Learn the benefits of running billing statements every two or three days and how to simplify the process with Dentrix and QuickBill.
Updated 10/29/21
Do you dread having to run billing statements each month? The mountain of paper sits on your desk while you sort through it, piece by piece, writing personalized messages or stamping a page with color-coded stickers to highlight the past-due balance. On top of that, the following week is spent fielding phone calls from patients with billing questions. Sound familiar?
What if you could do away with this archaic routine? Well, I’m about to tell you how. For several years now, I have been running billing statements every two to three days. Yes, you read it correctly–every two to three days. Why? It has made life at the dental office so much better.
Benefits of Frequent Billing Statement Runs
Running statements every two to three days does several things:
1) It turns a dreaded monthly statement run into a semiweekly routine. Rather than sorting through 100-200 statements during a normal dental practice statement run, you can now look at 10-15 every two or three days. This frees up a great deal of your time because you can spread this task out during the day in between checking out patients. You don’t need to set aside several days trying to get a large batch of statements out by a certain day every month.
2) Running statements every two or three days, spreads out the billing calls from patients and eliminates daily billing that feared “week after” phone call fury.
3) My favorite benefit of daily billing is that it will even out the cash flow for the office. If your office has set production and collection goals, daily billing will help keep the two goals more closely in line with each other. For example, if you run statements at the end of every month, you will get an influx of payments at the start of the month. It could appear that collections are good, but then they will start to drop off and eventually get back in line with the production number as the month goes on. Running billing statements every few days evens out the cash flow throughout the month so you always have a good idea of how you’re tracking towards production and collection goals.
Dentrix Makes it Easy
Now you may be wondering how to make it happen. Dentrix has an option called If Not Billed Since in the Billing Statements dialog box that can help.
Select this option and Dentrix will only generate statements for patients who have not received a statement since this date. It is very important that you do not change this date from its default of one month ago. If you leave it set to the default, Dentrix will only generate statements for those families or patients who have not had a statement generated in the last 30 days. For example, if you are posting an insurance check today for the Smith family who has a leftover balance, and you send them a billing statement from the Ledger today, then tomorrow when you run your normal billing statements, the Smith family would not get a bill. Selecting this option is the key to running billing statements every few days. It’s really that simple.
Simplify your Life with QuickBill
One more thing . . . QuickBill makes this efficient process even better! With QuickBill, you won’t even have to do the printing, folding, stuffing, stamping, or mailing. Just sort through your statements on the computer screen, type in any custom notes you want added to the statements, and then send them electronically. QuickBill can electronically send your billing statements to a clearinghouse where they are professionally printed, folded, and mailed for you.
They even include a remittance envelope.
Isn’t it about time to reduce your overhead and get the cash flow back into your A/R?
Learn More
To learn more about QuickBill, refer to the article Simplify Billing with QuickBill.
To learn more about billing statements in Dentrix, see the Billing Statements Overview topic in the Dentrix Help.
By 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 [email protected].
