4 Best Practices for Electronic Billing to Improve Collections

Streamlining outdated practices will allow your staff the time and attention they need to focus on revenue-generating tasks.

Slow collections and poor collections processes will keep your dental practice from being profitable. Even with a fair rate of collections, you may be struggling to invest in your business because you’re not always getting paid for work you’ve done. Below are four best practices for collections with an electronic billing solution to improve prompt patient payments and smooth out your revenue cycle.

1. Make it easy for patients to pay you

We live in a world where many patients prefer to pay their bills online. Not having an electronic billing option for your patients may have them looking for a dental practice that does. Electronic billing gives your patients the convenience of viewing and paying their bill online. Some dentists report getting paid within minutes of sending an emailed statement notification. Patients enjoy the flexibility of receiving a link to their statement directly to their device and the option to make a payment 24/7—including nights, weekends, and even holidays.

2. Send notifications as soon as statements are ready

Accounts with outstanding balances decrease in value over time. Electronic billing allows you to notify patients as soon as their statement is ready, eliminating the disruptive and costly practice of in-house paper billing. With an electronic billing solution, your team can easily send a bill anytime and as frequently as needed, not just once a month after a marathon of printing, folding, and mailing.

As a bonus, emailed statement notifications stay fresh in patients’ minds—while paper statements can be tossed into the at-home pile of things to take care of later. Both your pile of paper statements to be mailed and your patient’s pile of bills to pay represent money that you’ve earned but don’t have. Electronic billing can help you circumvent the piles and get cash flowing.

3. Collect on small balances normally written off

Do you know how much money you skip collecting because of the hassle? While pursuing payments on higher balances makes sense financially, with electronic billing, you don’t have to choose. Email notifications cost less than printed statements and aren’t labor-intensive, so you can avoid writing off small balances that cost more to collect through paper-based methods than what you’re owed. Balances of $15 to $20 may seem small to write off in the moment, but those balances add up quickly to be thousands of dollars at the end of the year.

4. Integrate with your practice management software

If your office staff members are staying late most days or coming in on weekends to enter receipts, an electronic billing solution that integrates with your practice management software will save them time, help you avoid overtime and improve their work-life balance. And that’s before you consider any time spent rectifying manual entry errors.
Dentrix QuickBill Email is an electronic billing solution you can use from within Dentrix so payments are automatically posted to the Dentrix Ledger. This means you can keep accurate records with less administrative time and decreased risk for manual entry errors.


Learn More

Watch a one-minute video on sending electronic dental billing statements with Dentrix QuickBill Email or call 866.551.2453 to speak with a specialist.