'Needs attention' list.
Identify uncollected balances from the day
This will allow you to see if invoices are waiting for payment from a patient or insurer.
Go to the 'Invoices' report in Dentally.
Apply the following filters:
Set the 'From' and 'To' fields to today's date.
Review all invoices from that day to check each patient balance is as expected. If you find a balance is more than $0 and therefore you have uncollected patient balances, you may need to investigate why. Possible reasons could be:
Your team are not collecting payment after each appointment.
Claims are not being submitted for each appointment.
Pending payments are not being created for each appointment.
If an invoice is awaiting insurance payment, it should say $0 and a pending payment should be created.